So
Or is it...?
To figure this whole thing out, we need to go to the start of this whole campaign and see where Trump started. Just how the hell did this caricature of a '90's WWE Attitude Era heel become elected President.
The short answer is he came from the same place that Bernie Sanders did.
What do I mean by that? Well lets look back at the mood of the country in 2015.While unemployment was going down since a high point at 2010, and in fact getting close to pre-recession levels, the number of long term unemployed seemed to remain constant, The number of involuntary part-time workers (workers who would prefer full time work, but have been unable to secure it) also remained the same. Average work week in March of 2015 also went down slightly.
So basically things were getting better, but not at the rate people wanted it to. Naturally this would lead to frustration and who else would become the focus of that frustration but the ones in power? Essentially, the "Establishment". What would result in the coming months was growing populist anger at the status quo. The status quo here not being any particular Party, but rather the nebulous concept of "business as usual" in DC. The thought that our elected officials take us for granted or as tools to be used and discarded when done with.
Out of this came two people, two people with a promise to change the way things were done and to give a voice to the various marginalized (perceived or actual) groups in society. Those people were Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Now did it have to be Bernie and Donald? No, they just happened to be at the right place at the right time, were able to read the mood of the country and harness it. Bernie by doing what he can to expand equality of opportunity, and Donald, buy tapping into that deep rooted tribal mentality though his media, on camera experience with Vince McMahon's entertainment juggernaut.
Here we have this growing mass of anger and frustration at a government that it perceives to not listen and to not care about it's concerns. To Obama's credit I do think he was genuine in trying to help the country with
At this point the Republican Party is throwing everything they can at this interloper. Trump wasn't part of their club, he forced himself in, forced himself in and started rearranging the furniture. They threw everything at him, and when they couldn't stop his runaway train, they jumped ship in a vain effort to stop him.
Thing is, they were the very entrenched political elite that the people were angry at. Jeb Bush? The Bush name is every bit associated with the concept of "political dynasty" as the name Kennedy, or the name... Clinton. Paul Ryan? Same thing, he's associated with Mitt Romney, another perceived entrenched elite. He rolled over them like a monster truck rolling over a bunch of scrapheap, junk cars from the '70s.
While Trump is going all Godzilla on the Republican establishment and swatting down every legitimate attempt to stop him, the Democrats have been watching the utter impotency of their establishment counterparts before The Trump. They start looking at Bernie with the same fear. Only here they don't try to take on Bernie in the open field, they don't want to get burned down the way 16 Republicans got trumped.
For at time it was starting to look like it would come down to which populist path the country would choose to take? Would the Super Ego prevail, or would the Id be indulged?
Enter "dirty" Debbie Wasserman Schults...
From behind the scenes Dirty Debbie worked with establishment darling Hillary Rodham Clinton to railroad Bernie Sanders. And Hillary herself, once denied the nomination against some unknown junior senator with a weird exotic sounding name, would not be denied a second time. Certainly not to some outsider interloper who thinks he can just come in and start redecorating. Dirty Debbie lead the shady behind the scenes efforts to derail Sanders and usurp the votes from his supporters for her collaborator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Which as we all know, knocked Sanders out of the race. Leaving Mrs. Establishment to square off against Herr Populist, in a election with a climate of rage and frustration. And she wasn't off to a good start with the email leaks starting to happen as the election switches gears from primaries to general.
Let me reiterate that... the Democratic National Convention, ran the public's very personification of the Establishment, against a populist candidate, in an election where the tone set is that of populist rage at the Establishment.
No one in the room thought this was a bad idea...?
OK, so we've covered where Trump came from and how he got to the general election despite all expectations and all efforts. But how did he clinch the general election?
He didn't.
This was a case of the Democrats seizing defeat from the jaws of victory.
Let's remember the mood of this election season. Frustration and anger at the established political elite. A sense of being fed up, and mad as hell at the "usual suspects". In this mood, the Democrats nominated they very personification of what the anger was loosely directed at. Worse yet, Dirty Debbie and the DNC hierarchy gave a face to that nebulous concept of "the establishment".
And apparently no one in the room with the Democratic National Convention thought this was a very bad idea and a very risky gamble...?
And in all this, what did Hillary have to offer? What did she have to show everyone that it wouldn't just be business as usual? More of the same insincere politicking, more of Wall Street having a voice in the legislative process, more dirty politics, is what the angry masses perceived that she was offering them. But it doesn't stop there, what else does Hillary have to offer? More war. Hillary is a hawk, a hawk on the same level as the neo-cons that surrounded W. She voted yes on the Iraq war. She supported overthrowing Qadaffi which plunged Libya into chaos and made it into another haven for ISIS. She wants to take a more hawkish approach towards Putin and Assad, with her proposed no-fly zone over Aleppo that would inevitably bring us into conflict with Russia. She got Dick Cheny's endorsement for Christ-sake. More corporate cronyism, and more war, that's what Hillary appeared to have to offer. Maybe there's more than that, but she just didn't sell it.
Honestly she probably couldn't sell it. Simply put, she couldn't sell it because she is the Establishment. Did anyone really think that an angry populist mass would listen to anything the face of the Establishment has to say?
She played right into Trump's hands, and Trump didn't even need to set her up. In an election characterized by rage at the establishment, a loud mouth just bumbling his way though and not giving a single fuck would actually have some appeal, as he would be a person that would shake the ground the establishment stood on, and not just that, but he plowed though with confidence.
It certainly didn't help Hillary's image to go in the identity politics game. By getting into identity politics like with 3rd wave feminism, with the worst of Black Lives Matter (yes I understand it's a loose organization with sane moderates and psychotic fringe elements), she aligned herself with those elements, including the most demented and psychotic fringes of those movements. She put herself in the same boat as the politically correct, university campus Social Justice Warrior types. Hillary always had that party line voters that will vote blue no matter what, but she also had voters that she had to win over. You don't win over voters by browbeating them with accusations of being racist, sexist, or bigots, just because they're not with you. By doing that, you end up pushing the otherwise passive and indifferent potential voter, into voting for Trump out of spite. The far left SJW types are starting to revive more and more backlash, Hillary picked the wrong horse aligning with them.
While Trump was basically a rolling shit show, with gaffe after gaffe, Hillary seemed to be actively antagonizing voters that weren't with Her. She demonized gun-owners as those directly responsible for all the guns used in crime. She demonized those with opposing views on things like the supposed "wage gap" as sexist and misogynistic. She demonized those who don't think minorities are an oppressed second-class citizenry as racist. When it comes to the fence sitters, she didn't win any of them over, she scared them over and/or brow beat them into her camp.
Where as Bernie was running a campaign that was positive in tone, Hillary ran a wholly negative campaign. A negative campaign that did not work against one Barack Hussein Obama back in 2008 and did not work yesterday against one Donald J. Trump.
So in the end, what just happened last night? What happened last night, was that we had an establishment candidate, with a vitriolic base (stealing Trump signs, arson at a GOP office, destroying public property by wreaking his Hollywood star, an assassination attempt on Trump...) that was more than happy to brow beat both the opposition and people just undecided. To call anyone not with Her, from the apathetic to indifferent to the open Trump supporter, every insult from misogynist to bigot for the sole reason that they didn't stand with their media manufactured messiah. In short, we had not only a toxic candidate with a U-Haul's worth of baggage, who is more than happy to attack, to some extent personally attack, the voters who weren't with her. A toxic candidate who couldn't connect to the voters, who couldn't read the mood of the country and ultimately crashed and burned. We have one Party that was run over by the Populist Ragemobile, and another Party with one faction that put one individual's personal political ambitions before the rest of the country (they nominated Hillary, knowing that things could go badly with her), took a gamble on her ambitions and lost, and now it's the rest of us who have to pay the gambling debt to the casino for the next four years. Just how did the DNC gamble with all of us as the poker chips? They ran the one candidate that could lose against Donald Trump, they opened the door to the possibility of, and now soon to be reality of, President Trump. That is how the DNC put a single individual's personal political ambitions before the country.
Was this a repudiation of the progress made under Obama's administration? No. Was this a vote for misogyny? No. Was this a vote for racism? No. Was this a vote for bigotry? No. Though is it being made out to be that because Hillary aligned herself with the SJW crowd that's always looking for something to be offended and cry oppression over. So as she went down and crashed and burned, she waived those flags on the way down, and the end result is makes it looks like her loss is because this country still embraces those -isms I just mentioned. But make no mistake the far left regressives will certainly scream as loud as they can about it to convince as many people that, this is indeed the case.
What this is, is a repudiation of the Establishment. A repudiation of the status-quo. As Michael Moore (I can't believe I'm referencing that fat bastard but he phrased it best) put it "...it will be the biggest fuck you to the establishment in American history." And a "big fuck you" it was indeed. This was a repudiation of the Establishment and the entrenched elite. This was a repudiation of the moral elitists who seek to put minorities on a pedestal while demanding the self-flagellation White people.
Donald Trump didn't win, he just happened to be Johnny on the Spot when the dust settled after the angry masses stopped swing the wreaking ball around. It could have been the corpse of Bernie Lomax being dragged around by Rich and Larry and it still would have won.
This whole thing is cyclical though, it happened before when Obama won the White House in a landslide and the Democrats took the House and Senate. In 2008 the Republicans were the establishment and were the ones trying to dictate morality to the people (the name "John Ashcroft" sound familiar to anyone?). The same thing happened to the Democrats last night that happened to the Republicans in 2008. They got too comfortable in power.
And that is the ultimate lesson here, nothing is a given. Karl Rove's "permanent Republican majority" was never a given any more than "President Hillary Clinton". Never underestimate a voting population's anger when it is directed at you
To Hillary supporters, take solace in the fact that American politics is cyclical. To Trump supporters, take heed that American politics is cyclical. To the Third Party and non-voters, make sure you got enough popcorn for the next four years because it's going to be one hell of a shit show.
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