The 2016 election is nearly official and apparently a pumpkin pie from 2011's Thanksgiving dinner is going to succeed Barack Obamar as the POTUS. Lots to unpack there so let's get to it.
Reasons Donald Trump won - Other than Jesus hates America, there has to be something that explains Trump's appeal to voters who presumably own a functioning human heart. Here's an exhaustive list of probable reasons that I can squeeze into my worldview:
People want to be lied to -
I already wrote about this just before the election, but fuggit, I'm a good ol' boy and there's nothing more good ol' boy than repeating yourself over and over and over. I learned that in debate class. Anyhow, people want to be lied to and Donald Trump lies a lot, so he got all of Michigan's vote. Wisconsin's too. "I will bring back auto factory jobs." Which was the plot to Argo, not a campaign promise any pathological liar in the history of ever intends to actually keep.
So here we are now, over a month into Trump's president-electedness, and he's already abandoned 75% of the bullshit red meat he threw out during his political rallies. Hillary's not going to jail, a deportation force isn't going from farm to farm looking for migrants, your neighbor's grandchildren don't have to go broke if their grandma gets the flu (never mind, that's still going to happen), and the swamp most definitely isn't being drained of corporate lobbyists. Most importantly, that wall has already been downgraded to a fence, which means it will be completely abandoned by next Wednesday, though don't cry too long if that was your thing: It will be resurrected just as soon as Trump gets hit with his first big scandal. 55% odds that scandal will have to do with kickbacks and 45% it will involve three consecutive lunch break rapes. No Republican officeholder or flyover voter with half a college degree will give a shit about either.
Racists - There's been a lot of effort since the election to frame the Trump vote as an expression of economic anxiety rather than approval of his racism, but, uhhhh, I didn't see all that many economically anxious not-white people voting for Trump, so explain that? No, nothing? Okay, I'll do the explaining for you: A humanoid made of orange Fruit Roll-ups appealed to white insecurities by blaming the death of 1950s America on black and brown people rather than the rapacious Wall Street assholes he regularly dines with and that sounded about right to them. And even if all that "rhetoric" - to put it nicely - didn't sit well with them it still wasn't enough to disqualify Trump as THE MOTHERFUCKING PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA even though it should have disqualified him as a person you'd say hello to if you were the only two people in a broken elevator. Or to put it in dating terms: You met a man who's ruggedly handsome in just the way you like, is intelligent but doesn't mainsplain a thing, can fix a car as well as discern differences between the 2004 and 2005 Cabernet, and not only likes the same things as you but hates the same stuff as well; he also French kisses a cardboard cutout of his mother every night before going to bed and mixes a little of his pee in with the scrambled eggs because it gives his toe hairs a nice sheen. Oh, and he calls anyone he doesn't like the N-word. Most people would call those things a deal breaker, but not the Trump voter. By the time he runs for re-election they're going to be asking him to tie the ball gag in their mouths a little tighter even though blood hasn't circulated through their brains since last February's primaries. So yeah, if you voted Trump you're most definitely not a racist but you certainly don't mind a little white supremacy with your disability check.
Racists were so butthurt that liberals called them racists that they voted Trump out of spite even though they were going to vote for him all along - I've read in more than a few places that all these invisible rural Republican non-voters the pollsters missed were motivated to actually vote this time because of the mountains of scorn heaped upon them by Bill Maher, Rachel Maddow, Michael Moore and any other liberal commentator they don't actually listen to. Uh, okay. Reminds me of when I was teaching in Detroit and some of my students would say something along the lines of: I don't care about that muhhhfugg. Then that muhhhfugg would call him a name and like three fights would break out because he was so nonplussed by that muhhhfugg that he had to break his jaw over being called a name. Basically, if someone calls you a racist and you respond to that by enabling a racist, well then, you're probably a racist. Own it. Don't blame that bullshit on some make-believe unicorn of an elite New York liberal.
Suckers - Like the number one compliment anyone had to say about Trump during the campaign was that he says exactly what "we've" been thinking, which, I don't know, sounds exactly like the job description for a used car salesman. "Oh, you're concerned about the environment? Well this '73 Bonneville gets great mileage for only having three wheels. And you're also worried that your health insurance has gone up because of Obama and not because of your Republican governor who refused Medicare expansion? How about we repeal the ACA since not having insurance to begin with is the equivalent of 100% savings on your monthly premiums? By the way, you'll have to trade in grandma's Medicaid to get that deal."
For real, let's examine the things Trump hit Clinton on that resonated strongest with all the easy marks he courted and then compare that to what's transpired on Trump's end since:
- Crooked Hillary was using the Clinton Foundation to enrich herself even though her family probably donated more money to the foundation than they ever pulled out of it. Trump is now using the presidency to shake down foreign governments who've stalled building projects with his name on it, not to mention letting the woman tasked with running his empire during his "absence" sit in on meetings with heads of state whose governments own companies finalizing business with that very same woman.
- Hillary was also using the Clinton Foundation to facilitate a pay-to-play scheme since large donors apparently asked for face-to-face meetings afterward but barely any of them got. Trump is appointing his largest donors to cabinet posts. So: asking to meet with the former Secretary of State vs. letting your friends buy whole swaths of the US Government? Okay now.
- Qatar donated a million dollars to the Clinton Foundation, so what happens when Qatar calls that favor in? Or how about: Donald Trump owes a bajillion dollars to Chinese and Russian state banks, so what happens when their governments tell their banks to make a margin call or two?
- The Clinton Foundation is just one big ruse to give Chelsea Clinton a job since not a single consulting firm would hire a Stanford graduate whose dad used to be the POTUS and whose mom should have been. Curiously, conflating the interests of the Trump Organization with the USA is only the second real job Donald Jr. and Eric have held since starring in Beavis and Butthead, but NBD.
- Hillary was paid $625,000 by Goldman Sachs to say a bunch of boring shit during lunch so is going to let them run roughshod all over the Treasury. Donald straight up gave Goldman the Treasury.
- Hillary risked the security of the United States by carelessly setting up a private server in her basement. Two days later Donald the Tee is on an unsecured line calling heads of state everywhere telling them their country looks beautiful, shame if anyone came around and dropped a bomb on it.
- Hillary's tenure as Secretary of State was a disaster. Just look at the Middle East, same as it's been since Jesus climbed that tree and came down off it dead. But let me send a quick text to Taiwan here so I can shake that Chinese hornet nest.
- Hillary has zero understanding of the white working class experience because she's a career politician who's had to maintain her employment by listening to the white working class who makes up substantial parts of her various constituencies. Donald Trump has taken exactly 37 poops since the election, all of them on a heated toilet seat made of gold. He really gets us.
- And like a million more hypocrisies.
Raise your hand if you didn't see all that coming. Not you, neo-Nazi; I didn't mean it that way.
Plain old dumbfunkery - The number one rule for an election is never vote for anyone dumber than you are. And in case you were wondering, a person who expresses his intelligence by saying "I have a very good brain" is not very intelligent. That there were enough Americans who graded out lower on the intelligence spectrum than this explains the results.
Also explains voting against your self interests. Capitalism is zero sum, so if you're on the losing side of that equation - and you are since "I'm not racist, I'm just voting for my job back" - then you should probably warm up to the idea of a social safety net. Access to a family doctor, an average public education, and a few loaves of bread every week is like $6 of your annual tax bill. For real, when people decry the redistribution of wealth they're not talking about your 45 large. That money's flowing upward, not downward.
Fake news - I obviously could have used the fake news to keep talking about how stupid people are, but at some point all the stupidism, racism, suckerism, butthurtism, even more stupidism, and post-truthism all just blend together. But yeah, fake news. A healthy portion of Donald Trump's support was pure opposition to Hillary, and much of that opposition was based on Super Conservative Gun Slinging Trolls Dot Com reporting that Hillary was Bill's initiate into a Satanic ring of goat humpers trafficking in child slavery. Which obviously can't be tolerated so let's vote for the child rapist instead.
A lot of post-election fake news coverage has focused on the people who produce it and how their intent was revenue, not political outcomes, which has inspired a lot of angry tsk tsk'ing from people who believe there's such a thing as the truth. But that all misses the point. The point is that facts are no longer a thing, and if nothing's a fact anymore than nothing can contradict reality. So even though Hillary is 100% not a member of a Satanic cult, that's just, like, your opinion so don't tell me how to think, you East Coast Libtard.
Suckers, part 2 - I can never point out enough how easily half my country got played. I get political, philosophical, and, most likely, ideological differences informing your vote, but if that's the case go with Rand Paul, Marco Rubes, or even Ted Cruz. But instead y'all voted for a transparent grifter whose favorite Bible verse is somewhere in Two Corinthians. "Who am I to criticize his relationship with the Lord...except when I use my own relationship with the Lord to criticize women who assert their reproductive rights!"
Predictably, Donald Tee has spent his entire transition accepting bids from ultra rich foxes for which hen house they'll get to guard. Can't wait for Joe Bob, who spent the election complaining how government regulation has held him back, to start whining about being forced to send his kids to over-priced, under-performing charter schools 10 miles farther from his house than the good public school that used to be there; the lack of workplace safety and overtime protections at his milling job; the tap water entirely more flammable than the "Drill, Baby, Drill" bumper sticker on his truck, and oh yeah, the five hour waits in the emergency room because giving the super rich a 0.2% tax break was more important than an accessible heath system.
Plain old dumbfunkery, part 2 - I can also never impress upon you enough just how stupid Trump voters are. "Government should be run like a business" as an argument against government spending and the national debt. So they elect the guy who runs one of the most highly leveraged companies in the world. Okay.
Reasons Hillary Clinton lost - Other than Muhammed hates America, there has to be a reason Hillary lost to a can of expired frozen orange concentrate. Here they are in reverse descending ascending order:
She's a woman - There's literally zero difference between Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden other than had Joe Biden run against Trump then he'd be President-elect right now. Because he has male pattern baldness and a dong.
The Clinton machine is broken down and has been stripped for parts in a junkard - Whatever political game the Clintons had in the 90s retired the same day Michael Jordan left the Bulls. They're still running data simulations on a Texas Instruments TI-84. Meanwhile, Barack Obama showed up in 2008 with a six-year-old Dell and ran circles around their operation. Donald Trump hired a data team with zero political experience and flipped the entire Rust Belt. Sometimes you win because you're the '27 Yankees, other times you win because you're playing the Cleveland Browns circa any year ever.
The Democrats are sad, rejected Republicans - Have you ever seen a picture of Bob Marley's dad? It will blow your mind.
I know, right? You're absolutely gobsmacked.
This means that Bob Marley was stuck between two worlds that left him with a decision to make: Appeal to the whiteys who would only accept him insomuch as he behaved like one of the good ones, or just be black and do his thing. Which is basically the same decision the Democrats have to make today. Are they early Wailers-brand fake Republicans you would've never heard of had they continued dressing like this?
Or are they absolute legends who, if they fail to save the world from global warming, at least they'll fight for your access to minimally potable water.
The emails - Literally zero was found in the DNC emails. If there had been then no doubt Hillary would have had to sit in front of Congress for 47 separate investigations. She sat for none. The big problem with the emails is that a bunch of people who act like they could have hacked law school even though they barely graduated high school were the ones digging through them. "Ohhhh, creme brulee. I heard on Alex Jones that, that's code for "let's be super corrupt today between 4:30 and 9:00 pm.""
Anthony Weiner - That dickbag is walking proof that the Clintons don't impose forced suicide upon political liabilities. Of all the flanks to leave undefended, I can't believe they left themselves exposed to a serial dick pic'er.
Reasons Donald Trump didn't win - The above were the only reasons Donald Doobag was elected the final President of the United States and Hillary wasn't. The following are reasons commonly given for the outcome that are as dead wrong as your predictions the US won't be a banana republic 10 years from now:
No one understands the underemployed totally-not-racist white vote from flyover country - A big ol' spectacle was made about the libruls failing to understand the bottom-of-my-heart motivations of the rural white voter, which culminated in Trevor Noah inviting some factory mold of a blond to come on The Daily Show and lecture him and his audience about living in their condescending leftist bubble. But, no. As a gentleman raised in a 4000 person farm town in the Michigan Thumb, I can tell you that the real Trump voter is no more nuanced than all the easy caricatures you've retweeted on your Instagram feed. Unless, of course, the guy who reflexively screams "all lives matter" at Black Lives Matter protestors is somehow more deserving of your empathy than, say, not-white people. A bunch of tea party folk who've demanded zero compromise from their government representatives and now they're sad because you haven't sat them down on your lap to ask what's been bothering them? Bish whut?
Here is a longer explanation of what I mean, the short version being that plenty of elitist liberals are from Red Town and understand exactly what's up.
Fake News - I know I said fake news helped elect Donald Trump, but it also didn't help that much since the doobag himself can just make shit up and good enough for me. The idea of fake news also presupposes that people read, which lololololol, no.
People wanted change - Everyone was so tired of ineffectual leadership stewarding the transfer of ever more wealth to the top 1% that they were emotionally primed to vote in the buffoon who predictably installed a $300 billion Presidential Cabinet to look after the interests of the everyday American. I told you the flyover voter wasn't particularly deep.
Misc. - I made this section just to talk about the Electoral College. And probably fake news.
The Electoral College - Since Trump got his wee wee kicked in the popular vote, faux-intellectual dipshits on the right have galvanized around the idea that the Electoral College was established to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority rather than as a way to appease Southern slave owners who wanted to include their slaves' bodies in the voting calculus, though obviously not their voices. But what the fuhhhhh does that even mean, the tyranny of the majority? I'll tell you: It means your side lost, because curiously, when it comes to extending protections to actual minorities persecuted by the actual majority, y'all are so quick to pipe in with your "why do black/Latino/gay/women/non-Christian people get special rights?" But then when you succeed in imposing your worldview on a bunch of people who don't want to deal with whatever 1940's wonderland you've come from, that's just democracy in action. Huh? Go drink beer from a broken glass bottle and leave the voting to Acorn.
Fake news, yet again - Most Republicans don't actually care about the Electoral College because
they think Trump won the popular vote. Like, how?
In summation - America is so fucked. I hope you canned enough vegetables from Michelle Obama's forced labor camp of a garden since preventative health is the only healthcare you'll be able to afford once grandma's medicaid is liquidated as a tax break.
