Well, the exit polls from the election have told us “who” voted for whom but the post-mortems on the actual “cause of death” of the presumptive winner are filling the pages of the internet journals and the liberal press which are essentially an echo chamber of the distraught Left. Now “we know” why the would be “first woman president” grabbing for the golden ring on the election merry-go-round snatched only air and fell off her wooden horse.
From the Democrats: Take your pick: Hillary lost because:
FBI Director Comey’s letter to Congress said he was investigating additional e-mails found on the Weiner’s computer. But: FBI Director Comey’s second letter to Congress said the first letter didn’t turn up anything.
The Russians hacked into the electronic polls and changed the outcome because Putin loves Trump and hates Hillary. But: the Obama Administration said there was no evidence of any Russian hacking of the polls and that the Administration stood by the election outcome.
Now it turns out that the CIA and FBI knew that Russian hackers had penetrated the Democratic National Committee’s computer systems several months before the election and the FBI warned officials of that organization. This resulted in enormous e-mail dumps made public by WikiLeaks which the Democrats claim, “caused” Hillary to lose a “tainted” election.
But: The e-mails were actual communications between Democratic officials. The Trump campaign wasn’t involved and since the e-mails were genuine, the media treated them as news and made them public. Sometimes “the truth hurts” and there is no evidence of this information affecting anyone’s voting decision.
WikiLeaks “unfairly” cast doubts about the integrity of the Democratic National Committee’s relationship to Hillary’s campaign. But: Hillary’s campaign didn’t deny the veracity of the leaks, and DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Shultz had to resign over her roll in manipulating DNC influence in favor of Hillary vs. Bernie Sanders. Then her successor, Donna Brazile was exposed as acquiring and forwarding presidential debate questions to Hillary’s campaign. And, the texts of Hillary’s $250,000 speeches to Wall Street Bankers which she had refused to release suddenly were made public. It seems the Democrats who were irate because Trump wouldn’t release his tax returns have a new message, “transparency for thee but not for me.”
Then there’s this claim: The mainstream media was biased against Hillary and didn’t “get her message out”. But: the mainstream media, and most of the web based media, campaigned tirelessly for Hillary and against Trump for months prior to either one being nominated and then were consistently supportive of Hillary until election night and after. Hillary’s message was out but it was politically flawed. The campaign over relied on social issues aimed at their perceived demographic advantage provided by women and minority groups.
The allegedly “trumped up” private e-mail server and classified content scandal uncovered by the FBI was of course was real. But: Hillary lied about it in a series of claims until each revelation was proved to be authentic. And then she was given a pass by the same Director Comey who her campaign later accused of handing the election to Trump.
Then, of course comes the hate filled repetitive cacophony from the liberal media parrot cage:
Trump is “squawk. . .racist, squawk. . .misogynist, squawk. . .homophobic and xenophobic.”
These nefarious traits “of course” energized millions of similarly flawed “deplorable” individuals to come out of the darkness and vote for Trump. Alas, the defeat of virtue by evil.
But: polls show that large numbers of Trump’s voters were former supporters of Obama in 2008 and 2012. Trump also won 54% of white women, effectively taking the claim of legions of “misogynist” voters off the table. Interviews of former Obama voters who switched to Trump by the liberal New York Times found that they were none of the “ists” or “phobics” claimed by the Left, but just ordinary working class citizens who were primarily concerned with their economic futures which they felt Hillary didn’t bother to address.
Trump also won 29% of the Hispanic vote, putting a dent in the broad claim of racism amongst the voters, not withstanding the simple fact that Mexicans aren’t a race at all but a multi-racial nationality, similar to the false claim regarding Islam which isn’t a race but a multinational, multi-racial, religion.
So what is apparent is that the most visible part of Democratic support, the liberal political establishment, the mainstream media and internet journals, are so steeped in the supposed superiority of their rigid ideology and were so convinced that Hillary was going to win that they can’t comprehend that she actually lost. Thus they claim that she actually didn’t lose because she won the national popular vote. But: this of course is irrelevant because the U.S. doesn’t conduct a national election for president. The federal election system we use has been in place for the life of the Constitution and all presidential campaigns, including Hillary’s, build their campaign strategies accordingly. Trump won the popular vote in 30 of the 50 states and thus accumulated the necessary 270 electoral votes necessary for victory.
The Democrats didn’t address any supposed unfairness in the Electoral College system prior to the election and now are engaging in hopeless attempts to manipulate the system simply because their candidate lost. Hillary acknowledged the legitimacy of the system herself by her election night concession call to Trump and her address to supporters the next day.
The post-election rationales listed above try to explain the “injustice” of her “unfair” loss by focusing entirely on her opponent or outside entities with little discussion or analysis of Hillary herself and her failed campaign. But the simple truth is that there were only two viable candidates on the ballot. While some individuals chose to cast a protest vote for one of the fringe party candidates, and others chose to protest the lack of acceptable candidates by leaving the top of the ballot blank or not voting at all, over 120 million citizens looked at the candidates, some briefly, others more seriously, and made a choice between them. So Trump’s voters did not make their choice based solely on his claims or personality, but also in comparison to his competitor. It is this evaluation, made by millions of voters, that the Left cannot endure. Hillary was judged and came up as the “lessor of two evils” by many and just the “lessor” by many more.
How this will play out over the next few years or maybe over Trump’s entire term of office will be important. A virulently divided society will tend to de-legitimize the entire political process and the public policies that flow from it. There will be few broadly applied federal policies that aren’t evaluated in terms of “oppressors” and “victims” by the Left. A sense of national identity already under assault and which is part of the cultural glue that binds the nation together, will be further diminished with unfortunate consequences.
Trump has been routinely denounced as a demagogue by his angry critics on the Left but these same critics are using their unearned access to the public themselves to incite raw hate. There are many such individuals using the opinion pages of the national press and web based media. Perhaps the worst example is Charles Blow, of the New York Times. Here is a brief example of months of his tirades on the pages of what was once a proud international paper.
“To president-elect Trump”:
“You are an aberration and abomination who is willing to do and say anything — no matter whom it aligns you with and whom it hurts — to satisfy your ambitions.
You are a fraud and a charlatan.”
“I have not only an ethical and professional duty to call out how obscene your very existence is at the top of American government; I have a moral obligation to do so.”
“I’m thankful to have this platform because as long as there are ink and pixels, you will be the focus of my withering gaze.”
“I’m thankful that I have the endurance and can assume a posture that will never allow what you represent to ever be seen as everyday and ordinary.”
“No, Mr. Trump, we will not all just get along. For as long as a threat to the state is the head of state, all citizens of good faith and national fidelity — and certainly this columnist — have an absolute obligation to meet you and your agenda with resistance at every turn.”
“The demi-fascist of Fifth Avenue”
“Time’s man of the year is, by words and deeds, more of a madman of the year.”
These personal insults are far worse than any that Trump has been criticized for directing at individuals. And the hypocrisy is only exceeded by the remarkably inflated level of self-importance which Blow displays. Blow is going to subject the soon to be President to his “withering gaze” and he has “the endurance and can assume a posture that will never allow what you represent to ever be seen as everyday and ordinary.”
The utter pomposity of these disgusting claims makes Blow’s screed absurd on its face but because the New York Times enables his narcissism he and others like him will spread the seeds of hate to the befuddled ideologues of the Left and help create the political climate of dysfunction that they crave.
The political Left seems determined to use the Senate hearings on Trump’s cabinet appointees
as revenge for his winning the election. Prolonged harsh scrutiny is promised where personal attacks will be prominently combined with the “sins” of each nominee’s conservative philosophy in an effort to discredit both them and the new President.
Donald Trump is indeed a political anomaly; unpredictable, demonstrably head strong, and unfortunately has a personality that too often relies on personal attacks and blatantly offensive language. He lacks the dignity and qualifications voters have come to expect in presidential candidates but many, if not most of his supporters acknowledged these traits but were willing to overlook them when contemplating the alternative. Thus despite his obvious flaws, Trump was elected fairly according to the rules of the American system and will be the President.
A prolonged vicious assault of the nature utilized by the Charles Blows of the world will harm the nation both domestically and internationally. This of course is of no concern to those whose smug sense of moral and intellectual superiority was served a harsh dose of reality on November 8th.
What the next few years will look like is very uncertain. The pages of the liberal media are filled with hysterical doomsday scenarios; the “end of democracy”; “war with China” or “war with Iran”; “the collapse of the U.S. economy”; a dystopia of brown air and green water caused by unparalleled drilling and pipeline construction, and now Russian domination of the U.S. because Trump doesn’t demonstrate the necessary fear and loathing of Russian President Vladimir Putin, a new found animus on the part of liberal Democrats since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s own naive and failed “reset button” with the Russians.
Essentially, Trump’s election is a gamble, but not necessarily one without merit. Four additional years of “more of the same”, from a reliance on big government solutions; an emphasis on divisive social issues and identity politics which excluded the economic concerns of a significant portion of the citizenry; unconcern with expanding federal deficits and debt; and a celebrity style of weak, hesitant and politically correct leadership at home and abroad, represented a continuing decline in America’s economic and security interests.
So far, in post-campaign mode Trump has not provided the raw material for the doomsday predictions, and the basic nature of the American democracy with its divided government, checks and balances and judicial review which mitigate the possibility of executive overreach, seem to be beyond the understanding of the hand wringers from the Left.
In any event, the next four years will be “interesting times” and hopefully will disprove the commonly accepted but apocryphal Chinese curse which defines the term as instability and discord.
From the Democrats: Take your pick: Hillary lost because:
FBI Director Comey’s letter to Congress said he was investigating additional e-mails found on the Weiner’s computer. But: FBI Director Comey’s second letter to Congress said the first letter didn’t turn up anything.
The Russians hacked into the electronic polls and changed the outcome because Putin loves Trump and hates Hillary. But: the Obama Administration said there was no evidence of any Russian hacking of the polls and that the Administration stood by the election outcome.
Now it turns out that the CIA and FBI knew that Russian hackers had penetrated the Democratic National Committee’s computer systems several months before the election and the FBI warned officials of that organization. This resulted in enormous e-mail dumps made public by WikiLeaks which the Democrats claim, “caused” Hillary to lose a “tainted” election.
But: The e-mails were actual communications between Democratic officials. The Trump campaign wasn’t involved and since the e-mails were genuine, the media treated them as news and made them public. Sometimes “the truth hurts” and there is no evidence of this information affecting anyone’s voting decision.
WikiLeaks “unfairly” cast doubts about the integrity of the Democratic National Committee’s relationship to Hillary’s campaign. But: Hillary’s campaign didn’t deny the veracity of the leaks, and DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Shultz had to resign over her roll in manipulating DNC influence in favor of Hillary vs. Bernie Sanders. Then her successor, Donna Brazile was exposed as acquiring and forwarding presidential debate questions to Hillary’s campaign. And, the texts of Hillary’s $250,000 speeches to Wall Street Bankers which she had refused to release suddenly were made public. It seems the Democrats who were irate because Trump wouldn’t release his tax returns have a new message, “transparency for thee but not for me.”
Then there’s this claim: The mainstream media was biased against Hillary and didn’t “get her message out”. But: the mainstream media, and most of the web based media, campaigned tirelessly for Hillary and against Trump for months prior to either one being nominated and then were consistently supportive of Hillary until election night and after. Hillary’s message was out but it was politically flawed. The campaign over relied on social issues aimed at their perceived demographic advantage provided by women and minority groups.
The allegedly “trumped up” private e-mail server and classified content scandal uncovered by the FBI was of course was real. But: Hillary lied about it in a series of claims until each revelation was proved to be authentic. And then she was given a pass by the same Director Comey who her campaign later accused of handing the election to Trump.
Then, of course comes the hate filled repetitive cacophony from the liberal media parrot cage:
Trump is “squawk. . .racist, squawk. . .misogynist, squawk. . .homophobic and xenophobic.”
These nefarious traits “of course” energized millions of similarly flawed “deplorable” individuals to come out of the darkness and vote for Trump. Alas, the defeat of virtue by evil.
But: polls show that large numbers of Trump’s voters were former supporters of Obama in 2008 and 2012. Trump also won 54% of white women, effectively taking the claim of legions of “misogynist” voters off the table. Interviews of former Obama voters who switched to Trump by the liberal New York Times found that they were none of the “ists” or “phobics” claimed by the Left, but just ordinary working class citizens who were primarily concerned with their economic futures which they felt Hillary didn’t bother to address.
Trump also won 29% of the Hispanic vote, putting a dent in the broad claim of racism amongst the voters, not withstanding the simple fact that Mexicans aren’t a race at all but a multi-racial nationality, similar to the false claim regarding Islam which isn’t a race but a multinational, multi-racial, religion.
So what is apparent is that the most visible part of Democratic support, the liberal political establishment, the mainstream media and internet journals, are so steeped in the supposed superiority of their rigid ideology and were so convinced that Hillary was going to win that they can’t comprehend that she actually lost. Thus they claim that she actually didn’t lose because she won the national popular vote. But: this of course is irrelevant because the U.S. doesn’t conduct a national election for president. The federal election system we use has been in place for the life of the Constitution and all presidential campaigns, including Hillary’s, build their campaign strategies accordingly. Trump won the popular vote in 30 of the 50 states and thus accumulated the necessary 270 electoral votes necessary for victory.
The Democrats didn’t address any supposed unfairness in the Electoral College system prior to the election and now are engaging in hopeless attempts to manipulate the system simply because their candidate lost. Hillary acknowledged the legitimacy of the system herself by her election night concession call to Trump and her address to supporters the next day.
The post-election rationales listed above try to explain the “injustice” of her “unfair” loss by focusing entirely on her opponent or outside entities with little discussion or analysis of Hillary herself and her failed campaign. But the simple truth is that there were only two viable candidates on the ballot. While some individuals chose to cast a protest vote for one of the fringe party candidates, and others chose to protest the lack of acceptable candidates by leaving the top of the ballot blank or not voting at all, over 120 million citizens looked at the candidates, some briefly, others more seriously, and made a choice between them. So Trump’s voters did not make their choice based solely on his claims or personality, but also in comparison to his competitor. It is this evaluation, made by millions of voters, that the Left cannot endure. Hillary was judged and came up as the “lessor of two evils” by many and just the “lessor” by many more.
How this will play out over the next few years or maybe over Trump’s entire term of office will be important. A virulently divided society will tend to de-legitimize the entire political process and the public policies that flow from it. There will be few broadly applied federal policies that aren’t evaluated in terms of “oppressors” and “victims” by the Left. A sense of national identity already under assault and which is part of the cultural glue that binds the nation together, will be further diminished with unfortunate consequences.
Trump has been routinely denounced as a demagogue by his angry critics on the Left but these same critics are using their unearned access to the public themselves to incite raw hate. There are many such individuals using the opinion pages of the national press and web based media. Perhaps the worst example is Charles Blow, of the New York Times. Here is a brief example of months of his tirades on the pages of what was once a proud international paper.
“To president-elect Trump”:
“You are an aberration and abomination who is willing to do and say anything — no matter whom it aligns you with and whom it hurts — to satisfy your ambitions.
You are a fraud and a charlatan.”
“I have not only an ethical and professional duty to call out how obscene your very existence is at the top of American government; I have a moral obligation to do so.”
“I’m thankful to have this platform because as long as there are ink and pixels, you will be the focus of my withering gaze.”
“I’m thankful that I have the endurance and can assume a posture that will never allow what you represent to ever be seen as everyday and ordinary.”
“No, Mr. Trump, we will not all just get along. For as long as a threat to the state is the head of state, all citizens of good faith and national fidelity — and certainly this columnist — have an absolute obligation to meet you and your agenda with resistance at every turn.”
“The demi-fascist of Fifth Avenue”
“Time’s man of the year is, by words and deeds, more of a madman of the year.”
These personal insults are far worse than any that Trump has been criticized for directing at individuals. And the hypocrisy is only exceeded by the remarkably inflated level of self-importance which Blow displays. Blow is going to subject the soon to be President to his “withering gaze” and he has “the endurance and can assume a posture that will never allow what you represent to ever be seen as everyday and ordinary.”
The utter pomposity of these disgusting claims makes Blow’s screed absurd on its face but because the New York Times enables his narcissism he and others like him will spread the seeds of hate to the befuddled ideologues of the Left and help create the political climate of dysfunction that they crave.
The political Left seems determined to use the Senate hearings on Trump’s cabinet appointees
as revenge for his winning the election. Prolonged harsh scrutiny is promised where personal attacks will be prominently combined with the “sins” of each nominee’s conservative philosophy in an effort to discredit both them and the new President.
Donald Trump is indeed a political anomaly; unpredictable, demonstrably head strong, and unfortunately has a personality that too often relies on personal attacks and blatantly offensive language. He lacks the dignity and qualifications voters have come to expect in presidential candidates but many, if not most of his supporters acknowledged these traits but were willing to overlook them when contemplating the alternative. Thus despite his obvious flaws, Trump was elected fairly according to the rules of the American system and will be the President.
A prolonged vicious assault of the nature utilized by the Charles Blows of the world will harm the nation both domestically and internationally. This of course is of no concern to those whose smug sense of moral and intellectual superiority was served a harsh dose of reality on November 8th.
What the next few years will look like is very uncertain. The pages of the liberal media are filled with hysterical doomsday scenarios; the “end of democracy”; “war with China” or “war with Iran”; “the collapse of the U.S. economy”; a dystopia of brown air and green water caused by unparalleled drilling and pipeline construction, and now Russian domination of the U.S. because Trump doesn’t demonstrate the necessary fear and loathing of Russian President Vladimir Putin, a new found animus on the part of liberal Democrats since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s own naive and failed “reset button” with the Russians.
Essentially, Trump’s election is a gamble, but not necessarily one without merit. Four additional years of “more of the same”, from a reliance on big government solutions; an emphasis on divisive social issues and identity politics which excluded the economic concerns of a significant portion of the citizenry; unconcern with expanding federal deficits and debt; and a celebrity style of weak, hesitant and politically correct leadership at home and abroad, represented a continuing decline in America’s economic and security interests.
So far, in post-campaign mode Trump has not provided the raw material for the doomsday predictions, and the basic nature of the American democracy with its divided government, checks and balances and judicial review which mitigate the possibility of executive overreach, seem to be beyond the understanding of the hand wringers from the Left.
In any event, the next four years will be “interesting times” and hopefully will disprove the commonly accepted but apocryphal Chinese curse which defines the term as instability and discord.
No comments:
Post a Comment