A Citizen's Dissent

A couple of months ago, before labor day, when the Presidential contest unofficially begins, and before the conventions in late July, that were rather lackluster compared to the open conventions the media was preparing us for, I really thought Trump would win by a landslide. He wouldn't win upwards of 45 States like Nixon in '72, or Reagan in '84, because that wasn't possible in the red state/blue state polarized divide in the U.S., but enough for a clear victory like Obama in '08, a campaign now famous for the term "the Obama Coalition," but not a 50 State winner. Why did I think this? I thought Trump was the change candidate and Hillary the status quo candidate, and in a change election the status quo doesn't usually fare well. I also thought (naively), that Trump had already said all the crazy things he could, and sunk himself as far as he could go in the Republican Primary, and was made of something even stronger than Bill Clinton's "teflon," but on this I was terribly wrong, and so it looks like he's going to lose two weeks from tomorrow.

Hillary Clinton may be the most status quo candidate of my lifetime, and that's saying something when you compare her to Pappy Bush, Bob Dole, Al Gore (Bore), or Obama or Romney from 2012. Love her or hate her, (though it's hard to do both like with Trump, making him much more fascinating) there is absolutely no central thesis to her campaign and even the above candidates, who all lost an election, had the ability to craft a thesis: Pappy was patriotic and outraged on flag issues; Bob Dole was a return to yesteryear, the last WW II era candidate; Al Gore was a pre Bernie populist, but that didn't stick so well; and Obama and Romney were weird mirror images, but Hillary is non existent. To say she doesn't hold press conferences, or answer questions from reporters, doesn't even begin to describe the strange non existence to a Presidential run from the first woman President. Now I know the political experts would tell me that this "non existence" was by design because it's politics 101 to stand back and just let your enemy implode, which Trump does at devastating speed, but it's more than this and those same said experts know it.

Part of the reason I thought Trump would win in what we moderns call a landslide, is that I didn't think it was possible to win the Presidency without one, not that a candidate had to have the best thesis, or the most dynamic campaign, but that one was required, but not in 2016. I'm inclined to think part of the reason for this is that the American electorate doesn't really require a thesis anymore, since we're essentially an illiterate society and this rings true. But whether I'm right or wrong, I've never seen a campaign where a candidate is on the precipice of what the statisticians are telling me is going to be a blow out, without even the hint of a campaign, not even a whisper of one. Clinton has had no memorable moments of glory yet, like she did in 2008 in the Democratic Primary against Obama, and more so has had tons of terrible news. She got dubiously cleared of ethics violations on July 5th by the F.B.I. (Comey should've announced on the 4th of July, to make a patriotic point), but the issue hasn't stopped hounding her. It's come to light that not only was Clinton ethically challenged by setting up a private server, but that the whole Clinton Foundation had questionable relations with donors while Hillary was the Secretary of State. I realize to the seasoned political observer this is all par for the course and legal, but as I heard one bleary night on the radio, "that might be true but what we're witnessing with the Clinton Foundation is the dumbing down of corruption." The dumbing down, indeed.

The political observer in me really didn't think it was possible to win a general election while being the second most unliked candidate ever, with corruption scandals swirling around her, and no real campaign thesis, or reason for her candidacy. I really didn't think this kind of mediocrity could win the day, but like a football game than neither team deserves to win, neither candidate seems deserving of the Presidency, and this is becoming a troubling trend in America, that Obama bucked in 2008, but that W. all but defined from 2000 to 2008, blundering his way to a 20% approval rating by the end of his administration, and becoming a national joke. Now obviously no one knows how Hillary or Trump would (will) run the Country since they haven't been tested yet, but it's relatively safe to say that a victory for either of them will be bucking the trends of all conventional wisdom. I've never really thought of myself as a conventional person per se, but the prognosticator in me must take off his political wizard hat and really contemplate what happened here in my great Country in the year 2016, in an election that defies all reason?

The first place to start is the change election vs. status quo election idea that I delineated in a blog a couple of months ago, when the campaign was seemingly innocent compared to now, and that's remarkable, considering the Donald had spent the primary season talking about how "big his hands were!" It's safe to say that the popular uprising of Trump and Bernie was (is) indicative of a major frustration and rift in the people that this national campaign is hiding from all of us for a bloody month or two, but one of these candidates will win, and then we'll be left with the same mood. If Hillary wins she'll be the wrong candidate for the times, and if Trump wins he'll be the right candidate for the times, but the wrong man, making for a shaky national mood. I've heard commentator after commetator basically declare this election is the end of America as we know it, but then they'll put their conventional wisdom hats back on and try to chatter away about the week's news, as if everything was status quo.

I don't necessarily blame the political class for being out of their depth right now since we all are as Americans, and yet it's hard to know what the different factions of the Country are rebelling against. The media has painted the race very clearly in the Sexist vs. the Woman, and if the media is behind Hillary, which it certainly seems to be then this was probably the best and only political tract for her to victory, since she has nothing else to run on and is not a candidate of the times. From this perspective, the media wants Hillary to beat Trump because it is owned by 5 major corporations, which in turn live and die on Wall St. everyday, and they see Clinton as a much friendlier candidate to their interests than Trump. I do think Bernie surprised them and wounded Hillary enough that the only candidate she could ever possibly beat would be Donald Trump, because as much as I would've argued otherwise in the Summer of Trump, she's far too damaged a candidate to legitimately win an election, let alone ascend to the Presidency, and isn't defying the odds because of a magical grace and connection to the people, since she's been in hiding for months.

One must think of why the media gave Trump so much attention in the first place, because they all but created his candidacy in what they labeled "The Summer of Trump." The obvious answer is that the cable news networks received great ratings through Trump and this was admitted by the heads of some major news departments, so no one need put on a tinfoil hat to think about it. There is no doubt that Trump and his ascendancy among a dreary Republican cast was more exciting than watching Jeb Bush blather on and on, and yet.... Jeb was most likely part of the same Bush/Clinton/Bush/(Obama)/Clinton (?) cabal that has lead America for the last 25 years, so whey weren't they for him?

This leads to the stalking horse theory, that I learned about on FB during the primaries but have fleshed out. Clinton was a preferrable candidate to the elite than Jeb!, and though I haven't given this much thought I'd say it's because Hillary was actually a more appealing candidate than Jeb, or a more compliant one, or a combination of the two. For starters, Jeb was hampered from the beginning by the last name Bush, since in the Bush/Clinton cabal, the last name Bush became vilified through W., while Clinton didn't exactly have a squeaky clean image, but Bill was a very popular President, and you want a good name to make a sale, or as Hillary used to say in 2008, "It takes a Clinton to clean up after a Bush (referring to her failed candidacy, and to Bill beating Pappy in '92). It's easy to to see the great Producers of the 2016 election in a back room somewhere deciding whether to cast Jeb or Hillary, since both were status quo candidates, but given the "change" mood of the Country, and that Hillary was a woman, ultimately went with her.... it makes sense. So, the media chose Hillary, pumped up Trump, and by doing so all but tore down the weak and ineffectual Bush Brothers.

I didn't believe the stalking horse theory at first but after Trump went after a dead Muslim U.S. soldier for being unpatriotic and all but brought his campaign down right after the Republican convention, I really had to wonder. Remember, this news came out right at the start of the Democratic Party Convention and Hillary's coronation, that got off to a horrible start when Wiki Leaks proved the Democratic Primary had favored Hillary over Bernie in the primaries, and forced Debbie Wasserman Schulz, the head of the DNC to resign on the eve of the convention! I mean that would be scandalous and perhaps a damning pivot in any other general election of my lifetime, and yet the Clinton camp blamed the Russians, starting a new cold war, and the media jumped on this assertion as if it was a far greater truth than the revelation that the Democratic Party was terribly corrupt and that all the Bernieacs were right.

So, here are the Trumpian variables: 1) he is a stalking horse doing his best to lose, 2) he is a stalking horse who fell in love with winning, and is reneging on his deal with the Clinton campaign, 3) he is not a stalking horse and just a phantasmagorical media creation that has been bubbling under America's collective skin, and has come to fruition. The rationalists like President Obama have done a decent job to describe to an illiterate electorate that Trump didn't come out of nowhere and his roots could be traced to the crazy conspiratorial thinking of Rush Limbaugh inspired right wing radio from which Fox news blossomed in the W. years. In an aside, I recently learned that Fox news was the most popular cable show on TV, not just news show, so there is definitely more than a grain of truth in the historical argument for Trump's rise through the Republican ranks, but it's hard to talk about for any popular politician since it's a radical indictment of the Republican Party, which makes up a huge chunk of the Countrty's electorate. It's also possible to hold this pragmatic historical view while still painting Trump as a stalking horse.

In this media dissection of the election, everyone got behind Hillary from the very start and that could be seen in the lack of TV coverage for Bernie Sanders in the primary. I mean he was mounting a major candidacy against Clinton and I had to listen to the TV and radio commentators talk about Republican also rans like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, and a host of others, more or as much then I ever heard about Bernie even though he was igniting a movement. I know that the reasons for this are obvious since Bernie is an avowed populist candidate who believes in taxing the wealthy, seriously regulating Wall St., and changing the economic foundation of the Country, which none of the media conglomerates want, but would they have covered other competitors if they had existed in a non incumbent general election? I don't think so since the Country has never been more ripe for a third party and they don't cover Gary Johnson or Jill Stein in the least.

The word "rigging" has become the new nomenclature for this election and has come to mean so many things at once it's starting to lose meaning. The word "rig" can now mean anything from the actually stealing of votes, to the whole economic structure of the Country, to a debate schedule, but at heart I really think it has to do with what the media chooses to show us, or not. The rigging is no different than it has been for the American political process for my lifetime, and if there is any truth to be gained from these two miserable candidates that both deserve to lose it's that the media is completely tilting an election. Sure, they initially created Trump by giving him millions of dollars of free air time, since he was the boss on "The Apprentice," but now they are taking him down, and it's safe to say this whole election has been about Trump, and Bernie.... not Hillary, who has largely been in hiding, and out of touch with the mood of the times. But it has been more about Trump, since Bernie never manned a popular reality TV show on ABC, and was never a stalking horse, or so we think! (lol!)

I'm not sure where to start this next thread since it's too big for word, but the media in the general has unapologetically turned into one big opinion piece against Trump. Now it's fine to do this in an opinion piece, but it's a journalist's job to search for the objective truth wherever it might lead him/her, and that is just not happening from any media source. You could argue that the media is horrified of the monster (stalking horse!) it created and now has the obligation to tear him down, and indeed this is how it's being presented sans the part that they created Trump. If anything, the journalists are taking a more righteous stand that they are doing something popular by not so transparently aiding and abetting Hillary's victory since in her words she is the last thing standing between "America and the apocalypse." The reasoning almost mimics the great theoretical question that if one could go back in time and murder Hitler in the '30's before the start of WW II, before the Concentration Camps, but after banning Jewish businesses, would they have done it? It's almost like all those Woody Allen movies where he asks if the Rembrandt was burning would you save it or yourself, but this seems to be missing the point.

So, you might ask if you are still reading, if the media is so concerned about a Trump victory why did they create him in the first place? The easy answer is they wanted ratings and only think of short term profits to show their shareholders, and thought Trump would die on his own sword, a line of argument his Republican Party opponents are also taking when they are questioned why they didn't attack the Donald's credibility more in The Summer of Trump. To me, the Hitler reasoning doesn't really cut it, because if they were so scared of Trump they wouldn't have created him in the first place, and the only argument for them in this scenario is that they too are lost in the reality TV game. The journalists have no high horse to stand on here, and by trying to correct their mistake may be destroying even the illusion that there is a free objective press in America educating the electorate to make the best decisions in their interest, since the foundation of the Country is based on this trust between the 4th estate, the press, and the government. Whether by design or just attrition the media has never seemed less real, and everyone feels it, but can't exactly describe it except through the word "rigged."