In the early morning hours of November 9th, it became official: In one of the most stunning upsets in American history, Donald Trump had become the next president of the United States. His hardcore supporters, who never gave any credence to the polls, were not surprised, but Democrats and media liberals were brought to silence as they swallowed a very unexpected defeat.
After coming to terms with the new American reality, they began looking for answers. What went wrong? What could we have done differently? How could the polls have been so misleading? What will become of the Obama legacy? The precious, precious Obama legacy???
If you couldn’t hold back your laughter, don’t be ashamed. You weren’t alone.
Still, it has been and will be fascinating to watch these liberals – so cocky going into the election – try to figure out why the American people rejected Hillary Clinton in resounding numbers. Already, the blame list is long:
- FBI Director James Comey
- WikiLeaks
- Russia
- The media
- Gary Johnson
- White supremacy
- Sexism
And so on.
The cold, hard truth, though, is that this result may have been etched in stone from the moment Clinton and Trump secured their respective nominations. The media portrayed this race as a battle between two of the most unpopular presidential candidates of all time, but that never felt quite right. Trump surged to defeat 17 Republicans and garner more primary votes than any Republican in history. He traveled the country, holding court at rallies packed with thousands and thousands of rabid supporters. He bounced back from scandal like he was made of Teflon. It wasn’t playing out in the traditional polls, but you couldn’t ignore the reality of his on-the-ground popularity.
Hillary, on the other hand, always felt like an “I guess so” candidate on the Democrat side. She held “rallies” in front of meager audiences who struggled to muster any real enthusiasm. She built her entire campaign on attacking Trump and his supporters, even slandering them as deplorables in one of her biggest missteps. Among the millennials who wanted Sanders, she was loathed. The polls said she would win, but it was hard to understand how that could be.
Maybe the Dems could have won with a Sanders or a Biden. Maybe they could have even won with Hillary, had she not been under FBI investigation for most of the last two years. Who can say.
But it doesn’t matter now, because the 2016 election is finally – Finally! – in the history books.
And if there’s any justice in the world, we will never have to see a Clinton in national politics ever again.
