What I find to be sad is that Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Barry Sanders are the best candidates that our country could find to be President in the past four years. George HW Bush was an unremarkable President, but I think that most people look back at his Presidency without rancor or anger. He was a victim of bad economic timing for the election and was just too damned pedestrian for his own good. It's a travesty that Bob Dole lost to Bill Clinton. I believe that GW Bush was a genuinely good person who was probably a bit overwhelmed by the job at times and allowed advisors like Cheney more influence than he should...but still a good man. Like him or not, I was proud to vote for John McCain in 2008. I wasn't a fan of Mitt Romney in 2012, but at least I respected him overall. 2016 was the first time in my lifetime where I didn't like a single candidate that the Republicans put forth. The rise of the Tea Party in response to Obama pushed the Republican Party to the right and has, in my opinion, created a situation where the GOP is in serious trouble in the next 10-20 years if they don't make some adjustments. Focusing on gun rights, abortion, immigration and enhancing corporate wealth above all else only get you so far, and they are losing the youth of this country. As kids get older, they will start to tilt more conservative but my daughter's generation looks at the GOP as a bunch of old, racist misogynistic white dudes that only care how their stock portfolios look and whether or not they can safely shoot a brown skinned person with a gun and tell women to shut up, have some babies and get their a$$es back in the kitchen.
The Democrats are gambling on the expansion of minority populations in our country and have the appearance of caring a lot more about those minorities and how to secure their votes without much regard for how an upper middle class white male nearing 50 feels about things. Even though I do agree with some of the things that they are trying to do and I think that overall, they have the moral high ground, there are parts of the Democratic Party platform that just don't work for me. Excessive government regulation and over-reliance on government programs isn't a direction that I want us to tilt excessively towards.
Hillary Clinton was the physical embodiment of everything that non-Democrats dis-liked/distrusted about the Democrats, Sanders is the friendly kook that you like but makes your eyes roll back as he enthusiastically tells you how he's going to fix things in ways that you may not want and Biden is a walking caricature of old white men that know that things are changing, but can't figure out where he fits in the new world. He wants to be better but he's still the creepy old dude who's been a little too handsy his whole life. Trump represents every single terrible thing about humanity and is a walking, talking example of what kind of person to NOT be....but his flaws resonate with people because we've all seen him do and say things that we've thought at some point but knew that we shouldn't say or do because we know that they are wrong. He doesn't care if it's wrong if he can get away with it and for a lot of people, that works for them. It's a particularly sad time to be an American right now.
