Does this election feel different?

Does this presidential election feel different to you? It does to me.

Perhaps, of course, this is my relative inexperiance in elections. After all, every time I've been able to vote for president there's been a Clinton or a Bush on the ballot. Once more, this should be worrying to people, but doesn't seem to be a strike against Hillary for some reason. Heck, the majority of my life has been with a Bush or a Clinton as president. I'm getting kindof fed up with it, in fact.

I guess I've known ever since I first thought about the fact that we've only ever had white males as president that inevitably the first non-(white male) to run would have partisans who called anyone running against them a racist/sexist. I'm just surprised it started this quickly, and before the nominees had even been chosen.

Perhaps it is my lingering regret that I no longer live in a swing state; it is a lot harder to convince myself that my vote matters when I look at Washington's voting record. In a way, of course, it gives me a certain freedom; I can vote for someone I'd actually like to win, rather than trying to get the lesser of two evils into office.

I think a large part of it, though, is that my awareness of issues, and the danger of putting the wrong person in the Oval Office, has grown greatly over the past few years. A lot of my political opinions have solidified in the last few years, and this time around I've done enough poking into candidate platforms early on that I'm seriously worried about a few of them.

You know what I'd really like to see? I'd like to see both parties fracture, and four candidates run - two 'republicans' and two 'democrats', say. It would throw every state up for grabs in the electoral math, and give the voters some real options on issues, character, and so forth. With several major contenders in each party (I'm used to seeing a forgone conclusion in at least one party - again, maybe that's just my memory or my limited experiance), I think it might be possible. Not likely, I admit, but possible.