So it’s come to this.

Three years ago, I took a class on this campus under one of my favorite people: Noah Nelson. It was the year 2012 and the presidential election was at full strength. It was our class’s job to watch the presidential debates, learn about the two candidates, and decide who would ultimately get our personal votes while examining and predicting how the election would turn out. At the time, I was quite confident that President Obama would retain his office, but I remember watching the results with fear at every one of Mitt Romney’s votes.

“How can people vote for him?” I asked myself as I remembered how he had essentially cast aside 47 percent of the country and made disturbing comments like “binders full of women.” “This man has no idea what he’s talking about!”

If only I knew. I remember thinking that Mitt Romney would be one of the worst presidents of all time; I had no inkling that his loss would create a collection of the absolute worst presidential candidates ever assembled.

With each incredible statement about women or immigrants that Donald Trump makes, with each crazy hypothesis about how gun-toting Jews would’ve changed the course of the Holocaust from Dr. Ben Carson, with each blindfolded claim against Planned Parenthood on account of a series of videos that have been proven to be fabricated from Carly Fiorina, I am absolutely stunned at how a once viable political party could allow itself to devolve into a chaotic whirlwind of bigots, nuts, and short-sighted morons. What’s incredible is that they think they’re fantastic. Marco Rubio himself said in the first debate in response to an insane question about discussions with God that The Lord “has blessed us with so many great candidates. The Democrats can’t even find one.” An amazing claim, to be sure, considering that the Democrats harbor one of the most honest and proven politicians of all time in Bernie Sanders and a woman with decades of experience and know-how in Hillary Clinton, not to mention the other candidates who all have proven track records. Meanwhile, the Republicans have a raging blowhard who has bankrupted multiple companies and has no political experience, a brain surgeon who thinks all of his abilities were bestowed upon him by a Biblical figure, a raging lunatic who is too focused on worrying about a colorful bag of Dorito’s than running a viable campaign, a crook, a phony… the list goes on.

I’m calling it now; a Democrat will win this election. The question we have to answer now is whether it will be Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. For me, and many others in my age group, the choice is clear. Bernie Sanders has stuck to the same values for decades and has consistently garnered bipartisan support (he’s tied as the frontrunner in the Republican nomination for president in his state of Vermont at the time of this writing) doing things like fighting against income inequality, arguing in support of the poor, and marching in the name of civil rights. But if Hillary Clinton does beat him as she is predicted to do, it won’t be the end of the world; it’ll just be a huge disappointment. The same cannot be said for virtually any of the Republican contenders, but as the clown car continues to gain speed on their race off of insanity cliff, I’m content to just sit back and watch.