The Wednesday Morning Blues

Well, to state the obvious, the election didn’t turn out quite the way that the majority of American’s planned or expected it to.

Naturally, those who are unhappy with the outcome have chosen to focus the blame on the Presidential election; the electoral college, voter disenfranchisement (via gerrymandering, strategic voting station closures, voter roll purges, unconstitutional voter I.D laws, the barring of ex-felons from voting, etc), the democratic candidate, and the effect that the absence of the voter protection act of 1965 had on ensuring fairness across both parties in this election, the first without its protections in 51 years.

One should assume that Republicans would not have put all the effort and resources into defeating this act, unless it played a vital role in their overall plan, to gain the edge over Black, Hispanic and Latino voters in swing states with rapidly changing demographics that would make a Republican victory statistically impossible in the near future.

In fact many have put forward the theory that the Electoral College and popular vote no longer agree precisely because the mechanism beneath the Electoral College has been tampered with and purposely skewed to favor the rural and southern states (where the “traditional white vote is strongest), even beyond its originally intended purpose.

Trumpite 2016

People such as Bernie Sanders say there hasn’t been enough attention paid to examining party primary procedures, which would include election funding. After all, it is this process which ultimately provides us with the candidates that will eventually compete for the presidency. Likewise, election funding and funding sources often play an important roll in determining the campaign points adopted or dropped by candidates.

It’s then no wonder that Republicans also put an exorbitant amount of effort into the Citizens United Supreme Court case, again because this was another major part of their overall strategy; to allow corporate donors to make unlimited cash contributions to the candidate(s) of their choice, based on how these candidates align with their strategic plan.

It’s no wonder that both the house and senate are Republican controlled now, because post Citizens United, Republicans have lost precious few elections due to outspending their democratic competitors, in some cases by as much as ten to one.

If we look back to the Republican primary and recall the absolute circus that took place, we should not be at all surprised that a candidate such as Donald Trump made it through. The candidate bar was set historically low, with all manner of clowns declaring their bid for the White House. As a result we ended up with a morally devoid historically under-qualified candidate, the likes of which U.S politics had never been seen before, which in turn set the tone for the entire presidential election. Trump won precisely because he was always willing to go further and lower than his opponents.

On the democratic side an insider’s game led to only two candidates being considered for the presidency vs the Republican party’s sixteen. One of the democratic candidates was so favored by the party elite that the other was virtually ignored by the party and media for the first two thirds of his campaign.

Only when Bernie Sanders could no longer be ignored did the media and Democratic Party begin to pay attention. Even then, elements within the party fought tooth and nail to prevent him becoming the party’s presidential candidate.

Compared to the Republican primary the Democratic primary seemed civilized and by the book, which wasn’t too difficult based on where Republicans set the bar. In reality, there were many things wrong with both primaries.

The one thing that both parties agree on is ensuring that no other party can rise. In this cause, they are uniquely united. The other parties in the U.S do not stand a chance because the rules have been fashioned by Republicans and Democrats to insure that they won’t.

This election raises a fundamental question. In a democracy with a constitution which explicitly lays out a system of government that is absolutely opposed to tyranny, fascism or plutocracy, if the will of the American people elects a person who promotes one or all of these ideologies is that democracy working or is it flawed?

Surely the constitution primarily exists as a manual to direct the people and their government to do the right thing in all imaginable scenarios, and maybe this could be one of the reasons why the Electoral College still exists; to make the democracy an indirect democracy, just in case “the people” loose their mind, or start reading the constitution in “Biblical” context, where interpretation is everything.

The truth is that no matter the causes, the majority of the country is not interested in whatever the now President-elect, Donald Trump, is selling. After 50 years of progress which has made this A More Perfect Union they are not interested in rolling back the clock to a time where America was Great for a few but terrible for most.

Donald Trump lost the popular vote by 2.2 million votes and climbing. He won the Electoral college because this vote, due to all of the above is no longer related to the “Will of the American people”. It is representative of those older, male and primarily of white heritage in a handful of strategic regions.

It’s one thing to have Congress opposing your every move, as Obama did, but it’s quite a different thing to have the majority of the electorate opposing your overall agenda. To enact such an agenda in opposition of public opinion and the constitution, which as President you would be sworn to uphold would be tantamount to tyranny.

This is all before we consider that those who were duped into voting for him will inevitably realize he is the duplicitous liar that even the most conservative analysis of his 70 years on earth prove him to be.

Many of these same people will begin to have doubts as he continues to stuff his cabinet with the very people that those people elected him to “drain the swamp” of. His cabinet is presently a who’s who of the murkiest of America’s plutocratic families. It is a cabinet made up exclusively of the 1%.

These are the people who his policies will most benefit, because these policies will remove regulations which oppose big business and reduce the super rich’s tax burden by 20%, placing the burden back on the middle class. Also, the abolition of Obamacare and Republicans enacting their long term strategic goal of scrapping Medicare will not be popular with anybody, except the unaffected rich.

With such a scenario could come frequent nationwide protests, and as history teaches us, eventually civil disobedience/riots, etc, which are typical of all presidencies where the presidential administration’s agenda is not representative of those it was elected to serve.

Just as with small children, young societies must sometimes learn the same lesson over and over again before the wisdom of inevitability finally seeps in.