With one month until election day, all expectations are gone.  
The past week of the 2016 presidential election has been dizzying. Numerous tapes of Donald Trump boasting of his exploits have caused many Republicans to back down from their initial support of the candidate, while a new array of emails has voters questioning Hillary Clinton and her already suspicious character. Both of these developments transpired 48 hours before the second presidential debate, stirring speculation and controversy into the anticipated bout.
The town hall style of the forum opened the candidates to questions from undecided voters. While some of these questions surrounded topical discussions or taxes and Islamophobia, there were also questions of character. The debate opened with a question asking if the candidates are, themselves, positive role models to the public. Both candidates gave expected answers promoting their campaign’s goals, but the question does strike at something deeper within this election: fear.
According to a USA Today poll taken in September, 80 percent of people supporting Donald Trump said they would be “scared” of a Clinton presidency, and 62 percent of Clinton’s supporters said they are “scared” of a Trump presidency.
These are tough statistics in an election where voters want to believe in uprooting the establishment and arising victorious in a new political arena. However, the common thread instead seems to be voting based on fear, not excitement; a scenario in which the winner is the survivor of the cliche ‘lesser-of-two-evils.’
For the undecided voters in the audience at the last debate, this is the difficulty in formulating questions. What questions could they ask that wouldn’t result in the candidates devolving into emails, audio tapes or tax returns? At what point could this election actually get back to politics and not the seemingly endless scandals enveloping their every move? The true answer is, never.
Donald Trump in this debate called Clinton “the Devil” and threatened to lock her in prison should he be elected, a move that some are now attributing to a dictator-like tendency hidden within Trump. Clinton dodged a potential attack against her open border comments and escaped a full scale war against Bill Clinton’s history of sexual allegations. What was designed to address the concerns of undecided voters became a slugfest of scandal.
“That’s why this election feels so depressing to people, because it’s a referendum on the other person – how bad they are,” said CBS News Political Director John Dickerson earlier in this election, and this assertion has only gained momentum after Sunday’s debate.
“Whoever wins, there will be a sourness to the victory, and that’s a problem if you want to actually do something when you get in office,” Dickerson said, which presents a very tricky reality: With partisan politics pushing into deep personal qualities like sexual morality and if a president is trustworthy, how will the country cope after the election?
Within the atmosphere that culminated both before and after the debate, this election is forced to glance at the unethical character of its nominees and question the unethical character of the government itself. This election has the political establishment becoming increasingly self-aware between Bernie Sanders’ call for a purified government and Trump’s domination as an apolitical savior. There has been a constant evolution from the traditional and status quo, which has produced a new awareness of the government but invariably led to the often appalling race that voters see now. The 2016 election is one of dissatisfaction and as Jimmy Carter might say, a crisis of confidence.
The interesting effect of this election is a voting base that is deeply invested in voting but not in its candidates. There is a blooming passion for voter awareness and third party activism, but from a base that in many ways still feels hopeless. It is an election of paradox, in which there is much at stake but little to be gained from two candidates that seem to exist only as the lesser of two evils.
The debate ended on a question of what the candidates saw as positive within the other candidate. It was a touching moment which spoke to a moral tinge outside of the harsh gloves-off debating. But the sweet ending of the debate is met with a looming election day that carries a weight of a drastically different American future. There’s a Supreme Court Justice on the line. The future of the Republican party is on the line.
The future of the presidency is on the line.
Listen to Alec Cowan and Zach Moss discuss political events in the most recent episode of the Emerald’s Political Podcast:

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An American flag representing patriotism. The current U.S elections are full of fear and uncertainty. (Flickr: Janzster’s View)