I'm as shocked as anyone, but I'm not necessarily surprised.
As I mentioned on Facebook last night, about 6 weeks ago during a discussion on Colin Kaepernick, a caller, emailer, and tweeter all said the same to me during my radio show, "I'm in the union and I would never vote for her."
It may have been the same person, but I could tell by the way he said it he wasn't alone.
The polls? I never truly trusted them. I wanted to, but as we got closer I started doubting them. I tried to put on a face otherwise, and be confident, but deep down I was fearful.
I believed Pennsylvania was going to go her way, but I started to feel this union man was representative of many people. That group is made up of white, working class men, often laborers, who believe this country has been taken from them. They believe "rust belt" jobs can return. They also believe immigrants and people of color have either taken their jobs, or are the reason they didn't get a job. Trump tapped into that sentiment, and while they would not admit this in polls, or just in public, they came out and voted for Trump.
Never mind the fact that many of these people had a built in opportunity in life to have a better life just by the color of their skin, but of course, the "party of personal responsibility" is eager to blame. And Trump made sure to put a target on the people they should blame. Irony is not lost on me that these men, who blame so many others for their plight and hate government handouts, were looking for someone to give them something.
Many are the ignorant, xenophobic, often sexist and racist, and while maybe not completely "deplorable", they are willing to let the world become deplorable for others as long as they can maintain their way of life, or at least get a leg up on someone they deem less worthy than themselves.
Many on the right are asking others to "heal" and "come together." It's easy to say if your candidate won, but Trump ran a campaign on "jailing" Hillary Clinton; on overturning Obamacare; on "bringing back jobs to the rust belt"; on "building a wall."
That is HIS CAMPAIGN. That is what his supporters want. This is what they expect. You're asking us to heal that for you?
Make no mistake though, that was his campaign. Can he walk away from it?
If yes, it's only because his most fervent supporters don't care about honesty, facts, or reality. They care about hate, and being above some other group. They care about a platform to preach their point of view, regardless of how dated and awful it may be.
And if he can walk away from it then he basically ran a campaign on lies, while casting her as the liar. That's what you get from insecure bully-types, so I'm not surprised. But either way, no matter how you spin it, his campaign will have been a fallacy. From the top to the bottom, be it his message, or the support that carried him which unwilling to be honest about who they supported. It was wholly dishonest. You can't blame pollsters if people are lying to them.
It's a sad day, and to be honest, I don't have a lot of confidence in what's to come. I wish I did. I don't think Trump is smart enough, nor do I believe he will surround himself with capable people. I guess the only way to go is up. I felt similarly when George W. Bush won, and in the end, he did nothing to make me feel better. The world only became a worse place, and then President Obama was asked to fix it. But make no mistake, it's a sad day. There's no sugar coating it.
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Lastly, there has been this false narrative/argument that "Hillary was the only candidate Trump could beat, and she was the only person he could beat!"
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Had a candidate who spoke the truth about the Republican party won the nomination, and if it were a discussion of ideas, she would have defeated that candidate. No one on the right, be it Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, or Jeb Bush was going to carry Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. It was only someone willing to lie and distort reality, able to make false promises, and willing to run on hatred and fear that was going to beat her. Despite all of their flaws, the other candidates never would have went where he did. But Donald Trump is a human being who lacks any semblance of class, or respect, for anything, or anyone. That will not change as President.
She lost to the only Republican who was going to beat her.
Would he have defeated Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden? No. But that's not how progress is achieved - by just putting out the winning man. It was time America got to see not only it's racism and xenophobia, but it's absurd sexism.
She had to be the candidate.
In the end, I hope for the best. I hope for those with less and for those of a different religion, color, or creed than a white, Christian man, to not fall further back.
Progress is not what Trump ran on. I can't imagine surrounded by Chris Christie, Rudolph Giuliani, and others, that's going to change.
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History is littered with horrendous and awful people who have won elections. At the time, people have been proud and excited. It doesn't make him great, or them right. It just means they were able to dupe a willing society, wanting so badly to believe things that aren't true.
This will be no different.
