Most Emotionally Draining Campaign in Decades Coming to a Close

By Autumn Pattison 11/8/16

Emotions are running high in the final day  of the 2016 presidential election. Today, Americans will finally put the last year and a half to bed with their votes. The 2016 election cycle has seen sexual assault, FBI investigations, racially-charged rhetoric and blistering character attacks. 

Tommy Vietor, who worked on the 2008 Obama campaign and now hosts the “Keeping it 1600” podcast, remarked “At this point we are boiled frogs. We are wondering why our skin is falling off. I think when this election ends and people stop for a second and people actually reflect, they will realize how horrible and unprecedented it really was.”

The whole country is frantically refreshing polls and predictions, and ratings for cable news networks are rising steadily. Clinton’s lead is narrowing heading into Election Day, heightening the tension further as both candidates vie for the win. A bleak outlook is not uncommon among American citizens, and this has been expressed through numerous media outlets. The New York recently published cartoons of a man on a train reading a newspaper with the headlines “Oh Sweet Jesus, Please God No,” and “Anything But That.”

The final episode of Saturday Night Live before the election saw Alec Baldwin, who portrays Donald Trump, and Kate McKinnon, who portrays Hillary Clinton, breaking character to talk about the reality of the election. This is unorthodox for SNL, but the urgency of this year’s election pervaded. Election Day is shaping up to be a close race, and a nerve-wracking experience for the American people.