The presidential election of 2016 has been the most dramatic in memory. Each candidate went up or down every week, shocking revelations came every few days, then a stunning victory – now this. Just when everyone thought it was over, up comes another chapter: recount petitions!
It seems that one enterprising candidate – the Green Party’s Jill Stein, whose votes in Michigan probably cost Hillary that state – has begun raising money to fund recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. She doesn’t guarantee that recounts will take place, and, if they do take place, she has no idea what the results may be. She does, however, promise that, if the money is not used for recounts, she will use it for a good purpose. She has raised over $7 million with that pitch, giving a whole new meaning to the “Green” Party!
The news media, in their own inimitable way, keep showing us clips of college students walking around their campuses, waving anti-Trump signs, refusing to go to classes, and sometimes getting into violent confrontations.
Other objectors are passing petitions around the internet to stop the election from going forward, while Jill and company are hoping to force recounts in key states, based on unsupported claims of fraud or hacking by Trump backers – claims openly disavowed by the cyber experts.
The most common critiques — and the most influential — are coming from the networks, the editorial writers and nationally syndicated columnists, who urge perverting the electoral college, or other equally unlikely schemes to overturn the election. The celebrities and late night talk show hosts, who consistently deride and caricature Trump and Republicans provide breathless news stories.
But they are very unlikely to change the election. And most of them know it.
So, why are they persisting in what appears to be such ill-fated, useless behavior? There appear to be several different categories of “Never-Trump” activists. The first is perhaps the largest in numbers. These are the people whose sole knowledge of Donald Trump comes from the talking points of Hillary Clinton and her campaign. The Democrats painted a horrid caricature of Mr. Trump, alleging that not only his policies, but also his character ranged from absurd to deplorable to downright evil. This view was carefully constructed along the lines of racial and class warfare that was so successfully exploited by Barack Obama.
Hovering over this portrait painted by the Democrats was the national media: television, newspapers and radio. The media decided very early that Trump would never be president. This mind-set was revealed early on by the New York Times solemnly preaching to the editorial staff that they had a moral obligation to stop Mr. Trump from becoming president of the United States - for the good of the nation. This “act of loyalty” to the common good transcended any preconceived notion that they were pledged to be neutral in this campaign. This was the siren call which guided nearly all the national media throughout the entire campaign.
Such moralistic fervor, once accepted, is hard to change. It takes on a religious quality, which can usually be changed only by “conversion” to another faith. And this orthodoxy led to entire news organizations accepting the Clinton campaign allegations at face value and proceeding to enhance them with backstories and research.
Most people didn’t delve too deeply into the campaign lore which was quickly built up around Mr. Trump. Most people had and still have only a very superficial knowledge of Mr. Trump. The demonstrating college students , and certainly the street demonstrators, have barely this level of knowledge. But many do fully participate in the moral outrage expressed many months ago by the NYT editor, and relentlessly built up over the long campaign. It has affected millions of people. (A similar situation obtains among some Trump advocates, although their sources are more likely the internet and talk radio.)
Another category of the “Never Trump” crowd is the Democratic Party organizers. Their resistance to the Trump election might not be quite as sincere as that of the true believers. These are the politicians and party apparatchiks who foresee a battle with President-elect Trump for at least four years .. If they can succeed in making the public believe that the Trump election is simply a fluke and carries no popular mandate, they are putting themselves in an advantageous position to re-take power piece by piece, starting with Congress in 2018.
Finally, there are the well-informed voters, who are truly convinced that Mr. Trump was not the better choice for president. These people, while not supporters of Mr. Trump, nevertheless accept the election results and are prepared to work with the new president. The prime example of this group has been President Obama who has demonstrated faith in our system and grace in defeat.
The question then arises, how in the world did Mr. Trump ever win the election with all the forces against him? That is indeed a tantalizing question. It seems he had three things going for him in addition to being a far more charismatic candidate than Mrs. Clinton.
The first advantage he had – and perhaps ultimately the most significant – was the Democratic candidate herself. Not only was she not a likable person, but she had a continuing and ever-increasing succession of very serious accusations to contend with. They ranged from stupid and arrogant in installing her private email server to avoid a public record of her emails (which numbered in the hundreds of thousands of pages), to compromising National Security (a felony), to selling U.S. favors and contracts to foreign governments and individuals for money (an estimated $200 million). If proven, this would have been considered treason. Many loyal Democrats turned away from her as these charges mounted up.
A second advantage Mr. Trump had was a massively disenchanted middle class. This “silent majority” had suffered for a generation from decreasing jobs and income (the USA has lost five million factory jobs since 2000, according to CNN), from increasing taxes, from insane restrictions on small businesses and medical care, and from useless schools – all being ignored by their elected representatives.
Mr. Trump may be a billionaire, but he grew up on building job sites, talking to the people who drive the trucks, lay the cement, sell the steel, the appliances, and the furniture, and hearing their stories, their jokes and their frustrations. He not only understands their problems, he speaks their language. From the first ride down the Trump Tower escalator, these people knew he was their man. It turned out there are more of them then the elite knew.
Mr. Trump’s third advantage was his message. In 1948, the USA took the lead in the Cold War, ultimately defeating the Soviet Union without World War III. This was an astonishing and historical achievement. It was made possible by the generosity of the American people, who paid for that victory with the no-cost nuclear shield, the free trade for everyone but us, the constant wars (still being waged), the one-way street of globalization, and indiscriminate immigration. The Cold War ended in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down. But the USA has continued paying for it to the present day, leaving us with a $20 TRILLION debt which threatens to bankrupt the country. We just can’t afford to keep paying for everybody else. It’s time to put America first.
Among the more than twenty candidates who started this election season, only one saw the real problem and set out to fix it. The fundamental problem is financial, and America picked the only financial guy running for the presidency. That man is Donald J. Trump.
Let’s give him a chance, and hope to God he succeeds!
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