Students United in Disdain for Presidential Candidates

Northwood students dislike both major party candidates. Source: Forbes

With the upcoming presidential election, the United States faces a divide in opinions more extreme than it has been in many years. Those who support a candidate seem to support that candidate very stubbornly and are nauseated to hear the name of the opposing candidate. Right now, young people in the US do not support either candidate, but rather have disdain for either Trump or Clinton and would vote for the other simply to keep the one they do not like out of office .

The general opinion of young people in this country is consistent with the opinions of students here at Northwood.  I interviewed a number of students for this article and found that those who supported a candidate did not want to talk about it, because they feared being persecuted for their political opinion. The students who did want to talk about it were those who were deeply dissatisfied with both parties. Many of these students were willing to speak at length about why both candidates were horrible choices.  I could not find one person who could describe either candidate as being a good choice. They had nothing positive to say about any candidate.

When I interviewed students who were US residents I mostly got the same answers: “Trump is an idiot” or “Hillary is an idiot” or “I’d vote for Gary Johnson because he’s not Trump or Clinton.”  I also spoke with Jean-Philippe Montmarquette ‘17 who is from Ste-Thérèse, Quebec. Maybe because he is Canadian, he was more willing to discuss the election than anyone else I spoke with.  He told me that if given the option, he would not vote, and then he shared his opinion on the way the United States approaches politics.

“You guys [Americans] take everything to the extreme and say, ‘we’re gonna do this we’re gonna do that’, Montmarquette said, while we’re [Canadians] just saying we’re gonna provide food for families we’re gonna get refugees into our homes to help them and you’re saying ‘we’re kicking them out they have to be in their own country where war is.’”

“Yes of course we [Canada] have difficulties on opinions and everything but we’re not gonna say we’ll separate ourselves, he said, so there’s one type of politics, but you guys are a totally different type.”

When asked why he wouldn’t vote for Trump or Clinton, Montmarquette said, for the candidates, “It’s not for the country it’s for themselves; Trump wants to be president, but not for the people. He wants to be president to be president. Hillary is doing the same thing, thinking ‘I’m president. I can do whatever I want,’ so she’ll try to do things that she cannot.”

With the absurdity and divisiveness of this election, it’s not hard to imagine Waka Flocka Flame winning the election in 2020.