Tuesday, November 1, 2016

A Handicapper's Nightmare: The 2016 Election

  

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.

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