I haven’t read my morning paper this morning, so I don’t have any great detail, but I feel I don’t need to for one simple reason.
I know how to read a map.
Donald Trump, as much as I hate to say it, is the 47th president of the United States, I think it’s the first and only time a once-serving president came back to serve again after being out of office for a number of years and defeated in an election between terms.
Pundits and talking-heads on television, radio, and the internet will have the complete low-down on the how’s and why’s of it, so there won’t be any of that here. As perplexed as I am by his win, I can still see how it came to pass. After all, you can’t just rage over your morning coffee about the supposed “stupidity” of Americans to vote for such a man. Rather, you have to look dispassionately at why a nation approaching 350 million people would do so in the face of everything we know and see about him.
It wasn’t a voter turnout thing. I believe an even greater turnout was experienced in this campaign. In fact, two demographics voted like never before, with Latinos/Hispanics and young people going to the polls to cast their ballots, and if preliminary data is to be believed, they came out for Trump.
Was it anti-Kamala, anti-Democrat, anti-women, anti-woke, anti-establishment, anti-everything/anything? Was it a protest vote of some sort? Maybe some of those things, maybe all of those things, maybe even none of those things at all. But they mostly voted against her, and did so decisively.
Trump won the electoral college vote 277 to 224, a candidate needing to reach 270 to claim the White House. The Electoral College, as we all should know by now, is the most anachronistic and arcane method of determining something as important as a president of the world’s most powerful country, but there it is. And it works that way for both sides, so no pointing fingers there.
Remember that map I was talking about? It shows the United States with colour representation — blue for Democrats, red for Republicans — of the two political parties each presidential candidate represents. It takes but a moment to see that the map is almost entirely red, with only a small scattering of blue, often in places with larger population densities, like California, New York, and the various metropolitan areas scattered throughout the land. It’s visually jarring, but visually certain. Trump has won the White House, fair and square. No cheating, no voter fraud, none of the hijinks we’d probably be hearing about if the result was the other way around
Was it the border? I think that might be a good chunk of it. Trump was no better on the border than Biden was, perhaps even worse, but he did manage to paint the Democrats successfully with that brush. He won’t be offering any solutions to that problem in this term either, a term in which there’s every likelihood he won’t be able to finish, primarily because he’s now the oldest person to ever win the White House, a criticism he once relished levelling at the increasingly infirm Biden. So just to get that out there, but what really happened last night is that America decided that they’re more than okay with JD Vance as president. You heard it here.
Trump can beat the system, but he can’t beat Father Time, who is already knocking at the door. We may be only a Big Mac away from the Tennessee Hillbilly having the place to himself. It can make one dizzy if one’s not careful.
Was it the American values that Trump trumpeted? As tragically ironic as that might be coming from an absolutely detestable human-being who has walked in the footsteps of Christ exactly never but was supported massively by Christians who have absolutely no problems looking the other way when it comes to things like money or bashing on women’s rights. Or other rights of other people.
Anti-woke? I’ll bet that’s a big part of it, so Canadian prime minister Trudeau — aka Goldisocks — should take note. Americans have not, as a whole, responded well to “virtue-signalling,” and you can bet huge that the same will apply here when the time comes, which it will within the next year.
Anti-immigration? Sure, why not? Everybody knows it’s the fault of immigrants for everything bad, right? Even though almost all data indicates that immigrants are actually the people keeping the place running, and that their theoretical absence would be devastating to the American economy. And ours.
Angry at the economy? That’s a hard-yes, Americans buying the Trump argument that the place is going to hell in a hand basket, despite the overwhelming data showing that the economy hasn’t been this good in a long time.
Trump is not the first rascal to be elected president. He’s not even the first rascal to be elected twice.
Andrew Jackson was an ornery little piece of work who would have no problem giving you a sound thrashing with his cane if you didn’t see eye-to-eye with his “no nonsense” approach to American politics, which of course was filled with nonsense, most of his own creation. Another Andrew, this time Johnson, took over after Lincoln was shot and made every effort to scuttle reconstruction and the freedoms accorded to black slaves by Lincoln himself. Maybe Warren Harding, but he was just inept and didn’t have Trump’s “edgy” style. Theodore Roosevelt comes to mind, the swashbuckler who stormed atop San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War as part of the famed “Roughriders.” He once got shot at a rally and kept speaking as blood oozed out of a wound in his chest. That’s pretty Trumpian right there, if you ask me. Richard Nixon and Watergate? How about that rapscallion William Jefferson (Bill) Clinton who couldn’t find a pair of pants where the zipper would stay up.
And so here we are, Trump 2.0, likely not an improvement over the 1.0 version, but as I said, he’ll fade into oblivion and will only remain relevant for as long as people keep putting a microphone in front of his face.
Will he blow up the world? Embrace Putin? Become the new Hitler? Deport tens of millions? Sell out Ukraine? Scuttle NATO? Destroy hard-fought-for basic human rights? Set up a police state? Jail opponents? Shoot Liz Cheney?
Come on, folks, we have to take a breath. That’s a lot for anyone on their first day of a new job, even if they’ve been there before.
Plus, we have no choice. So we might as well breathe.
I can see poor Joe Biden, sitting in his rocker in the dark somewhere, repeating something under his breath, and maybe even in his sleep.
“I coulda beat him. No joke, I coulda beat him.”
Say it ain’t so, Joe. Say it ain’t so.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 