When Trump first announced, I thought it was a joke. In fact, that's what I told my teenage son, when he asked me. Trump had tried to run four years ago, and that foray was over in a blink. This was just a replay. Or so I thought.
And then Trump won New Hampshire. Odd, but somewhat believable. After all, we were still in the Northeast.
But then he won South Carolina, and I knew right then that this was "game on". Not so funny anymore. And so I started to listen to what he was saying. Carefully. I found myself in essential agreement with virtually all of the high-level perspectives expressed over the course of the campaign by our president-elect. And, having nothing to do with my own personal preferences, I quickly saw that this guy was the guy to beat in the Republican primaries.
Fast forward now, to Election Day. I was sad. The polls were so uniform in Hillary's favor, with maybe an exception or two, both as a national matter and in the battleground states. Every four years they say that this is The Year That The Polls Could Be Wrong. And yet the polls never really seem to wind up being fundamentally incorrect.
Regardless, I held out some hope that this year could indeed be The Year. I focused on two factors: the potential unwillingness of people to admit they were going to vote for him, and the potentially wild unpredictability of this year's turnout in any number of key demographics. But, heading into Election Night, the overwhelming uniformity of the polls left me deflated.
Then, Election Night arrived. It was an interesting flow, to say the least, starting with the closeness of Virginia. I was so consumed with worrying about The Donald's path that I focused only on the result. With virtually no time left on the clock, Virginia fell to Hillary. I was sad, again. I thought of the 20-point underdog in the first round of the NCAAs that takes the top seed into double-overtime, only to lose by one. An opportunity lost, yet again. (sigh)
I later heard someone say that Virginia was actually the end for Hillary. The comment was that, if Virginia could possibly have been that close, especially given the choice of a popular Virginian as a running mate, then the rest of the map would surely spiral out of control for Hillary. As things ultimately unfolded, that observation turned out to be perceptive in the extreme.
Things stayed pretty tight, but, for what seemed like days, nothing really happened. Until - Fox called Wisconsin for Trump. I, quite literally, physically launched off my viewing perch, in utter disbelief, realizing that he really could, and now indeed probably would, win this thing. Wisconsin?!? Seriously? Wisconsin wasn't even in the dialogue (unless, apparently, your name was Kellyanne).
Soon thereafter, the commentators awkwardly starting talking about Hillary's campaign in the past tense. And then Jake Tapper said that the path he was having trouble seeing was Hillary's. And then, in a blink, as the dominoes fell, it really was over. Wow.
Ultimately, the win was one of overwhelming breadth. Look at the county-by-county election results. If you sheer off a sliver of blue in the northeast just west of the Long Island Sound, and a sliver of blue in LA LA Land, the map is essentially uniformly red. The House is strongly Republican. The Senate stays Republican (and, given the seats about to open up, seems likely to continue to stay that way). Statehouses are predominantly Republican. Remember the eulogies for the Republican party, focusing on some combination of a Hillary landslide and a downballot wipeout? Now, after the Election, can you say, . . . "Mandate"?
The irony of having gone from hearing about the impending demise of the Republican party at the hands of Mr. Trump, to hearing about the Democrat's debacle presided over by The Divine Mrs. Clinton, pushed me to do some reflecting about my experiences over the last several months as The Lone Trumper in a bastion of liberalness. So here goes.
First off, I am not a racist, I am not a bigot, I am not a misogynist, I am not uneducated, I am not disaffected, I am not downtrodden, I am not scared. The narrative goes that every supporter of Trump is either a Nazi-like horror show or utterly beaten down by the world around him or her. Not so fast, kemo sabe.
The hubris of the left here is reflected by its view that, as a Trump supporter, I must be in one or more of the foregoing categories, which range from horribly insulting to grossly patronizing. I'm either a Deplorable (thank you for that, Hillary) or a loser. But you want to know something? - I'll put my morality, approach, judgment, intellect and lot in life up against theirs, any day. Looking around at my life and family, and seeing the shambles in which so many of them (surely, though, in fairness, not all of them) find theirs, I enthusiastically accept that challenge.
People on the left are just floored by the demographic numbers, especially in the case of women and Latinos. How could they possibly ever support this monster? Don't they understand? How could they so easily be conned?
I have some somber news on this point - these . . . voters . . . are not idiots and, moreover, don't need the left's help. Maybe, just maybe, those who voted for him, including the women, Latinos and blacks that did so, actually agree with and support him. Early on, months ago, I suggested in a post that Trump's performance among Latinos, blacks and even possibly women might be better than expected, in which case those votes would seal the deal. That turned out to be spot on (which is pretty amazing, since I'm correct about once every three years).
But Trump's inroads into the groups that presumably supported Hillary doesn't by itself explain this wide-ranging victory. Sure, there are any number of disaffected and downtrodden people to whom Donald Trump powerfully spoke. I'm so glad he did, and it's about time. But this red map from coast to coast - well maybe just-off-the-coast to just-off-the-coast - did not get cobbled together without the help of solid everyday people who just happened, by some strange an inexplicable happenstance, to agree with him. The coalition, or whatever it is, includes more components than the left seems willing to acknowledge and accept. Together with rock-solid Republican support, it all added up to: President Trump.
But there continues to be disbelief. Hey, maybe the answer is that Hillary was a flawed candidate, allowing anyone, simply anyone, to walk in the door. Yeah, that's the ticket (apologies to Jon Lovitz) - people didn't like Trump, and they held their noses and just voted against Hillary. Or because Hillary was so awful maybe they all simply stayed home.
Or maybe, just maybe, Trump earned the votes that he got, from the Republican primaries to and through the Election. Hillary, quite frankly, is an intelligent woman with experience in national affairs that is virtually unsurpassed. I get the fact that she wasn't the perfect candidate, but, again, the focus on her flaws is yet another part of the smokescreen being erected to obscure the fact that Trump, other than on the outermost edges of this great country of ours, simply killed this thing.
I was struck as all this evolved by the fact that, while I was more than happy politely to listen to commentary in support of Hillary, I was met with complete revulsion at my utterance of any words in favor of Mr. Trump. The cost of support for Trump was being labeled as some kind of prehistoric cretin (ordinarily a label for me reserved for use by my wife). The shallowest of the anti-Trumpers expressed amazement and concern for my mental well-being, wondering how someone with a family and an education who was doing alright economically could possibly support this aberrational candidate. It was like I was some kind of sociological experiment gone wrong.
And then would come noise and amazement about how anyone could like a guy that said this about this group or that about that person or the other about who knows what. "This is no reality show," I'd hear. Lighten up, folks. He's funny. Really funny. That's allowed. Get over yourselves. Oh, and by the way, what we've got here now is not a reality show, it's just . . . reality.
Anyway, eventually, rather than getting into the weeds regarding specific issues (did you notice that towards the end of the campaign Trump was the only one talking policy and, as they say, "go[ing] high"?), I went to an extremely baseline point. "Listen," I'd say, "at this point, he's the Republican nominee. At an absolute minimum, I simply do not have to be for your candidate. I'm allowed to be for the 'other' one." I was convinced, silly me, that I just didn't have to be "with her".
Now that novel concept - that there actually were two serious candidates running - would sometimes get grudging acceptance, but it would often be followed by disbelief that, not only was I willing to vote for Mr. Trump, but I actually enthusiastically supported him. The self-absorbtion on the other side was palpable. It was like I needed those with remaining sanity somehow to guide me back to the Light. While I truly appreciate all the concern, though, I'm alright, don't nobody worry about me (apologies to Kenny Loggins).
So I'll deal with my peers viewing me as some kind of mental defective because I actually like the incoming President of the United States of America. Indeed, I like him quite a lot.
I guess I'll just have to make peace with all of this. I'm not sure how I'll get there, but I'll try. Oh, wait, I know: to quote the indefatigable Walter White, "I win."
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