How does one write about politics without taking sides, even if they do it unconsciously? It certainly is not an easy thing to do. I am going to do my very best to do this, but if my preferences sneak through I apologize in advance. One thing which has always irked me was the fact we do not vote for presidents directly. We all hear how democratic this country is, but can a country be truly democratic without direct election by the people for a presidential and vice-presidential candidate? The Electoral College elects them and these representatives are elected according to laws in the individual states they come from. The representatives are called electors and supposedly pledge to vote for a particular candidate. It is possible to have electors who have not pledged. The numbers of electors are equal to the number of members of congress each state is entitled to, plus 3 for the District of Columbia, thus there are 538. The electors are not bound by law to vote in any certain way.

You might think so what the electors always carry out the will of the people, but if you thought that you would be incorrect. It turns out four times in the history of this country presidents were elected who didn’t win the popular vote. In 2000 George W. Bush was declared president, yet he had 540,000 votes less than Al Gore. In 1888 Benjamin Harrison was elected president, but had 90,000 votes less than Grover Cleveland. In 1876 Rutherford B. Hayes was elected president, but he had 250,000 votes less than Samuel J. Tilden and in 1824 John Quincy Adams was elected president. He had not won the popular vote or even the electoral vote. I wanted to point these elections out to prove the system is anything but democratic. Many of us are unaware of what is really transpiring. The system is rigged and we are just being taken for a ride. Those who control these things know they have free reign to do what they want and they will get away with it.

When I look at what is going on today with the democratic and republican parties I have to wonder if there can be a lawful election. If the results are within a million votes will the Electoral College still carry out the will of the people or will they answer to some higher power and I am not talking about God? Both candidates are hated so much you have to be careful how you assess this situation. Notice I am dropping Bernie Sanders from the equation, because I think he is finished. Sorry Sanders supporters, this is not personal I just don’t think he can stop Clinton from getting the required amount of votes to make her the candidate and the only chance he might have is if Clinton is charged with a crime, which looks less and less likely. I can understand that, because who would want to be the person to pull a candidate for president out of the race? The pressure these people are under not to do this must be tremendous.

When I look at what I call the two main candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump I can’t help but feel we have reached a sorry state in the history of this country. Even when there were a lot more candidates I wasn’t inspired by any of them. As I said to someone, Kennedy told us to put our country ahead of ourselves, these candidates all seemed to be people who would put themselves first or at the very least just be more of the same old thing leading us down the road to bankruptcy and misery. Some of them were members of congress and had terrible records so they were easy to spot, some were failed business people and others were state officials who had let their states down. There were no heroes in this batch of candidates. Where there are no heroes sometimes the panders and loud mouths come to the forefront and that seems to be just what happened. We now have two main candidates who are historically disliked. A poll in May 2016 showed Trump with an unfavorability rating of 55% and Clinton with one of almost 40%. With these high unfavorability ratings one has to wonder how these two candidates beat the opposition.

Trump is a candidate who doesn’t seem to have many answers aside from what he figured out the masses like to hear. He will say a few phrases like build a wall to keep out illegal aliens, yet in his heart he knows that is not the answer, because illegal Mexican aliens have been tunneling under the walls and fences we have for years. When pressed about immigrants coming in from Syria and the warring part of the Middle East, he knew he could have said we won’t allow immigration from that part of the world, but instead he wanted to provoke news reports to constantly talk about him so he said keep Muslims out. This was good for many months of press coverage plus it appealed to the baser instincts of some people. The idea with Trump is to get as much free press coverage as possible so always look to him to be controversial. Another problem with Trump is he says things then either denies them or changes his mind. There are some issues where Trump has actually changed his mind so much we really don’t know where he stands anymore.

Clinton seems to be a pandering candidate playing to minorities hoping they will carry her over to the presidency. There has been many things said about her which are less than flattering, but I don’t want to nitpick so I will skip the personal stuff. She has constantly shown bad judgment over the years when she has been in charge. When asked about her email server she replied there was nothing classified on it and when she turned over the emails she withheld thousands saying they had nothing to do with the government. When we talk about others not using the government email all the time, none of them had their own server to hide what they were doing. Benghazi, Libya was a tragedy. Clinton was Secretary of State at the time and in charge of ambassadors and their embassies and buildings. Chris Stevens the ambassador repeatedly asked for more security and was never given it. Again we see bad judgment. One thing I will say for Clinton, she always apologizes.

I have tried to give short honest appraisals of the candidates and I admit I am going to vote for one since there is not much choice in my mind. I hope I haven’t tipped my hand and I hope when the election takes place the Electoral College doesn’t pull another fast one.