2016: We Have A Winner!

Is this crap over?  Is the long journey into darkness coming to an end?

The electoral college has spoken and Donald Trump will be the 45th prez of the US of A…..

The AP declared Donald Trump the next president of the United States in the early morning hours Wednesday, and Hillary Clinton called him to concede. That concession came soon after aide John Podesta said not to expect one because some states remained too close to call. In fact, NBC News held off calling the race for some time over uncertainty about Pennsylvania, but it eventually put the state in the Trump column and declared him the overall winner with a still-incomplete electoral tally of 278-218. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and others also called it for Trump. The only states still not decided are Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Hampshire.

Donald Trump is now president-elect of the United States—and after his stunning victory, he promises to be president “for all Americans.” In a victory speech at his campaign headquarters in New York that the Washington Post describes as “subdued and humble,” he said it is “time for America to bind the wounds of division” and “time for us to come together as one,” the AP reports. “For those who have chosen not to support me in the past, I am reaching out to you so we can unify our great country,” he said. Trump told supporters that Hillary Clinton had called him to concede. He said she is owed “a major debt of gratitude” for her service and he “congratulated her and her family on a very, very hard-fought campaign.”

Trump went on to thank supporters and family members including his late parents and brother, and to tell the world that while “we will always put America’s interests first, we will deal fairly with everyone, with everyone,” Vox reports. “While the campaign is over, our work on this movement is now really just beginning,” Trump said. “We’re going to get to work immediately for the American people and we’re going to be doing a job that hopefully you will be so proud of your president. You will be so proud. Again, it’s my honor.”

Congrats!  Job well done……time to get to work….promises to keep….

Donald Trump is now America’s president-elect and many commentators are calling it “unthinkable”—but they also admit it is a possibility they should have probably have thought a lot more about. Some early reactions to the historic victory:

  • Trump’s “astonishing” victory “is the greatest upset in the modern history of American elections—convulsing the nation’s political order in ways so profound and disruptive its impact can’t even be guessed at,” writes Glenn Thrush at Politico. He was able to defeat “a better-funded, better-organized Hillary Clinton by surfing a tsunami of working-class white rage that her army of numbers crunchers somehow missed,” Thrush writes.
  • What Trump “has done is nothing short of cataclysmic,” writes Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post. “He has fundamentally reshaped the political map. He has broken the Republican Party into pieces—and its shards still remain scattered everywhere. He has proven that the political polling and punditry industries need a deep re-examination.” But beyond that, Cillizza writes, the victory shows that “many of the assumptions that people have long made about who we are as a country and what we want out of our politicians, our political system and each other are, frankly, wrong.”
  • Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic says that he hopes Trump will “rise to the occasion”—but to be on the safe side, people should start thinking now about how to thwart Trump “misbehavior.” “The most important project in American politics for the next four years is safeguarding the rights conferred by the Constitution and the norms of a liberal society,” he writes. “The effort expended by ordinary citizens will determine the odds of that project’s success.”
  • Jim Rutenberg at the New York Times sees the media’s failure to see what was happening leading of to the Trump win as not just a failure of polling, but a failure “to capture the boiling anger of a large portion of the American electorate that feels left behind by a selective recovery, betrayed by trade deals that they see as threats to their jobs and disrespected by establishment Washington, Wall Street and the mainstream media.”
  • Trump didn’t just “vanquish” Clinton, writes Gerald F. Seib at the Wall Street Journal. He “instantly remade the Republican party in his own image. He rewrote some of the GOP’s most dearly held policy and philosophical positions.” Trump has sent the capital into a “zone of uncertainty the likes of which it hasn’t experienced at least since Ronald Reagan’s conservative revolution in 1980,” and is about to become “the most unconventional president in modern American history,” Seib writes.

 

Now the bitching, whining and crying……after that…..but the one lesson taken from this election……polls suck!  They were wrong in 2012 and they were dead wrong in 2016……

The big question now is….what will the Trump cabinet look like?  That should be telling……going to be a fascinating few months….

And the peasants dance…….

15 thoughts on “2016: We Have A Winner!

  1. After being on-line a few hours, I’ve noticed one thing……
    The Trump side is not doing a ‘touchdown-dance’, they are being gracious winners and considerate to Clinton.
    But – on the Clinton side we are seeing more hate, yelling, defeatist ideas and riots. Perhaps this is all telling us something?

    1. I am hoping that he is this gracious when he gets the job….it could be a life changing….and 3rd party voters are being blamed as usual….

  2. “But beyond that, Cillizza writes, the victory shows that “many of the assumptions that people have long made about who we are as a country and what we want out of our politicians, our political system and each other are, frankly, wrong.”
    Jesus, Mary and Joseph! as a good Catholic Canadian would explete, it always amazed me how deeply buried in the sand of denial Americans sat with their false beliefs of being leaders of “the free world” and a beacon of democracy, liberal values, virtues of hard work and success and blah, blah, blah, all the while the truth of the matter, that it was nothing but hot air and propaganda propped up by consumerism, was doing it’s thing in bringing America to its knees, economically, politically and socially. The funny part, for me, was how the rest of the world also bought into a lot of that, also despite all evidence to the contrary; how American “values” (or devalues) swept across the planet, taken up by banksters in high places and teens in low places, mega bucks, ratty clothing styles and raunchy “music” that would have been shut down had it been rated as industrial noise. And I haven’t even mentioned the military, America’s real face to the world. Well, on this lovely morning with the mockingjays (ref. to The Hunger Games) singing their hearts out, the world has America’s real face, Captain America himself, to remind everyone. You’ve awakened to your real self, America, out of a deep, deep coma that’s lasted over 200 years. Welcome to the reality show with President Trump as your emcee. Question of first importance: from which end should we start the wall?

      1. Could there be a cabal that actually wants world chaos?

        Hell of a question, which I’ve tried to figure out for years! On one hand, “they” need the numbers to fuel capitalist consumerism. On the other hand “they” want a pristine planet for themselves with just enough plebes to comfortably and safely serve as slaves. So what “they” intend, as far as I can project, is maintain consumerism as long as they can while they “adjust” their economic stranglehold system from capitalism to a system encompassing all three planetary powers, organized religion, the state and money, under one un-challengeable totalitarian system with the earth divided under a dozen quasi-independent power states linked to a central Hegemon authority. For “them” to allow a Trump to move up front of the world’s still main military power could mean they are getting ready to launch their planetary chaos. With all the wars going, resurgence of religious intolerance, economic uncertainty (some call it the “precariat”) and of course the rise of revolutionary thought due to economic injustice… it won’t be that difficult, plus their time frame is long term: they could be looking at a 500 year transition time. Just some thoughts.

  3. I have a total lack of trust, and will be writing about it soon, regarding Mr. Trump’s plans regarding healing the wounds and division of the nation. Hell, he instigated a good many of them when he was still doing the primaries? How the hell can the great divider suddenly become the great uniter. Just wave his little hand like “Pfft, water under the bridge.”? No, as a person he will never have my trust. I can only hope as president elect he does right by the scrap of paper we’re supposed to love so much–the Constitution.

    1. I think that all will change as soon as he sees the intel briefing he will get in a couple days….he will be overwhelmed….

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