Whenever you turn on the news, there is always a segment on the much anticipated 2016 Presidential Race. As the time counts down to the moment where the nominees are announced for each party, the candidates get more aggressive.
As an outsider looking in, the Democrats seem to have better footing than the Republicans. The reason: Democrats do not have a “Donald Trump” running amok in their party.
Democrats have the underdog Bernie Sanders, the experienced Hillary Clinton, and the unknown Martin O’Malley. Most experts would have put Hillary in the running in front of all other candidates, but recently Sanders has been surging in the polls.
According to Time.com, Bernie Sanders has 51 percent support in Iowa polls while Clinton has 43 percent support. In New Hampshire polls, Sanders is also in front of Clinton, he has 60 percent while Clinton has 30 percent.
The Republican Party is another story. With many more contenders, there are larger fights. Donald Trump seems to make the news every day with his controversial comments. His most recent one:
Trump saying “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”
While many thought Trump would drop out of the race or he would never be in the running to be candidate, the recent polls say otherwise. Trump has been leading in the polls in front of what was seen as obvious contenders.
From my perspective, this whole run for the President seems like a circus.
From the cartoon-like Trump to the unseen underdog in Sanders, nothing seems certain anymore.
Political analysts would have put Clinton as the obvious choice for the Democratic nomination and no one would challenge her seriously in the polls. That, however, all changed when Bernie Sanders came into the picture. I am a staunch Bernie supporter, but I would not mind voting for Hillary. While my family is Republican to the bone, I happen to be flexible. I vote for whoever I identify with the most, which in this case is Bernie.
Maybe I never paid enough attention to presidential races before and maybe that is why I see this presidential race as a joke. This is the first time I will be able to vote for a President since I turned 18 in 2014. I was excited to be able to have a hand in choosing the next president, but as soon as the Republican candidates started coming out of the shadows, I cringed.
I cannot help but feel sympathy for the Republican candidates; they had no idea that Trump was going to steal the nomination chances from them.
Trump has done damage to the party. Some citizens now see the Republicans as different versions of Trump himself. They now all see the candidates as racist, xenophobic and crazy. Even I cannot help but see them as all those things from time to time.
While I hope regardless of who I vote for, that Trump does not receive the Republican nomination, Paul Ryan, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin and Speaker of the House, denounced Trump’s views on banning Muslims.
“This is not conservatism,” he stated, “What was proposed yesterday is not what this party stands for and more importantly, it’s not what this country stands for.”
Funny how the man who is seen as the leader of the party in Congress, does not approve of Trump.
We will see how this turns out after the primaries and then comes the real presidential race.