While I’d like to play the optimist, and say yes, I’m going to be realistic and say we’re far from ready.

Why? Because adorable, kind-hearted, champion-for-the-people Bernie Sanders will tear apart what our Founding Fathers and the generations that followed have held most dear – the entire political system. He is, in essence, a left-wing independent under the guise of the Democratic Party. And it seems like every vice we talk about in politics today – from infinite rises in tuition to the amount of spending for defense – conglomerates in Sanders’s campaign.

Personally, I love it. I love that there’s finally a candidate that’s taking the most liberal stance on virtually every issue in the U.S. However, as the NY Times called him “The Socialist Senator”, back in ’07 it’s too soon to say how he’ll do in the primaries.

It all comes down to how the system is run today, in which big businesses are dubbed “too big to fail” and many of our policies run in favor of them; in which as one of the most developed countries in the world our wage gap is among the highest; in which veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan face inadequate care back home; in which climate change is still a debated topic in Congress whereas the rest of the world has taken preventative action for it; in which the rights of a woman’s body is somehow everyone else’s business but hers; and so on.

There’s no question about it – there’s a lot to reform. The fact that Sanders is hitting all these points and more in his campaign and is offering arguably radical solutions is more than anyone frustrated with the way life is nowadays could dare hope for.

Sanders gives hopefuls a voice with his extensive political agenda. But from what I’ve seen from the GOP debates – by some crack in the conventional pirouettes of the cosmos or what I hope was just a hack in the polls ֪ Donald Trump is leading in the Republican primaries, making me fear for Bernie’s political future. Trump’s success is a reflection of the people encouraging him, people who are just as fed up as the rest of us but who hold a vastly different idea of reform.

And let’s not forget; sentiments here in New England are not representative of the rest of the country. As a whole, we’re too traditional, too religious and too hesitant for an independent-turned-Democrat as president.

But as a first-time voter in the 2016 presidential elections, my vote’s still reserved for Bernie.

Noosha Uddin is a collegian columnist. She can be reached at [email protected].