So, it’s been a
rough week and a half for me since the election. Though I felt that I had a strong campaign
with a platform that was beneficial to all Americans, it appears to have been a
fruitless endeavor for me. Despite the fact that there are still a good number of votes to be counted and verified across the
nation, it would appear that, as the dust settles, Donald Trump will win the
Electoral vote and Hillary Clinton will win the popular vote. Acknowledging this outcome, it is with a
heavy heart that I have to concede this race; my bid to be elected President in 2016 has fallen short of its goal.
With this, I
believe the real hurt to be how my campaign, which I felt to be full of
honesty, integrity, tolerance and moderation, performed well below even my own
modest expectations. I actually got a
smaller portion of the vote than Jill Stein, who believed she could use a magic
trick to erase student loan debt (it seems her understanding of quantitative
easing is that it’s basically your grandpa pulling a quarter out of your
ear). I got fewer votes than a guy who
dresses like this:
This is a
man who is angry about his own fashion choices.
I feel like a
bigger failure than Jeb Bush right now and he had to tell his audience to clap
for him at one of his rallies. Truthfully,
my only saving grace is that I spent about $130 million less on my campaign
than he did, mostly because my campaign finances were budgeted at approximately
$7.36 (an amount that was raised entirely through grassroots fundraising
efforts).
I know how
you feel, Jeb
I thought I had
tapped into what the American people really wanted. I thought I had heard the message loud and clear;
they wanted someone who wasn’t a politician, someone who was an outsider. I thought I fit that mold perfectly without
any of that troublesome racism or sexism, but apparently I just wasn’t
inflammatory or attention-grabbing enough.
Though I feel proud that I stuck to my convictions throughout my
campaign, I am saddened to announce that it was my own fault for misreading
what the American people wanted in a president and launching my campaign at a
time where I simply didn’t fit the mold of what less than half the population of
America was willing to vote for in a leader.
Even more
disappointing is the fact that, according to exit polling, I actually got a
negative percentage of the votes. This
means that, not only did I not get a single vote in my favor, someone actually
took the time to write-in “Not Ryan Rick” and that this was actually
legitimately counted as a vote against me.
Really, I think if more people had known that you could vote against a
person, without casting a vote for their opponent, the outcome of this election
would have been a lot different.
Pretty sure
this is what the electoral map would have looked like.
So I sit here, disappointed
in myself and trying to find a new direction for myself. For at least the time being, my political
aspirations are on hold. It’s a tough
pill to swallow, but I consider myself a realist and I just don’t see myself
realistically making up 60 million plus votes and literally all of the electoral
votes, even with recounts. I’ll just
have to move my focus back to doing what I do best (as soon as I figure out
what that is). And to all voters out
there, even those (stupid) people that didn’t vote for me, I hope that we can
all realize that democracy has spoken and we can come together and show the
same kind of grace, humility and American pride in supporting the winner of
this contentious presidential election as was shown to Barack Obama when he
handily won both the Electoral College and the popular vote.
Apparently,
these people were celebrating democracy.
Lastly, I’d like
to express my extreme disappointment in finding out that there are no snacks
involved with a concession speech, despite the obvious implications with the
name “concession.” Now is the perfect
time for me to eat away my sadness. This
is bullshit.
If I’m
going to lose I should at least be able to lose with nachos.
-Ryan
