Being 21, this is the first presidential election season that I've been old enough to vote. In 2012, I was still six months shy of voting age. Voting, especially in the presidential election is one of the quintessential acts of patriotism that we as Americans living in a democratic society can perform. You can imagine - and some of you likely share - the disappointment I felt when the primaries were all done for and I found that we were left with a handful of terrible presidential candidates. No matter how passionate (or not - I don't blame you) you are about your candidate of choice, I'm here to tell you at least one reason why your candidate sucks. Nobody is safe, not Hillary or Trump, not Gary Johnson, not Jill Stein, not even Evan McMullin ("who?" Don't worry, I'll get to him).
Hillary Clinton (Democrat)
Hillary Clinton. The queen of the Democrats. There's so many ways I could dig into her (though admittedly, not as many as Trump). There's her email scandal, Benghazi, her defense of a child rapist in the 70s, her vote for the Iraq war, the basket of deplorables comment (even if the sentiment is hard to disagree with), I could go on. Instead, I'm going to focus on something far more boneheaded and still relatively fresh in everybody's mind: her pneumonia.
I'm not talking about the fact that she had pneumonia, using a common illness as an example for how she is somehow "unfit for office." That's stupid. The reason Hillary Clinton really sucks is because she hid the fact that she had pneumonia for absolutely no reason. For weeks she was hounded by conspiracy theorists about the state of her health, because of a series of coughing fits. The Clinton campaign covered it up. "Oh no, she's not sick." "Hillary is in perfect health." Then, out of the blue it's announced that she really had been sick all along. To that, there were two responses. The first was "oh damn. She's been campaigning that hard with pneumonia? That's bad ass!" (see Patton Oswalt's Twitter feed). The second was "people already don't trust her or any of her people? What did they gain by fueling the conspiracy theories that turned out to be true, albeit overblown?" The management of the situation was completely botched, and really only helps back up the notion that Hillary Clinton is untrustworthy.
Donald J Trump (Republican)
I'm going to start by saying this: Donald Trump is the last person I'm writing about. Not because I couldn't think of a reason for why he sucks (don't make me laugh), but because I haven't been able to decide on a decent single reason that avoids touching too much on actual substance ..... OK, I actually had to stop and laugh at the idea of Trump and "substance." And that's when it hit me. That's exactly why Donald Trump sucks. The man talks. So. Damn. Much. I would bet more than a stake in a piece of imaginary Trump realty that he talks just to hear himself.
The man has made it clear that he has no regard for the truth, driving home talking points long after they've been debunked. He does this day in and day out, most recently (as of this writing) driving the claim that Hillary Clinton started the birther movement, despite it being rated completely in the red on Politifact. As far as I'm concerned, the fact that "the Donald" relies on the repetition of these talking points that he knows to be false and that he cites these talking points with "many people are saying" me that 0% of what Donald Trump says is worth listening to.
Gary Johnson (Libertarian)
If you found yourself bummed out over Bernie Sanders's Democratic primary loss, would never vote for Hillary, despise Trump, and were put off by Jill Stein's lack of experience in government, you may have turned to the Libertarian Gary Johnson. The man has experience running a state, and just wants gay married couples to be able to protect their marijuana plants with guns on property that they own and don't have to pay taxes on. A Libertarian country sounds like paradise on paper, but if you care about the economy and actually went from Bernie to Gary, you're an idiot and I assume you know nothing about Libertarian economics.
That's not why I'm going after good ol' Gary J, though. Mr. Johnson sucks because he actually had to ask what Aleppo is. You know, Aleppo, the largest city in Syria, the city that's been the arena for a battle spanning four years. That Aleppo. In his (brief) defense, he handled the fallout from that gaffe pretty well, but come on! You're going to run for president of the strongest military power in the world and you can't even recognize the name of the location of one of the longest ongoing single conflicts in the Middle East? That's not exactly the best way to instill confidence in your voters, Gary.
Dr. Jill Stein (Green)
Jill Stein is a physician by trade, so you would think that when it comes to matters of healthcare, she would know what she's talking about. Right? Wrong. Being the candidate of the far-left Green party, Jill Stein has to answer to a bunch of gluten avoiding, tree hugging, "vaccines will give your child autism" thinking, socialist and communist minded left-wing nuts. As such, she does what she needs to in order to appease the legions of environmentalists and their pseudo-science alternative medicine. In doing so, Stein continues to pander to the anti-vax movement despite numerous studies that prove the notion that vaccines cause autism is completely baseless (seriously, that's a lot.) That's not exactly something you want to hear from a Harvard-educated medical professional.
Evan McMullin (Independent)
This year is the year of the anti-establishment. Bernie Sanders surged until the Democratic establishment stole the primaries back from him. Donald Trump took advantage of a wildly unpopular and incompetent Republican establishment. The anti-establishment Libertarian and Green parties are more relevant than any election since Ralph Nader allegedly played spoiler to Al Gore. It would be the perfect year for an Independent candidate to come out swinging and maybe take a state or two in November. In comes former CIA operative and Goldman Sachs banker, Evan McMullin.
If something about that sounds wrong to you, it's that his background screams anything but "anti-establishment." The man's resume may as well just say "Republican establishment operative" a bunch of times, a thought supported by the fact that the man is backed entirely by the very same donors who had previously backed Marco Rubio. McMullin is only even on a handful of state ballots, so it's clear that his candidacy is just a desperate grab by the #NeverTrump branch of the GOP to take back a few states. I mean, come on. If you couldn't stop the walking dumpster fire that is Donald Trump in the primaries, what makes you think throwing another establishment candidate at him will do anything in November?
Literally Everyone Else Running For President
To be quite thorough, there are actually way more people that are on Presidential ballots throughout the country. Though, if we're honest, we have to remind ourselves that a vast majority of them were write-ins made by random people who think they're funny. The people who represent actual baby parties just have to try harder and maybe in 2020, they'll get to be singled out in their own way. Until then, the fact that they can't even build a respectable party will have to do for the default "why they suck" reason.
