{"id":20536,"date":"2016-10-30T11:03:58","date_gmt":"2016-10-30T01:03:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=20536"},"modified":"2016-10-30T11:04:28","modified_gmt":"2016-10-30T01:04:28","slug":"us-presidential-elections-2016-a-positive-outlook-on-an-awful-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=20536","title":{"rendered":"US Presidential Elections 2016 – A Positive Outlook On An Awful Election"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tagusa2016\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"hillpresident\"<\/a><\/p>\n

O<\/span>n November 8th, for the first time in two hundred and forty years, the people of the United States will send a woman into the White House. \u00a0They will elect Hillary Clinton as their president.<\/p>\n

We can say she has won with near certainty. \u00a0The only question will be by how much. \u00a0Despite\u00a0a media landscape that is invested in having a close contest, the polling data is emphatic. \u00a0In a race to win 270 electoral college votes, she has at least 300 in the bag. \u00a0There’s maybe another sixty votes she could yet win. \u00a0Barack Obama crushed John McCain eight years ago and right now Clinton is poised to win by an even bigger margin.<\/p>\n

It was after the first presidential debate concluded that we knew it was all over. \u00a0There would be no Trump pivot to appeal to those outside the base. \u00a0Trump supporters planned an October surprise in the form of a Wikileaks email hack that revealed the contents of her speeches to Wall Street bankers and her private emails with her strategists and planners. \u00a0They turned up empty handed. \u00a0Trump had his own October surprise in the form of an Access Hollywood video tape in which he bragged about sexually assaulting women. \u00a0It was the nail in the coffin for his campaign.<\/p>\n

\"538snapshot\"<\/a>

A snapshot of the polling results taken from Five Thirty Eight on October 26th<\/p><\/div>\n

For those people who live in America and have been in Trump’s firing line during this marathon election season (and as we can see from a recent New York Times compilation of his abusive tweets, it is an exhaustive\u00a0list<\/a><\/strong>), this has been a sickening and disheartening time. \u00a0Trump’s divisive rhetoric and prejudice towards women, minorities and anyone else he decides to paint as an ‘other’ has strained the country’s social cohesion\u00a0and left one of the two major political parties of the United States in ruins.<\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton is recognized by political commentators\u00a0as a savvy and vastly experienced campaigner\u00a0and twelve months ago, she probably would have anticipated pitting her talents\u00a0against a Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush. \u00a0But then\u00a0that<\/em> Republican primary happened and the country has been robbed of an election that had any meaningful exchange of ideas. \u00a0Climate change was not mentioned a single time during the three presidential debates. \u00a0Clinton should’ve been pushed on how she would address income inequality and ensure the long term viability of the Affordable Care Act. \u00a0Instead of challenging her on these fronts, Trump accused Barack Obama of literally founding ISIS<\/a><\/strong> and his attacks on Clinton never got more nuanced than yelling about her emails and Bill Clinton’s sexual misconduct. \u00a0The campaign\u00a0became a war of attrition as Clinton patiently soldiered on and watched Donald Trump sink his own campaign in gruesome\u00a0fashion.<\/p>\n

\"trumpsize\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Trump represents the American Conservative id. \u00a0He is their darkest desires laid bare for all to see. \u00a0No wonder so many establishment Republicans, who for years worked to the Southern Strategy playbook, were shocked and appalled. \u00a0They had their carefully crafted policies and slogans that\u00a0approached the line but never crossed it. \u00a0Trump started his presidential campaign by calling Latino migrants rapists and he didn’t tone down the rhetoric\u00a0for the next twelve months. \u00a0He didn’t just cross the line, he pissed all over it and then set the whole building\u00a0on fire. \u00a0He attacked and insulted women, Muslims, African Americans, war veterans, the disabled, journalists and judges. \u00a0All to the unwavering, vociferous support of the GOP base who shed any last inhibitions about their views on the rest of the country.<\/p>\n

During some of the uglier exchanges that took place when Republicans campaigned against Barack Obama, I felt I had a pretty reasonable understanding of the darker side of the American conservative movement. \u00a0Most of it is predicated on the fear of the other and the erosion of White Privelege. \u00a0But I was taken aback by how far they were willing to go with Trump. \u00a0It wasn’t the prejudice. \u00a0The prejudice I expected. \u00a0It was the wholesale support of a demagogue who boasted of silencing the press, restarting the nuclear arms race\u00a0and locking up his\u00a0political opponent. \u00a0That took it to a whole other level. \u00a0By the end of the campaign, when the party faithful were cheering at Trump rallies where he boasted of ignoring the election results, the Republican base had given up on the republic itself. \u00a0In supporting Trump they had ceased support of freedom of religion, freedom of speech and believing in the fundamentals of free and fair elections.<\/p>\n

\"obamahillary\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By and large, I’ve been satisfied by the American media’s coverage of this election which I understand puts me squarely in the minority. \u00a0Trump’s opponents during the Republican primary bemoaned the massive amount of coverage he was afforded for each and every repulsive statement he made with reliable (and measured) regularity. \u00a0I think the press has every right to cover these statements. \u00a0It’s newsworthy not just because he made so many outrageous remarks but that they so clearly resonated with\u00a0the Republican voters. \u00a0He wasn’t some fringe candidate shouting into the void. \u00a0It also wasn’t ‘media bias’ when the press continued to cover what he said and had said in the past once he secured the Republican nomination and suddenly had to turn his attention to winning over the rest of the country.<\/p>\n

I felt this coverage was fair and reasonable as the mainstream news outlets were quite explicit in pointing out when Trump was lying (too often to list) or proposing a policy that was unconstitutional (banning Muslim migration) or implausible (building a border wall and charging Mexico for it). \u00a0As long as the news media maintained that standard – and I believe they did – then I think they absolutely did the right thing.<\/p>\n

The biggest concern I had over the lasting influence of Trump’s campaign was if the media were to try and normalize and humanize his views and beliefs. \u00a0This happened once during the campaign when Trump appeared on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight<\/em>\u00a0show and he was treated as a regular guest. \u00a0Fortunately, the public response was scathing and we haven’t seen anything like it since.<\/p>\n

\"trumptonight\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Understandably, there has been a lot of soul searching over the course of this election campaign and more think-pieces than you could possibly count trying to come to grips with the very idea of Trump’s candidacy and that he should appeal to nearly 40% of the electorate. \u00a0There has been a lot of column inches devoted to dismissing Trump but extending an olive branch to his voters, trying to understand how they could support such a man. \u00a0How had the country let these people down? \u00a0It was the economy wasn’t it? \u00a0These were middle Americans, factory workers in the Rust Belt, who had been left behind in modern America. \u00a0Ignored by career Republicans in D.C who spent too much time focusing on roadblocking Obama and abandoned by Democrats who once championed and proudly represented blue collar workers. \u00a0Or at least that was a common idea posited by columnists at the Guardian<\/a><\/strong> and the New York Times<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

As further studies have been conducted and more data has become available to us about the voters of this election, it is becoming increasingly apparent that we are giving Trump supporters too much credit with that idea.<\/p>\n

On average, Trump supporters earn far more<\/a><\/strong> than either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders supporters. \u00a0Very little of Trump’s flagship policies are focused on bettering the lives of those on the poverty line. \u00a0If anything, Trump’s mantra on inner cities has been to introduce a police state<\/a><\/strong> to tackle a non-existent surge in crime (homicide rates have been in decline nationally for decades).<\/p>\n

So what does unify and bring together Trump supporters? \u00a0The answer is simple as it is obvious – racial resentment<\/a><\/strong>. \u00a0Not unlike Brexit voters in the UK, this election has become a mandate on multiculturalism and white people coming to terms with sharing their country with others. \u00a0More specifically, old white Christian men.<\/p>\n

\"votesplit2016\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Which brings me at last, to the good news.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump is losing. \u00a0He is losing a lot. \u00a0It’s nice to think he shouldn’t have gotten this far in a presidential election\u00a0and shouldn’t have the support of 40% of the voters but it’s important to look at the context here. \u00a040% of the voters isn’t the same thing as 40% of the total population. \u00a0Only about 20% of the country will vote for him. \u00a0And they are the last gasp protest votes of the Baby Boomer generation, not the youth of the nation. \u00a0By every major\u00a0voting demographic of the future, Democrats are the choice of the people.<\/p>\n

Not only is Trump losing, he has stripped away the veneer of respectability from the Republican’s political stances and wrecked the fortunes of more polished representatives of those views. \u00a0The hit list reads like a who’s who of Republican presidential hopefuls – Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Carli Fiorini. \u00a0They’re done. \u00a0They’re a laughing stock. \u00a0No wonder some observers wondered if Trump was actually a Clinton insider. \u00a0Longstanding Republican stalwarts such as Newt Gingrich and Rudy Guliani are also smearing the twilight of their political careers trying to salvage and spruik the Trump campaign.<\/p>\n