Quick Mid-Post Rant: Most of us have spent the entirety of the last 6 months fighting over who will become our President. During that same time most of us have ignored every single other race and measure. You will walk into the voting booth completely unprepared to vote for everything else, so you'll do 1 of 2 things. You'll go down the ballot and vote for the names you recognize (or the parties they represent) and cast your measures vote on some 30 second commercial you saw on TV. Or you'll simply decide not to vote for most of the other candidates and ballot measures because you aren't educated enough on the topics. This is how we get lifetime Congressional Members. This is how our taxes creep up year after year and we end up paying $5 to cross a bridge. In reality, whomever gets elected President will likely have zero impact on your own personal life. However, your local races and measures will have profound effects on you. It's not too late to spend a little time getting educated on the other votes you need to cast so I urge you all to do that before Tuesday.
Ok, back to me. I've never struggled with a decision about where my vote would go more than this year. I had said long ago that I would vote for a Republican this election no matter who the Republican candidate turned out to be. That seemed like a fairly low risk statement given 17 Republicans were running for President and several of them seemed like decent choices to me. I came out of the gate liking Rubio and even donated to his campaign, but Christie exposed him for the lifetime politician he is and my support (and everyone else's) quickly disappeared. I think liked Christie for about 30 seconds until it became clear I was the only one and there was no chance he'd be elected. So I turned my support to Ted Cruz. Many of his positions were similar to mine and he didn't seem to come with all of the venomous rhetoric you heard from Trump. I also liked the fact both Democrats and Republicans seemed to dislike Cruz. That told me he was not a typical politician and raised my hopes of what he could do in D.C. Meanwhile, Kasich kept hanging around like the crazy guy he was talking nothing but common sense and practicality. With every debate and every primary I continued to hear nothing but good ideas and sound approaches on everything I seemed to care about. I found myself hoping against hope that somehow Kasich would emerge as our Republican candidate. But he didn't and so I was left with Trump.
I guess you could say I was like a man wandering through the desert desperately looking for a glass of water. Rubio was salt water and ended up making me sick. Christie was a mirage. Cruz was ice water that would never melt. And Kasich was just a dream that would never become reality. So as I continued to wander and my thirst grew and grew my only option became Trump. By no means was he a cold glass of water or an ice cold beer. Sure he was a warm, stagnant, fly infested pond in the rain forest where I'd likely get dysentery, but I was thirsty and in dire need of drink. So I took a sip and at first found it wasn't all that bad. Yes, the taste was unpleasant, but it did the job. I didn't like how he said things but I did find I liked the core of a lot of what he said. (For example, I don't think Mexicans are all rapists and drug dealers, but I do think our borders are far too porous to illegal aliens from all countries.) So I found myself drinking more and more of the water until I ultimately became sick. I didn't like all of the reports that began to leak about the way he's treated women in the past (or present for that matter). I didn't like the way he behaved in debates and the fact any person could provoke him into an early morning Twitter tirade. So I began to purge myself of my Trump support feeling worse than I did when wandering through the Republican Primary Desert.
But who would I vote for? I cannot and will not vote for Clinton (hereto referred to as HRC). I definitely don't believe everything that's come out about her, but enough of it is probably true to make me believe she's the exact embodiment of everything I loathe about Washington D.C. I believe at best she's an unethical politician and at worst she's a criminal who belongs in jail. She's every bit as negative and vitriolic as Trump and her hypocrisy has no limits. For example, how can she possibly demand the FBI be transparent about their evidence when the only reason they are investigating her is her lack of transparency on tens of thousands of emails?? HRC is the devil in sheep's clothing (or pant suit if you like) and it's unfortunate so many people believe she's okay because she's "not as bad as Trump."
I won't vote for a 3rd Party candidate. It's not that I'm opposed to 3rd parties and in fact think a viable 3rd party would be very healthy in America. But Gary Johnson is just a mediocre politician turned drug pusher who wasn't good enough to be elected as a Republican so has decided to stay in the spotlight every 4 years as a Libertarian. And with that, I won't waste any more words on him.
So I still have no one to vote for. But wait, I live in California and no matter who I vote for my electoral votes are going for HRC. So that frees me up to do whatever I want to do. So I decided to do a write in and cast my vote for the Republican I thought would have been best. That's right, that tall drink of water John Kasich. I had found the loop hole. I didn't have to vote for Trump or HRC. I was proud to be able to take the moral high road and not have to put my "support" behind either candidate. Oh I talked a good talk about how if I lived in a battleground state then I would have made the tough choice on voting for one of them, but in reality it was a cop out. Since our nation was formed, millions of men and women have died for my right to vote and I wasn't going to be a chicken because the choice was hard.
So this morning I woke up with a decision. I will vote for Donald Trump. I will not vote for him because I think he's a good man who represents America well, because he doesn't. I will not vote for him just because I think HRC is evil and a vote for him is a vote against her. I will not vote for him because what he supports is exactly equal to everything I believe, because it isn't. I will vote for Trump because I think Washington D.C. and the entire electoral process needs a complete and total overhaul and he's more likely to bring it than anyone else. I'm tired of politics as usual. I think it's funny all of the hyperbolic statements people make about the world we'll get if we elect Trump or HRC. The reality is for the past 30 years no President has been able to do anything at all so why on earth do you think one of these two people will get anything done? But if Trump gets elected, it will send the strongest message ever to American politicians. It tells them the status quo of ineptitude and idleness is over. If a guy like Trump, with all his flaws and problems can beat a career politician in HRC, then they all have to change now.
So now I'm faced with the backlash of casting my vote for Trump. I've heard some say only toothless uneducated men from the south are his supporters. Well I have all my teeth, went to college, and I don't say yes sir and ma'am. I've heard HRC say Trump supporters are deplorable (or at least half of them). Well I'm not. I'm a high integrity Christian who has been forced to make a difficult choice. I've heard people say if you vote for Trump you aren't representing your wives, daughters or mothers. Well that's just like saying if you vote for HRC then you aren't representing our soldiers or the people who invented email (and no, that wasn't Al Gore).
But none of it really matters because in America and in California my vote does not count. We still have this crazy system of an electoral college where somehow we believe that's the best way to elect the most powerful person in the world. I actually think this is where Trump is right. The election is rigged. But not against him. It's rigged against the American Voters. How is it possible that Al Gore can win the popular vote in 2000 but not be elected President. Why is it that okay? Why is it okay that I live in California and unless my vote goes to HRC then my vote doesn't count? Or on the other side, why is it okay that a Democrat in Texas never gets their vote heard? How is it possible that the Republican Party started this election with an incredibly narrow path to the White House simply based on electoral votes and the states that never change. This was all long before Trump was the candidate. It's time for that process to change which I believe we get more people out there to vote because each vote matters much more. I want my vote to count and so should you.
