For those of you who do not know, a centrist is somebody who is literally right in the middle between Democrats and Republicans. Occasionally they’ll lean more left or more right, but generally a centrist is right in the middle of both parties. This makes it actually extremely hard to find a candidate that I personally agree with. I have met die hard Trump supporters and die hard Clinton supporters, and I don’t know which ones I relate to less.

I found the election (and my first ever voting experience) overall a very challenging one because I do consider myself a centrist. There’s never any centrist candidates out there, and I highly doubt there ever will be. But the nation and their ideals are changing. As my history teacher said best, my generation does not fit into either party we have in place today. Most (MOST, definitely not all) of us are socially liberal and more economically conservative. There are obviously exceptions to this, but in general our political parties are simply outdated. The Republican party has been around since the 1850s, and the Democratic party since even before that.

As our nation changes and grows, so should our parties, right? After all, these candidates are supposed to represent the nation as a whole. I don’t think either of this past election’s candidates would do that or are doing that. Trump has been president-elect for not even a week and protests have erupted across the country. Everybody has their freedom to protest, of course, but I think it really says something about the state of our nation and the candidates we elect. We can never just have someone who will appeal to Republicans and Democrats alike, and I think this is why my generation needs to form a new political party based on our ideals and not the outdated ideals of our ancestors. We need things from both of these parties, but certainly not everything.

Obviously no political parties would never happen anymore, but George Washington did say that the creation of political parties would tear the nation apart, and look at us now.