Americans will vote to elect a new President in less than two months, but students and faculty at the University of Detroit Mercy still don’t know what to make of this sometimes-bizarre election.
Of the 17 Republicans and 5 Democrats that ran for President, it now comes down to either Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Zana Brown, a political science major, is completely fed up with both.
“When (Trump) speaks on taxes, race, immigration and other things he has no real basis for what he’s saying he has no real facts, but Americans are feeding into that,” Brown said.
He also takes issues with Clinton’s email scandal and national security decisions made as Secretary of State.
“I would say that this election is probably an insult to the American intelligence, and it’s just interesting that we call this country a democracy, yet these are the two candidates that we’re left with,” he said.
Omar Dlewati, a biology major, isn’t old enough to vote. If he was, he said he’d vote for Clinton, but admitted he “thinks both of the main nominees are horrible.”
UDM faculty members are split, too.
History Professor Roy Finkenbine thinks Trump doesn’t stand a chance at winning the election.
“The growing number of minority voters is dramatically shifting the outcome of the electorate, to where if they go and vote, progressive whites and progressive minorities are becoming kind of a permanent majority,” Finkenbine said. “We saw that in 2008, and we saw that in 2012, and I think we’ll see that again this year.”
Finkenbine said Trump targets non-college educated, working class whites who have “a tremendous fear and anger over losing control.”
He hopes the 2016 election doesn’t have longer-lasting effects.
“My biggest fear is that (Trump) has so poisoned the atmosphere, not only in terms of his campaign style, but more and more people and congressional candidates are adopting this ‘swagger’ and ‘boasting’ and ‘mud-slinging’,” he said.
Marketing Professor Michael Bernacchi says Trump has done nothing to prove that he is Presidential material, but he has done a better job at drawing most of the attention of the public than Clinton.
Bernacchi agrees with Finkenbine that Hillary has great chance at winning due to progressive whites and minorities typically voting Democrat.
“The problem is she’s is not able to energize or really connect with that particular base, and it’s because of who she is,” said Bernacchi. “What Hillary Clinton has to do to succeed here is, she has to energize the millennials, she’s got to energize the minorities, and she’s got to energize the women.”
