Hate Trumped Love: How the Winners Lost and the Losers Won
In my last post, I said I would not be euphoric when the results of the 2016 election were announced. Well, that was the understatement of the century! I was shocked, horrified, briefly depressed (those of us who start with three or four strikes against us and manage to succeed don't usually spend much time being depressed), then disgusted, outraged, furious, fierce, fired up, and ready to fight. I had planned to write today about why I love being a liberal Democrat. I was going to say that we are always on the right side of history and always for progress, moving forward instead of going back (still true). I was going to point out that we are in the majority (still true, since we've won the popular vote--the only vote that should count--in four of the last five elections), and our majority consists of a beautiful, futuristic rainbow coalition of nonwhites, women, youth, and educated whites (still true, although we black women need to have a little talk with our white sisters, maybe snatch some weaves, flip a few tables). I was even going to celebrate the fact that we have all of the cool celebrities on our side (still true, thank you cast of "Hamilton"). Now I'm going to write about what caused this disaster, the worst in America since 9/11/2001, the worst in November since 1963.
The 11/9 (Hillary conceded Wednesday morning) disaster was not caused by the elites having too much control of our government. If the elites had controlled the election, Hillary would have won. It was not caused by too much money in politics. If money ruled this election, Jeb Bush would have been the Republican nominee, and Hillary would have won the general election (as she should have) in a landslide. In fact, most of the reasons for the election of an insane bigot who lost the popular vote by more than a million and counting have not been discussed or discussed enough in the post-election analyses that I've read and watched. Here they are:
1) Americans lack critical thinking skills. I've commented on this problem frequently in my blog posts. Most recently (8/28/16), I discussed the problem of seniors being conned because they are suffering from dementia and can't think clearly. Dementia was one of the problems during this election. I've discussed racism as a vile form of dementia and will cover that issue in the next paragraph. But I think this election created another kind of dementia--dynasty dementia. The thought of having another Clinton-Bush contest drove some voters so crazy that they lost the ability to think clearly, which explains why two seventy-something white men, one, a Jewish socialist who has been ranting about class and income inequality for years without anyone noticing him, and the other, an egomaniacal businessman/reality television star who has been treated as an entertaining but harmless clown for decades, became so popular. But even Americans who don't suffer from dementia have trouble thinking critically. Too many of us believe what retired tennis player Andre Agassi once said in a camera commercial: "Image is everything." If we see a big white man talking tough, we think he's strong instead of recognizing that he's a whiny bitch. We don't realize that bullies are weak. And this thoughtlessness is not just characteristic of the not well educated whom con men like Trump love. Educated people can be fooled (and foolish) as well. I was watching one of the many talking heads who should follow the advice I tweeted to Rachel Maddow (rewriting a line from "Hamilton"), "talk less, think more," when he told a Democrat that the electoral college was rigged in favor of the Democrats. Fortunately, the Democrat was thinking clearly and pointed out that no, it was rigged against the Democrats since both times that a candidate won the popular vote and lost the electoral college (2000, 2016) the Democrat was the loser. The MSNBC talking head just looked blank and went on to his next inane, thoughtless point. I'm not sure that he or his viewers understood that very significant message--the system is rigged against the Democrats, which is the only reason Republicans win.
2) Hillary Clinton discussed the next main problem in her campaign--implicit bias. Trump won the electoral college because of both overt and covert racism and sexism. As damaging as these two societal evils are, the denial of them is more destructive. Even I, who knew that there were still many racists in America before Obama's election and saw how many of them came out of the closet after his election, was shocked that there were enough bigots or people who didn't mind bigots to hand Trump more states than Hillary won. Over sixty million Americans voted for this insane bigot. I had said before the election that I would be disappointed if he won more than a couple of states--maybe we could let him have Alaska and Montana or Wyoming because there are not that many people in those states. This racist, sexist mad man won more states than either McCain or Romney. It's also annoying to see the talking heads, who clearly have no shame or humility since they're still talking after being so wrong about this election, working overtime to deny that racism and sexism were among the primary reasons Hillary lost. There was some talk of secret Trump and secret Hillary voters before the election. But I haven't heard anyone discuss the (Tom) Bradley effect since we discovered that the polls were so wrong. Those suburban whites lied about their votes. And how do these empty-headed blabbers know that many of the people who voted for Obama twice voted for Trump? Did they see those people's 2008, 2012, and 2016 ballots? Clearly, we cannot believe what the voters say. It's possible that some 2008/12 Obama voters were sexist but not racist, and some may have been suffering from dynasty dementia or Clinton fatigue (way below my other emotions I felt a bit of relief that we won't have the Clintons to kick around anymore) during this election. But I suspect many of the Obama voters stayed home because they couldn't stand Clinton or Trump while the white people who voted for Trump stayed home in 2008 because they didn't want to vote for a black man or a woman Vice President or maybe a man who had a seemingly black adopted daughter. They may have stayed home in 2012 because they didn't want to vote for a black man or a Mormon. Most of those white, small-town or rural bigots who voted for Trump in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida probably skipped the last two elections. Some of them probably came out on Tuesday because they saw reports of Latinos voting in record numbers in Nevada and Florida, and they saw Hillary hanging with Beyoncé, Jay-Z, and the Obamas in her final pre-election, premature celebration. She probably should have just stuck with Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi for that Monday night celebration. Even Lady Gaga might have been too much for those small-town, culturally deprived jerks. Where was Taylor Swift? It's also disgusting to hear progressives like Bill Maher, Michael Moore, and egomaniac Bernie Sanders blame their loss in the electoral college on Hillary's not being able to talk to these bigoted, small-town white losers. These people handed our democracy to an insane bigot so that he could give it to two Hitlers (Bannon and Putin), and it's Hillary and the Democrats' fault for not paying enough attention to them? I almost lost my mind when I saw Chuck Todd and some other blabbers on "Meet the Press" looking chastened because they may have hurt these small-town, ignorant losers' little feelings by pointing out the fact that they voted differently from the well-educated whites. Compare how the BlackLivesMatter Movement organizers have been treated to the sympathetic way everyone is responding to these small-town bigots. That's racism in America, folks!
3) Our two-party system is broken, not because the parties are so much alike but because they are so different. The Republicans are corrupt assholes who believe in winning by any means necessary. They responded to the election of a black man by a majority of Americans by obstructing his legislative agenda to prevent him from accomplishing anything so that they could blame him for failing to deliver on his promises, they demonized the healthcare bill, which was more Republican than Democrat (it was RomneyCare before it was ObamaCare) and ran against it for three election cycles, they didn't condemn the birther nonsense, they gerrymandered, and passed voter suppression laws. They were upset with Trump, not because he was an insane, incompetent bigot but because they thought he was going to cost them the White House and the Senate. When he won, most of them (including Romney) came aboard immediately. Nothing says these jerks don't care about our country like the way Paul Ryan was grinning and the way they were passing out Trump's "Make America Great Again" hats after his undemocratic victory. The Democrats are the exact opposite. They are weak pussies who like to go high and lose while the Republicans are going low and winning. If a Republican had lost the electoral college but won the popular vote by more than a million votes, if some foreign nation like Iran had hacked into his campaign manager's e-mails and selectively leaked damaging information, and if a federal agency (the FBI in this case) had sent out a letter that helped the other side, the Republican would not concede. And no Republican would refer to that Democrat elected under those circumstances as the President-elect. No Republican would claim that if that Democrat succeeded we would all succeed even if the Democrat was sane and not a bigot or a con man. We are in a political system where the winners (the Democrats who win the popular vote and the more educated, progressive coalition that elects them) lose and the losers (the Republicans who lose the popular vote and the ignorant, culturally deprived bigots who vote for them) win.
4) The media is not biased toward the left or the right; it's biased toward corporate profits, personal relationships, access, and ratings. The media created the monster that became our President-elect or as I call him Loser of the Popular Vote. They gave him so much free publicity that he didn't need to pay for commercials. They also failed to demonize him off television when he promoted the racist birther lie (media folks are people too, so they suffer from implicit bias and poor critical thinking skills like other Americans). They loved Trump because he gave them access and good sound bites. Of course, Trump is a narcissist who wants to be on television all of the time, which is why he did more interviews and rallies than any other candidate. Because Hillary is not a narcissist and prefers the service to the public part of public service, she did not give the media much access and paid the price. They demonized her while giving Trump as well as Sanders mostly positive attention until it was too late to stop Trump.
5) Partly because of the flawed media, we are living in a Post-truth, Fact-free world. It now doesn't matter what the truth is; what matters is what we can persuade people to believe. One early indicator that Hillary wouldn't win in the landslide that any sane, competent politician should have experienced against an insane bigot was that she always lost to Trump on the poll question "Which candidate is more honest and trustworthy?" Trump is a pathological liar; he tells crazy, easy-to-debunk lies. Hillary lies like any other politician; she tells strategic lies, like about those damn e-mails. But Hillary has been portrayed in the media as not transparent (even though she's released years of tax forms, and he's released none), and she doesn't talk as much or as wildly as Trump, so she's seen as the dishonest, untrustworthy one. I've heard some talking heads say that it doesn't matter what the facts are about the economy or about Trump's real agenda. If people believe that the economy is not growing and if they believe Trump will build a wall, that's all that matters. And we wonder why a mad man is about to move into the White House?
One of the most moving moments of this generally too prosaic, too lowdown campaign happened after the third debate when Republican strategist Steve Schmidt choked up on MSNBC, saying, "Hitler rose not because he was strong, but because democracy was weak." We have to know what broke our democracy before we can fix it. My list offers one answer to that question, and I'm suggesting solutions to any Democrat or progressive group that e-mails me for money: Fight back! Get rid of the electoral college. Demand that our Supreme Court justice be appointed since we won the election that counted--the popular vote. Change the primary/caucus process (California should go first) so that nonwhite people are more involved in the screening process, etc. I've also started a movement, FREECOSBY/LOCKTRUMPUP. Americans can understand a movement focused on sex and television stars better than they can a discussion of the electoral college or the way we allocate Senators or hold our primaries/caucuses. The different ways these famous sexual predators are being treated illustrate the racist double standard just as well (and more compellingly for the less educated) as the different treatments of the small-town losers who elected an insane bigot and the black urban protesters who are trying to save young black males' lives. Occasionally, after a passionate but civil debate, I end my comments with "Peace." Now I'm saying, "No Peace." We must not rest until we have saved this country from an insane bigot, a puppet of Putin and Bannon. The media didn't stop him, his Republican opponents and the Never Trump Republicans didn't stop him, and clearly the Democrats aren't planning to stop him. We must do it. No Peace!
The 11/9 (Hillary conceded Wednesday morning) disaster was not caused by the elites having too much control of our government. If the elites had controlled the election, Hillary would have won. It was not caused by too much money in politics. If money ruled this election, Jeb Bush would have been the Republican nominee, and Hillary would have won the general election (as she should have) in a landslide. In fact, most of the reasons for the election of an insane bigot who lost the popular vote by more than a million and counting have not been discussed or discussed enough in the post-election analyses that I've read and watched. Here they are:
1) Americans lack critical thinking skills. I've commented on this problem frequently in my blog posts. Most recently (8/28/16), I discussed the problem of seniors being conned because they are suffering from dementia and can't think clearly. Dementia was one of the problems during this election. I've discussed racism as a vile form of dementia and will cover that issue in the next paragraph. But I think this election created another kind of dementia--dynasty dementia. The thought of having another Clinton-Bush contest drove some voters so crazy that they lost the ability to think clearly, which explains why two seventy-something white men, one, a Jewish socialist who has been ranting about class and income inequality for years without anyone noticing him, and the other, an egomaniacal businessman/reality television star who has been treated as an entertaining but harmless clown for decades, became so popular. But even Americans who don't suffer from dementia have trouble thinking critically. Too many of us believe what retired tennis player Andre Agassi once said in a camera commercial: "Image is everything." If we see a big white man talking tough, we think he's strong instead of recognizing that he's a whiny bitch. We don't realize that bullies are weak. And this thoughtlessness is not just characteristic of the not well educated whom con men like Trump love. Educated people can be fooled (and foolish) as well. I was watching one of the many talking heads who should follow the advice I tweeted to Rachel Maddow (rewriting a line from "Hamilton"), "talk less, think more," when he told a Democrat that the electoral college was rigged in favor of the Democrats. Fortunately, the Democrat was thinking clearly and pointed out that no, it was rigged against the Democrats since both times that a candidate won the popular vote and lost the electoral college (2000, 2016) the Democrat was the loser. The MSNBC talking head just looked blank and went on to his next inane, thoughtless point. I'm not sure that he or his viewers understood that very significant message--the system is rigged against the Democrats, which is the only reason Republicans win.
2) Hillary Clinton discussed the next main problem in her campaign--implicit bias. Trump won the electoral college because of both overt and covert racism and sexism. As damaging as these two societal evils are, the denial of them is more destructive. Even I, who knew that there were still many racists in America before Obama's election and saw how many of them came out of the closet after his election, was shocked that there were enough bigots or people who didn't mind bigots to hand Trump more states than Hillary won. Over sixty million Americans voted for this insane bigot. I had said before the election that I would be disappointed if he won more than a couple of states--maybe we could let him have Alaska and Montana or Wyoming because there are not that many people in those states. This racist, sexist mad man won more states than either McCain or Romney. It's also annoying to see the talking heads, who clearly have no shame or humility since they're still talking after being so wrong about this election, working overtime to deny that racism and sexism were among the primary reasons Hillary lost. There was some talk of secret Trump and secret Hillary voters before the election. But I haven't heard anyone discuss the (Tom) Bradley effect since we discovered that the polls were so wrong. Those suburban whites lied about their votes. And how do these empty-headed blabbers know that many of the people who voted for Obama twice voted for Trump? Did they see those people's 2008, 2012, and 2016 ballots? Clearly, we cannot believe what the voters say. It's possible that some 2008/12 Obama voters were sexist but not racist, and some may have been suffering from dynasty dementia or Clinton fatigue (way below my other emotions I felt a bit of relief that we won't have the Clintons to kick around anymore) during this election. But I suspect many of the Obama voters stayed home because they couldn't stand Clinton or Trump while the white people who voted for Trump stayed home in 2008 because they didn't want to vote for a black man or a woman Vice President or maybe a man who had a seemingly black adopted daughter. They may have stayed home in 2012 because they didn't want to vote for a black man or a Mormon. Most of those white, small-town or rural bigots who voted for Trump in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida probably skipped the last two elections. Some of them probably came out on Tuesday because they saw reports of Latinos voting in record numbers in Nevada and Florida, and they saw Hillary hanging with Beyoncé, Jay-Z, and the Obamas in her final pre-election, premature celebration. She probably should have just stuck with Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi for that Monday night celebration. Even Lady Gaga might have been too much for those small-town, culturally deprived jerks. Where was Taylor Swift? It's also disgusting to hear progressives like Bill Maher, Michael Moore, and egomaniac Bernie Sanders blame their loss in the electoral college on Hillary's not being able to talk to these bigoted, small-town white losers. These people handed our democracy to an insane bigot so that he could give it to two Hitlers (Bannon and Putin), and it's Hillary and the Democrats' fault for not paying enough attention to them? I almost lost my mind when I saw Chuck Todd and some other blabbers on "Meet the Press" looking chastened because they may have hurt these small-town, ignorant losers' little feelings by pointing out the fact that they voted differently from the well-educated whites. Compare how the BlackLivesMatter Movement organizers have been treated to the sympathetic way everyone is responding to these small-town bigots. That's racism in America, folks!
3) Our two-party system is broken, not because the parties are so much alike but because they are so different. The Republicans are corrupt assholes who believe in winning by any means necessary. They responded to the election of a black man by a majority of Americans by obstructing his legislative agenda to prevent him from accomplishing anything so that they could blame him for failing to deliver on his promises, they demonized the healthcare bill, which was more Republican than Democrat (it was RomneyCare before it was ObamaCare) and ran against it for three election cycles, they didn't condemn the birther nonsense, they gerrymandered, and passed voter suppression laws. They were upset with Trump, not because he was an insane, incompetent bigot but because they thought he was going to cost them the White House and the Senate. When he won, most of them (including Romney) came aboard immediately. Nothing says these jerks don't care about our country like the way Paul Ryan was grinning and the way they were passing out Trump's "Make America Great Again" hats after his undemocratic victory. The Democrats are the exact opposite. They are weak pussies who like to go high and lose while the Republicans are going low and winning. If a Republican had lost the electoral college but won the popular vote by more than a million votes, if some foreign nation like Iran had hacked into his campaign manager's e-mails and selectively leaked damaging information, and if a federal agency (the FBI in this case) had sent out a letter that helped the other side, the Republican would not concede. And no Republican would refer to that Democrat elected under those circumstances as the President-elect. No Republican would claim that if that Democrat succeeded we would all succeed even if the Democrat was sane and not a bigot or a con man. We are in a political system where the winners (the Democrats who win the popular vote and the more educated, progressive coalition that elects them) lose and the losers (the Republicans who lose the popular vote and the ignorant, culturally deprived bigots who vote for them) win.
4) The media is not biased toward the left or the right; it's biased toward corporate profits, personal relationships, access, and ratings. The media created the monster that became our President-elect or as I call him Loser of the Popular Vote. They gave him so much free publicity that he didn't need to pay for commercials. They also failed to demonize him off television when he promoted the racist birther lie (media folks are people too, so they suffer from implicit bias and poor critical thinking skills like other Americans). They loved Trump because he gave them access and good sound bites. Of course, Trump is a narcissist who wants to be on television all of the time, which is why he did more interviews and rallies than any other candidate. Because Hillary is not a narcissist and prefers the service to the public part of public service, she did not give the media much access and paid the price. They demonized her while giving Trump as well as Sanders mostly positive attention until it was too late to stop Trump.
5) Partly because of the flawed media, we are living in a Post-truth, Fact-free world. It now doesn't matter what the truth is; what matters is what we can persuade people to believe. One early indicator that Hillary wouldn't win in the landslide that any sane, competent politician should have experienced against an insane bigot was that she always lost to Trump on the poll question "Which candidate is more honest and trustworthy?" Trump is a pathological liar; he tells crazy, easy-to-debunk lies. Hillary lies like any other politician; she tells strategic lies, like about those damn e-mails. But Hillary has been portrayed in the media as not transparent (even though she's released years of tax forms, and he's released none), and she doesn't talk as much or as wildly as Trump, so she's seen as the dishonest, untrustworthy one. I've heard some talking heads say that it doesn't matter what the facts are about the economy or about Trump's real agenda. If people believe that the economy is not growing and if they believe Trump will build a wall, that's all that matters. And we wonder why a mad man is about to move into the White House?
One of the most moving moments of this generally too prosaic, too lowdown campaign happened after the third debate when Republican strategist Steve Schmidt choked up on MSNBC, saying, "Hitler rose not because he was strong, but because democracy was weak." We have to know what broke our democracy before we can fix it. My list offers one answer to that question, and I'm suggesting solutions to any Democrat or progressive group that e-mails me for money: Fight back! Get rid of the electoral college. Demand that our Supreme Court justice be appointed since we won the election that counted--the popular vote. Change the primary/caucus process (California should go first) so that nonwhite people are more involved in the screening process, etc. I've also started a movement, FREECOSBY/LOCKTRUMPUP. Americans can understand a movement focused on sex and television stars better than they can a discussion of the electoral college or the way we allocate Senators or hold our primaries/caucuses. The different ways these famous sexual predators are being treated illustrate the racist double standard just as well (and more compellingly for the less educated) as the different treatments of the small-town losers who elected an insane bigot and the black urban protesters who are trying to save young black males' lives. Occasionally, after a passionate but civil debate, I end my comments with "Peace." Now I'm saying, "No Peace." We must not rest until we have saved this country from an insane bigot, a puppet of Putin and Bannon. The media didn't stop him, his Republican opponents and the Never Trump Republicans didn't stop him, and clearly the Democrats aren't planning to stop him. We must do it. No Peace!
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