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The Style of our Election



Oh, dear good lord, the media are gagging on their analyses of why Trump won, and Clinton lost, the election!  Well, Clinton handily won the total vote, but Trump won the electoral college numbers, so America will be great again.  What would really be great is if we got rid of the electoral college, which originally was intended to take the election out of the hands of the uninformed general public, and put it into the hands of gentlemen who understood what was going on.  It has come to be nothing more than an absurd artifact skewing the popular vote.

The election was not won or lost because Latinos voted as they did.
The election was not won or lost because women voted as they did.
Neither was the election decided because Trump was not a woman
nor because Clinton was not a man.
James Comey did not determine the outcome of the election:
he only made it clear that the FBI is not pristine,
and that he is a clumsy, self-absorbed oaf with no ballet training.

Donald Trump won because the old political parties represented alternatives that do not matter, anymore.  The established Republican Party was run over by Trump supporters who rejected at least sixteen Party regulars and irregulars who chose Trump instead.

Hillary Clinton lost because she did represent the old Democratic Party that was pretty much what Democrats have been since FDR.  She was establishment; as much as the Republican Party that Trump ignored was correspondingly establishment.

Trump 1
Establishment 0

I have just finished reading the Sunday New York Times, a pleasure that only another historical artifact can understand.  For the first time in years, I leafed through the Style magazine.  I nearly gagged.  The photographs of the sulking models were splendid.  The clothes were obviously expensive.  The jewelry was absurdly bedazzling.   The penthouses in New York were really useful devices to coax massive amounts of money into someone else's bank.  It was everything people did not vote for.  I cannot imagine that anyone reading the Style magazine, wishing for anything it was celebrating, bothered to vote, at all.

The Style magazine is a parody of what is wrong with our economic system.  Bernie Sanders knew that.  Trump was that, but he somehow managed to convince people who were angry as hell, and scared silly, of precisely that kind of economy, that he could make America great again, and that they would have jobs, could afford to send their kids to college, get better health care, and lower taxes (because they were paying taxes, even if Trump wasn't), so whatever they were paying obviously was more than their fair share.  And, as icing on the cake, he would ship all those immigrants back to somewhere, too.

Forget all the dramatic analyses of the election.
People voted against the whole system of things as they are.
They voted for a magic solution:  put one of the people
who represents everything that is wrong with our economic system
in charge.  Make him President.  He and all those Washington lobbyists
will make everything good, again.

No, they won't.
But we ought to learn, at least,
that what we have been doing,
what both Parties have been doing,
is out of touch with reality.
The people who do not read
The NYTimes Style magazine
are hurting like hell,
and neither party has done much
to really change that.

Clinton was wrong.  Trump was wrong.  We were wrong.

It is time to ask what kind of America we really want,
and be willing to change what has to be changed to achieve it,
which will begin with a brutally honest economic analysis,
and result in a willingness to pay for what we need, fairly.  

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