I Was Wrong

It certainly seemed like long odds to me and the so called experts who pontificated on this election. My belief had been based on the skewed electoral college map and the ingrained voting blocks and special interest voters. I wrote and I blogged she would win a couple of times. I was wrong. And I was not alone. The TV gurus on ABC, NBC and CBS looked like they had just received news that their house had burned down and the dog had died. Several looked like they were about to break out in tears. The newspapers and magazines had cover stories already written calling Trump a loser. Stop the presses!! It was the worst call since the Dewey vs Truman election. I should have listened to myself and my last blog piece about “experts”. Dan Gardner’s book “Future Babble” shows that so-called experts are right only 50% of the time, but in this election, the experts were right maybe 3% of the time.

I’d often said that the choice was between a buffoon and a crook. Calling him a buffoon was overstatement. You don’t build a business like his without both acumen and the ability to hire good people and let them do the job. As the campaign wore on, I heard some stories (unpublished in the main stream media) of Trump’s amazing generosity and smarts. These, of course, were overshadowed by his ability to say and tweet some over the top crap. He insulted and pissed off a number of Republicans in the primaries and many of the pure conservatives refused to support him.

The main stream media, both print and televised, are decidedly liberal and hated Trump and openly cheered for Hillary. The polls showed a decided lead for Hillary, and the experts refused to be daunted by the recent miserable failure of the polls in the UK on the Brexit issue. The media focused on the “horse race” aspect and refused to get out in the fly-over states and talk to real people. Instead they hunkered down in their liberal enclaves of New York and Washington DC and talked to each other.

None of it mattered. If you look at the US map of the election results by county, the country is nearly pure red with pockets of blue in the major cities. Of course, the numbers of Hillary voters in the cities gave her a slight lead in the popular vote (about 1%) but a loss in the electoral college…. just the way the Founders envisioned.

The reaction, after the Democrats and liberals let what had happened sink in, was anger and frustration. They think they know best what the country needs and their prescription was four more years of the leftist policies of Obama. The problem is that Hillary is a flawed human being and corruption and controversy follows her around like a cloud of stink around a skunk. People go to jail for the security violations she and her staff committed with that email server. Also, the Clinton Foundation used Hillary’s position as Secretary of State to enrich herself, her husband and her cronies. That she and Bill were protected from prosecution by the Obama Justice Department fooled no one.

She’s been around for 30 years and everyone is sick to death of that snarky smirk.

What everyone underestimated is the middle class have been squeezed for years with stagnant wages, higher taxes and costs. They are sick to death of the over regulatory Federal Government. By huge margins they think the country is headed in the wrong direction.

The pundits claimed that the white, uneducated men swung the election, a clear demonstration of their smug elitism. Celebrities once again vowed to leave the country.

Canada seemed to be a popular destination. Some joked that Canada should build a wall and make the Americans pay for it. One immigration official pointed out that moving to Canada is not so simple. We’ll see how many actually move out.

I think this election result happened because of ‘a revolt against the machine’.

The ordinary Americans are fed up with the corruption, and over reach of the Federal Government. One wag said that this was a stealth return of the Tea Party that had been destroyed by the “weaponization of the IRS”. I believe it was also a statement about the ineffectiveness of the GOP in Congress who seemed more interested in getting reelected than in stopping the Obama machine.

The Black Lives Matter movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement joined with a bunch of college kids who are ignorant of history and civics, and urban liberals and are protesting in the streets right now. There’s not much they can do about it. Trump is the next President, like it or not.