As one of the most historical presidential elections slowly but surely comes to an end, we are forced not only to reflect on the past several months, but also reflect on how those months will impact our future. The things that have taken place will forever change not only politics, but day to day life in America.
It is easy to look at this election and the campaigns that have accompanied it as just a fluke in our course of history that will easily be forgotten, but that is not what we have here. We have an election that can tell us a lot about ourselves as citizens of the most powerful country in the world. June 16, 2015 is the day that seemingly launched the chaos of this crazy cycle. Donald Trump announced his presidency at the Trump Tower Atrium in Manhattan, where he said the words that would haunt his campaign every day since. My concern is not so much of the words of one man, but more in what those words sparked in the people that heard them. To the journalists that heard his words, their first reaction was excitement in how well those words would make for headlines. To the Mexicans that heard his words, they feared what this would mean for how they were perceived daily. To the undocumented immigrants that heard his words, their hopes to ever become a citizen became a far-fetched idea. To his soon to be supporters, his words sounded like what they had all already been thinking. These reactions are telling for where we are as a country, and eventually shaped how the rest of the election went.
Journalists did not care that they were technically giving Trump millions of dollars in free ad space, they only cared that his one liners would get them millions of readers and viewers. To say that this free advertising daily is what led to Trump’s surprising success would be too great of an assumption. To say that it did not help at all though, would be ignorant. It is also important to note how they reported on Hillary Clinton. Trump’s comments were always so absurd that the reporting on Clinton was always the way in which she was obviously better than Trump instead of how she was also not the perfect candidate, and how we could push her to address why she was qualified other than not being Trump. It is too late to undo the media gaf of the 2016 election, but after November, they have a chance to start over. Whether they take the challenge to report political news responsibly is up to them. But after this type of election it will undoubtedly change the way they report in someway, hopefully for the better.
Mexicans make up 17% of America’s population. There are 11.7 Mexican immigrants in the United States. So when Donald Trump said that Mexico sends its worst people, he was talking about many more people than him and his supporters realized. When you say that a large number of people of a certain demographic are the lowest of their own people, nothing can ever mend that type of hateful rhetoric. Donald Trump has since said that he did not mean his words exactly the way they came out but when there is a whole country listening to you, your impact means a lot more than your intent. His impact was consistently having violence at political rallies like America had never seen before. His impact was normalizing hate speech. His impact was making Hillary Clinton seem like the best presidential candidate we’ve ever had, when her track record shows something much different. His impact is not over.
The impact of this entire election will never be over. We will never forget how Bernie Sanders took on elites, and gained support from young people across the country with an issue-driven campaign. We will never forget, even if we want to, how Hillary Clinton became the woman who was finally able to break that mighty glass ceiling. We will never forget Trump, and the divisive language he ensued. We will never be able to go to a time like before the 2016 election, and that is huge. That is something that can not be taken lightly.
There is no way to know exactly what will happen when the inevitable happens and Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes our next president in November. Maybe, despite having not had to prove herself throughout the election, she proves herself in office. Maybe Donald Trump and his supporters will accept the diversity in America for the virtue it is, maybe they won't. But one thing is for certain, if 2016 has been any indicator for how our country will be from here on out, we’re in for one hell of a ride.
