Like most liberal progressive college students, I’ve been a diehard Bernie Sanders fan from the start of the 2016 presidential cycle.
When Hillary Clinton won the Democratic Party nomination, many of us lost hope for a better future that would actually give our generation a voice in governance. There’s a lot of talk now about staying home on election day.
Who could blame us? With all of the scandals and wishy-washy politics that made Clinton seem like nothing but an opportunist, what were we left-wing liberty lovers to do?
It wasn’t until I watched President Barack Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention that I understood what a glass ceiling we were breaking as a country.
Obama is a dedicated Clinton fan. His speech reminded us we weren’t the first people to try to tear her down. She’s been in politics for 35 years, breaking gender barriers and earning the respect of world and domestic leaders.
I began to realize that I, too, am one of those seeking to tear Clinton down, even though she’s a fellow woman and I should be proud to see a woman making it so far in such a misogynistic world.
Clinton is one of the most experienced and dedicated female politicians in America. She was the first lady, a U.S. senator from New York and U.S. secretary of state.
If my choice is between putting a woman in office and putting a toupee in office, I shouldn’t have to think twice.
If you’re sitting at home on election day simply because you don’t want to Stand With Her or Make America Great Again, ask yourself: Is Clinton such a bad candidate that we would pass up the first serious opportunity in history to make a woman the leader of the free world?
Our society judges Clinton more critically because she is a woman. We exploit her faults and plaster them across the media.
But no human will ever be perfect. No candidate will ever make the right decision every time. We know and recognize this fact whenever the race is between two men.
Calling Clinton the lesser of two evils is either an exaggeration of her wrongdoings or a phrase that can be applied to every political candidate to ever run for the presidency.
The Washington Post analyzed the sexism and slurs Clinton faces on Twitter and found that most of them come from Sanders supporters and other left-wingers. The hatred comes from those of us who claim to be liberal and pro-equality when, in reality, not siding with the Democratic Party’s nominee means siding with Donald Trump.
Clinton will not win by a landslide if those of us who are throwing a tantrum about Sanders’ loss stay home. We would essentially give the future of our country to a man who invites bigotry into mainstream culture and plans to turn it into law.
As children, many of us wanted to be the first female president and did not realize how truly improbable that dream was until we grew up and saw how many barriers society throws up to keep white males in power at all costs.
White men hold 65 percent of all elected offices in the United States, even though they make up just 31 percent of the population, according to Who Leads Us, a project by the Women Donors Network.
Obama’s presidency is a victory for African-Americans and other minority groups, but electing Clinton would empower women worldwide. The only way we can gain respect and equality for our gender is to lift one another up and seize every opportunity to be great.
So I stand with her. Not because she was my first choice and not because I agree with all of her political moves. But because one day, I’d want my daughter to say, “Well, if she can do it, I can do it, too.”
Anjana Nair is an 18-year-old international studies sophomore from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.