No matter who wins, we lose.
Hillary Clinton is widely despised across the board. Men and women
of a certain age remember her as a pushy, overstepping First Lady with a
health-care agenda no one was ready for. There were rumors of
high-handedness, which is the most generous way to put it; at worst she was
said to throw her weight around the White House. She was entitled and
wanted to be co-president—or so people thought.
Then there
was the Clintons' Whitewater fiasco, a seemingly endless parade of land
purchases, bad loans, and illegal proceedings. Deputy White House counsel
Vincent Foster committed suicide, federal investigations began, and various
people went to jail. But not Bill or Hillary, who were stained by the
scandal but not taken down.
More
recently we have seen her as Secretary of State squirming to explain the
attacks on the Benghazi embassy that left the Ambassador and his Information
Officer dead. And thousands of her official and classified emails were
sent on her private account rather than the government's official one.
Very messy. Very questionable. Very unpresidential.
And what
kind of woman "stands by her man" when he's getting blow jobs in the
White House bathrooms? And when the ensuing scandal occupies most of the
four years of her husband's second term? She should have kept her own
dignity by dumping her philandering husband.
Fact is,
nobody likes Hillary. Not much anyway. And many despise her.
Who could possibly vote for her?
Well, me
for one.
The reason
of course is the moronic Donald Trump, the most epic, self-promoting egotist to
cross the national stage--maybe ever. He overcame big odds in the
Republican primaries because he stumbled onto political gold, the fertile
valley of middle-class, racist, anti-immigrant, flag-waving, empty-headed
American men. He's convinced them they're going to make America great
again--on the backs of blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, women, and gays. He's
the billionaire who has convinced American men that he's just like them.
Hillary has
left a trail of questionable decisions, but The Donald has no public record at
all--except for five years on a reality television show, which made him a
celebrity in the most celebrity conscious country in the world. National
politics has given his monumental ego what it most wants and needs. Every
breath he takes is recorded by the media. He has Secret Service
protection. He roars, points his thumbs up, and waves the flag. And
he struts around on the biggest of stages, the American presidential
sweepstakes. He's an absolute fraud, an intellectual lightweight.
For years he has gone on talk shows and been laughed at. He's a clown after
all, a buffoon. Letterman loved skewering him. It was almost too
easy.
It hasn't
dawned on his supporters that their rich leader is using them, tapping into
their insecurities and fears--that his money will separate him from them
inescapably and forever. Which he's happy about. The last thing he
wants is to rub elbows with the men and women voting for him. This is not
a man of the people. Unless, of course, you mean rich people.
But
through the long campaign season, Trump's shoot-from-the-hip style, his
take-no-prisoners rhetoric, his talk-fast-think-later approach to debates and
stump speeches has struck a chord with middle-class American men. They've
been humiliated by eight years of a black Democrat, and Donald Trump has turned
out to be the anti-Obama. That's what American men like about him.
The billionaire will make America great again by grabbing presidential power on
behalf of the common man. He says he can kill someone and still be
elected. He couldn’t be a greater embarrassment.
Trump's brand
of Americanism isn't new, though. It's called "nativism," and
it has emerged sporadically in our history, most notably in the 1840s and 1850s
when "native" American white men were threatened by Irish immigrants,
who were taking jobs away from "real" Americans and threatening American
Protestantism with their report-to-the-pope Catholicism. Nativists came
together as the national American Party, which was widely called the Know
Nothing Party, and they stood for hatred--of blacks, of immigrants, and of
Catholics. Donald Trump, exploiting popular
prejudices and widespread fear, is the newest Know Nothing. He’s an anomaly, a blip on the radar tracking the
upward climb of American democracy.
This isn't a case where voters can
choose the lesser of two evils. Our candidates are both bad, both
seriously flawed. I’m going to hold my nose and vote for Hillary—at least
she’s a serious leader, while The Donald will never be anything more than a scary
clown.
Election Night: Trump wins. The
actual numbers are still uncertain and no news source is announcing that Trump
has won, but he has. I had it all wrong. I figured the GOP blew the
election by putting up the one candidate Hillary Clinton could beat.
Turns out the Democrats blew it by putting up the one candidate Trump could
beat. But as I said at the outset, no matter who wins, we lose. So
brace yourself America and buckle up. We're about to experience some
serious turbulence.
Two
weeks after the election, November 22: According
to USA Today, Trump won the electoral
college vote, 290-232 (270 are needed to win), but lost the popular vote by
some 1.7 million votes. Votes are still
being counted, but the newspaper estimates Clinton’s lead will continue to
grow, but the electoral college vote will not change.
Three
and a half weeks after the election, December 2: According to Editor William Falk in The
Week, Hillary Clinton decided "to virtually ignore 'safe' Wisconsin
and Michigan in the final weeks,” a bad decision considering that she lost both
states “by 0.3 and 1 percent, respectively.” Shades of the election of
2000, when Al Gore lost the presidency to George W. Bush because he couldn't
win his own state of Tennessee, Bill Clinton's state of Arkansas, or
traditionally Democratic West Virginia, any one of which would have given him
enough electoral college votes to win the election. Instead, we got Bush Junior—and lived to tell the
story. Now we have The Donald—and somehow
the country will survive him too.
