As a person who identifies as a liberal, it is hard for me to understand the ideologies that would lead people to support a man named Donald J. Trump for president. I just don’t get the appeal. He’s not especially well-spoken, his ideas aren’t new nor well-thought out and he faced scandal after scandal on the campaign trail in 2015 and 2016. I’ve read his Twitter feed, watched the interviews and debates he participated in and listened to some of my more conservative friends give their opinions on why voting for him last election cycle was the best option. 

Most of my friends would agree that they don’t care for him much as a person; they don’t agree with most of his stances regarding the LGBTQIA+ or minority communities and they think he is incredibly disrespectful to women, but the argument that they make is, essentially, “I will vote for this man because he’s not a Democrat”. 

The phrase, “not a Democrat,” was common in my friends’ responses. They would look past a history of racism, misogyny, bigotry, scandal, sexual assault and a documented borderline incestuous comment he made about his daughter – just to not have to vote for a Democrat. Their perception of the Democratic Party was so extreme that they would get into arguments, mainly with me, defending such a vile man as Trump. But then again, I would never vote for a Republican. So does that make the level of partisanship in our country equally polarized? Not exactly.

The Republican Party has shifted a little bit more extreme off their base than the Democrats, but both parties are now very partisan – so the fact of which party started the more extreme polarization is irrelevant. We are now at a point where our president is hated by 50% of the country and adored by the other. If Trump were to miraculously invent the cure for the coronavirus and announce it at one of his rallies, I sure as hell wouldn’t listen to him. I doubt most liberal-minded people would. And that’s what America’s two-party system has manifested. 

Because of the conservative, extremist policies Trump has pushed on his agenda, he has lost the trust of the Democrats. A country needs a leader that can be trusted by all to work in the benefit of all, not just one political party. The same is applicable for the opposite case, and I am no exception to the faults the two-party system created.  

I am voting for Joe Biden in November purely based on the fact that he is not Trump and he is not a Republican. How can I critique the political opinions of others while falling victim to the same biases as them? In the American political experiment, two parties have been writhing for power on and off for over 100 years. Save some notable exceptions, most U.S. presidents have associated with these two parties and while their respective ideologies have shifted immensely, they nonetheless shaped our country as we know it today. The same struggle, however, is also there. 

Politics in this country is a competition; people are competing to win power and use their parties to push them over the edge. It’s obvious the politicians in this country have stopped focusing on serving the people and instead beating their opponents. And it’s we the people who are both fueling and paying for it.