Trump Showed Me That My Vote Matters
I like many people thought Trump had no chance of beating the other Republicans running for President, let alone Hillary or Bernie, when he came down the escalator in Trump Tower on June 16, 2015, to announce that he was running for president in 2016. As time went on, the more experienced Republicans dropped out of the race one after the other, while Trump was continuing his bullying tour. He bullied his way into becoming the 2016 Republican Presidential Candidate. Republicans had chosen a bully, while the Democratic Party had chosen Hillary Clinton, a former first wife of the United States, with an extensive political career.
A year and a day after Trump had come down the escalator in his own hotel to announce his Presidential campaign, I turned eighteen and I was now eligible to vote in the 2016 Presidential election. Hillary Clinton is who I was planning to vote for, but poll after poll showed her leading Trump and nobody except the Trump Campaign had Trump winning the 2016 Presidential election. So, I questioned if my vote would matter since I live in a state that had not gone red since 1988 and my candidate looked like she had it in the bag. What I did not expect was that Hillary would have to answer for things her husband, former President Bill Clinton, had done while he was President and for using a private email server while she was the Secretary of State of the United States. Even with these two things lingering over Hillary’s Presidential Campaign, I still thought Clinton would overcome them and get elected and become the first female President of the United States because her opponent had done worse things. So when the 2016 election day came, I did not exercise my right to vote. At the end of election day, Trump became President-elect Trump, and like many, I was fearful of what was about to come.
Trump did not wait long to put fear in many Americans as he signed his Muslim Ban, but as a response to everything Trump would do, people came out and protested his Muslim ban. Next, the Trump administration unbeknownst to Americans was plotting a plan to deter immigrants from Mexico and Central America from coming to the United States by separating immigrant parents from their children. This plan became known as the “Zero Tolerance Policy” and as of right now five hundred plus of those children have not returned to their parents. Then, Trump got impeached by the House of Representatives because he unsuccessfully tried to find dirt on Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, by withholding funding from Ukraine until they provided him with what he was looking for. Last, as countries around the world began seeing the spread of the Coronavirus in their cities, Trump, even though he had told Bob Woodward that it was worse than the flu and was having people with who he came in contact tested, publicly he was saying it was like flu and that it would miraculously go away. Nine months later, almost 240,000 Americans have died of the Coronavirus, and for four straight days, the United States has reached 100,000 new Coronavirus cases a day.
For nine months not only has the Coronavirus pandemic ravaged the United States, but it has also intersected with the 2020 Presidential election. After a year of fending off a lot of democrats who like him were trying to secure the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden became the Democratic Presidential nominee. As Trump disregarded his own CDC’s recommendations on how to control COVID-19 by holding rallies with crowds full of people not wearing masks because he cares more about feeding his ego than the health of his followers, Biden slowly moved from virtually campaigning to holding drive-in rallies.
After election 2016, I told myself that from now on I would vote in every presidential election that I’m alive for, to prevent another Donald Trump-like candidate from becoming POTUS, and with everything Trump has done leading up to the 2020 Presidential election, I couldn’t wait to help in voting Trump out of the White House and in bruising his ego. I couldn’t wait to help in voting Trump out of the White House and bruise his ego. Biden was not my first choice, Kamala Harris was. Kamala Harris was my first choice because I still wanted a female as president and her being a woman of color was a plus. After Harris dropped out of the race, I moved on to support Elizabeth Warren because she had a plan for everything and she was the only woman left. Eventually, Warren dropped out of the race but determined to do my part in getting Trump out, I was going to vote blue no matter who. So, I voted for the first time in a Presidential election. I voted for the winning ticket, President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. For now, I will have to settle for a female V.P., but I still believe that it is time for America to elect its first female POTUS.
