Tragedy, farce and uncertainty
The evening wasn’t so enjoyable after all. Hillary Clinton, who is still leading in the popular vote, has lost in the electoral college, with several swing states that had been expected to tilt towards her instead going for President-elect Donald Trump. The electoral college, where each state has two votes, no matter what the population (plus the number of representatives), favors less populous states that lean Republican.
This is a tragedy for me personally. I’m an establishment progressive who thinks America has to play a strong role in the world, free trade and investment are desirable, and equal rights for everyone are the indispensable basis of liberal democracy, a system that has served Americans and non-Americans well.
It is also a tragedy for many of my friends around the world. Clinton would have pursued democratic ideals wherever possible. Trump shows no interest in them, at home or abroad. He admires Russian autocrat President Putin, draws support from anti-liberal Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, cozies up to Egyptian strongman President Sisi, and gets plaudits from Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, who is using last summer’s failed coup as an opportunity to crack down on all those who oppose him. Those who believe in equal rights in those countries should despair: they will get no support from the United States for the next four years.
My guess is that the same will be true for liberal democrats in other countries Trump has never mentioned. The moderate Syrian opposition, Ukraine’s Maidan democrats, Europe’s traditional socialists and conservatives, Iran’s Greens (what is left of them), and many others can expect no real sustenance from Trump’s America. Throughout the Balkans, Trump’s victory will empower ethnic nationalists, who are already sending me their schadenfreude. There is a real risk that his white nationalist predilections will inspire a chain reaction of ethnic and sectarian partitions there and in the Middle East, spreading war and instability far and wide.
The Trump victory is also a farce. This self-declared billionaire so far as we know hasn’t paid taxes for decades or given any significant contributions to charity. He notoriously stiffed contractors and used illegal workers when building his hotels, not to mention that his Slovenian-born wife worked illegally in the US. He put his tacky label on cheap imported products. But he now claims to represent the American working class, in particular in its distaste for immigrants and foreign products. He claimed to want to make America great again, but criticized its generals and its fighting men and especially women. All this is bozotic.
How did he win? Women and Hispanics, whom he insulted with vigor during the campaign, shifted their votes only slightly towards Hillary Clinton. More educated Americans shifted more, but they were not enough to offset the shift of non-college educated whites to Trump. Minorities did not turn out in the numbers that elected President Obama. Efforts to suppress their vote by limiting early voting, cutting back on polling hours and places, and requiring proof of identity (Americans do not have identity cards) were marginally successful in some swing states.
The tragedy and farce will remain forever. Uncertainty is the most important result of the election right now. No one knows what Trump will really do. That’s why stock markets worldwide sold off and have only partly recovered. He prides himself on unpredictability and has a Republican Congress to go along with his whims.
Here are my best guesses. At the very least, he will have to proceed with the promised repeal of Obamacare, which has provided tens of millions of Americans with health insurance. Repeal will throw them back into hospital emergency rooms, which are the most expensive way to cure a cold ever invented. He will propose cutting my taxes sharply, with no guarantee that I will reinvest the bounty productively. He will try to throw a lot of money at rebuilding infrastructure, something the Republicans have blocked President Obama from doing. He will appoint an anti-abortion member of the Supreme Court, to fill the existing vacancy.
But little else is clear, especially on foreign policy. Renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement I suppose, but that won’t be easy. Complete the wall on the border with Mexico, though his proposed method for financing it (by taxing remittances from Mexicans in the US) is unlikely to work. Tear up the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Cut a deal with Putin on Ukraine and Syria, surrendering Donbas to the Russians and as much of Syria as they, the Iranians and Assad can conquer. Continue Obama’s fight against the Islamic State, which has been strikingly successful over the last year.
I doubt however that he will tear up the Iranian nuclear deal, which is clearly better than no deal at this point. He’ll make a lot of noise about enforcing it vigorously and may levy new sanctions on Iran based on other issues. We can expect belligerent talk about China’s trade and currency policies, but I suppose those complaints will be channeled into the existing bilateral and multilateral mechanisms that already exist to deal with them.
Worst of all, we are going to have to listen to him and his appointees for the next four years. Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor who closed highway lanes to punish a Democratic mayor for not supporting him, will direct the transition team. Rudy Giuliani, who invented the “stop and frisk” police tactic that has been declared unconstitutional, will likely be the Attorney General. Newt Gingrich, the Speaker of the House cited for ethnics violations, is thought to be a candidate for Secretary of State. This is a rogues’ gallery of male chauvinist has-beens.
It’s had better be a great country. Otherwise how could it survive such a mistake?
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We’ve seen it before. Similarly like in Croatia (Zoran Milanovac) and especially Serbia (Boris Tadic), overly ambitious, self-admired, arrogant individuals brought their countries to a shame.
This is the case with Hillary. She was somehow successfully defeated by this bozo Trump. It looks like anyone else without Hillary’s deceitful history would have defeated Trump.
Now, good luck my fellow Americans!
Obama should have supported Joe Biden, the DNC should not have conspired against Bernie Sanders, … There were alternatives to the supposedly “electable” Hillary. (In the polls during the primaries, Sanders beat Trump handily when Hillary was essentially even with him.) The white working class – my background – didn’t need to be written off, many had voted for Obama, at least the first time. And in the general election, against a nominal Republican, she just provoked too much institutionalized antipathy – wasn’t there anybody awake at the Democrats’ wheel to recognize that? And even f she’d won, would the Republicans in Congress allow her to accomplish anything? By now the Republicans have had 8 years of experience in obstruction, and resentments dating from her husband’s term to inspire more of the same. And so there goes the Supreme Court. “A government of laws, not men.” But men make the laws.
About Obamacare – my across-the-street neighbor has been in a total funk over this: it wasn’t until Obama finally actually managed to push it through that he got health insurance for the first time in his life. But it turns out that – according to this article (http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-repealing-obamacare-20161110-story.html) – killing Obamaare will be almost impossible, although wounding it is possible.
The Serbs in N. Mitrovica have put up a billboard telling Trump they were with him all the way, Vucic is bragging about his “good friend” Rudy Giuliani, Selselj is claiming everythig was fine with America until Clinton came along … – we’ll have every opportunity to see how vindictive Trump is with his enemies list. (Somebody in his entourage is certainly tone deaf, or simply knows nothing about American history in the 20th c.)
Max Primorac of Between Two Rivers LLC writes:
Dan – Actually it was a very enjoyable night. The American people would not elect the most corrupt candidate for President in American history, one that has no respect for the rule of law and was about to get caught attempted to cover it up by destroying documents/evidence and systematically lying about it. And need we discuss the shenanigans of the Clintons money making machine called a “Foundation”, erasing the lines between nonprofits, political party and government? And all the smears that Trump et.al. were Putin cronies, only to learn from Wikileaks how the Podesta brothers were on Russia’s payroll while Clinton herself sold off America’s uranium deposits to Russian front companies that, in turn, gave millions to Bill.
It is utterly shameful how the Left willfully chose to ignore these inconvenient truths and are continuing their smear campaign against Republicans as racist, mysoginists and homophones. To continue to slime the now President elect to the rest of the world is not impressive, but predictable. It is true that the Right in America is interested in ideas while the Left is only interested in power. Very sad.
My guess is that Trump won the election not because people like him so much but rather because they dislike Hillary Clinton in the first place. Simply, over last few years people have been growing increasingly weary of politicians of Mrs. Clinton’s type, who look as if they have been “serially manufactured” in some specialized factory. I heard that some Republicans commented that they couldn’t have hoped for a “better” rival, alluding to Hillary’s victory over Sanders in the Democratic party’s primary. Ironically, Sanders would have fared much better than Hillary against such an unconventional contender as Trump.
I’m also sure that Barack Obama would have had far better chances against Trump if only he had been eligible to run for the third time. Regarding the idea of a woman becoming US president for the first time in history, Obama’s wife Michelle would also have been a better choice than Mrs. Clinton, in spite of her relative lack of “hard” political experience.
Another factor were mainstream media. Most of them were so obviously in favor of Hillary Clinton that even people who do not particularly like Trump came to feel disgusted.
Finally, as much as Trump deserved condemnation for his racist, Islamophobic and other “politically incorrect” remarks, one must admit that he definitely possesses a lot more natural charisma than Hillary.