Faced with going down to defeat against 69-year-old Democratic nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, there’s already much second-guessing and I-told-you-sos about 70-year-old GOP nominee real estate tycoon Donald Trump. Conservatives insist Trump wasn’t conservative enough but the real reason Trump didn’t make it to the White House was due to his promise to “drain-the-swamp,” a reference to Washington’s corrupt special interests, collectively referred to as the status quo. Trump’s problem from Day-One was not his brash New York style but rather an entrenched system unwilling to give up power. Trump’s problems in the general election were not minorities but Washington’s power elite, refusing to give up the gravy train for anyone, certainly not for Trump. When the dust settles, Trump’s critics will no doubt blame him for running a bad campaign.
When you consider Trump was a political novice that beat 17 Republican candidates in the primaries, it showed he tapped into widespread voter frustration with a failed political establishment, incapable of bridging the partisan divide. Voters had high hopes when President Barack Obama beat Sen. John McCain (R-Az.) in 2008, promising to run a post-partisan presidency, getting over the red-state-blue state division, so much a part former President George W. Bush’s eight years. When Obama took his oath of office Jan. 20, 2009, no one expected he’d exceed Bush-43 in bitter partisanship. It didn’t take long for Obama to let former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to railroad the most partisan piece of legislation in U.S. history: Obamacare AKA the Affordable Care Act, signed into law March 23, 2010.
Once Obama imposed Obamacare on GOP lawmakers, he created the worst partisanship and gridlock seen in Washington. For the next seven years, Obama lost his ability to interact with the GOP Congress, leaving the least productive legislative record of any president in modern history, Democrat or Republican. Hilary faces even more rancor than Obama, a virtual unknown to the Washington scene before elected to Congress in 2004. With Hillary, there’s no hope of getting along with the GOP, other than aligning with hawks looking to pick a fight with Russia or Iran in Syria in the Mideast. When the votes are tallied Nov. 8, Hillary will have won a pyrrhic victory, winning the battle but losing the war. Without a consensus on Capitol Hill, Hillary can’t push her progressive agenda without a fight from the GOP. Obama complained for his eight years about Republican obstructionists.
Trump offered voters disgusted with Washington’s gridlock hope to change the system. No matter how you analyze it, Trump wanted to rock the boat, prompting him to call Washington a “rigged system,” rigged by entrenched special interests but also the media that supports the status quo. Running an outsider campaign, Trump had no backing with corporate lobbyists, Washington insiders and career politicians, all trying to preserve the status quo. Whether former Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) admits it or not, Hillary’s close Wall Street and defense industry ties want her for president. Trump gets blamed for politically incorrect speech but the truth be told he rubbed the establishment the wrong way: When you run on taking away the gravy train.
Hillary’s campaign hammered Trump for being temperamentally unfit for president. She pounded him being a racist, misogynist and sexist, diverting attention away from her high negatives, especially for her low trustworthiness with voters. In the end, voters took the devil they knew, not the one they didn’t know. Today’s youth are treated with mixed bag with Hillary. On the one hand, she broke the longstanding glass ceiling of a woman president. On the other hand, there’s plenty of evidence showing corruption, if not criminal behavior at the highest levels with her email and Clinton Foundation scandals. Whether FBI Director James Comey charged Hillary or not, the public’s been treated, thanks to WikiLeaks, to the inner workings of the Clinton’s management team. Half the country has seen too much of Hillary’s shenanigans to embrace her as president.
Trump lost the election because he was outworked by Hillary, painting him as a garden variety racist, misogynist and sexist. She successfully defined Trump as too dangerous for the White House and commander-in-chief. If voters paid attention, they’d know Hillary was far more likely to get the U.S. into WWIII. Hillary backs the Saudi proxy war in Syria because she’s taken millions from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. If Hillary follows McCain’s plan to set up a no-fly zone in Syria, she’ll push the world to the brink. Trump would have worked to improve relations with Russia and end U.S. Mideast wars. While the GOP will blame Trump for losing to Hillary, the other 17 GOP candidates would have done far worse. Trump lost the election because the deck was stacked against him, by his own Party and by the mainstream media that couldn’t deal with his criticism.
