Why’d Clinton Lose?
The 2016 U.S. Presidential election was a family affair at my home last night. My two younger brothers, myself, and my Mom all gathered on ‘the big brown’ (our couch), and settled in for what my Mom claimed would be our last night of cable news. She wouldn’t be watching after the election regardless. My brothers and I had a different take. They wanted Donald Trump to win. Myself? I strongly didn’t want either nominee, and I was sad that the person I did want wasn’t in the race anymore. I felt like Hillary Clinton came to the table with a lot of baggage from the beginning that most of my family and I believed she would have a hard time overcoming. And, as I watched a sea of red float across the American map county by county, it turns out I was right. I was right, I had been right, and now the right had been given a mandate that they were right.
Well, I don’t think they’re right.
But before I get ahead of myself, I’d like to be clear that for the bulk of the evening I believed Hillary Clinton would pull it out and win in the end. Skyping with a friend, I remarked to him that “I think HRC-when she wins---is going to have a very difficult time governing…that sea of red suggests to me that voters saw red when they went to the polls. Someone’s angry…I don’t think cheesy poofs are going to fix it.”
And why wouldn’t they be angry? Health care costs, a la Obamacare, are irrefutably rising as options dry up (CNN Money). The impoverished have to pay a tax penalty every year if they don’t carry health coverage. And when I learned about that, it made me frown. I will soon be saving for college and making my own money. Because I work hard, but I don’t have health care when I’m no longer my parents dependent, I’ll have to pay around a $700 tax penalty right off the bat? Isn’t Obama a Democrat? What’s wrong with him? (healthcare.gov)
But the Obama legacy that she’d have to explain away (don’t forget, we just put more ground troops in Iraq…quietly (New York Times), Clinton brought with her scandal after scandal into the primary season way before the general election against Trump was ever even a foregone conclusion. Most people in America—myself included—were appalled at her quote regarding Benghazi and ‘what does it matter’…because, paraphrasing, it was months ago. Whether that quote was taken out of the context of meaning as a soundbite or not by the news media doesn’t matter. That’s what the American people heard. The death of diplomats serving overseas mattered. What kind of commander in chief would she be if she let diplomats die? Would young soldiers receive equal thought and care?
But Benghazi wasn’t enough to sink her. She did that all on her own by blatantly disregarding what she knew to be the law out of convenience to herself. In my opinion, the general public at least has the perception that people at the highest levels of office have an obligation to follow the rules, and keep America’s most important information safe. According to USA Today and Sean Hannity on Fox News (love or hate him, he does have his facts straight on this one), “Clinton appears on Fox News Sunday where she is asked about her claim that she never sent or received classified information. Clinton responded by saying Comey “said my answers were truthful, and what I’ve said is consistent with what I have told the American people, that there were decisions discussed and made to classify retroactively certain of the emails. But that wasn’t true. Comey told Congress during the hearing “There was classified material emailed (USA Today).”
People would have forgotten Benghazi. They might have even not cared about ‘(her) d*mn emails’ as Bernie Sanders so famously said in the first debate against her during the Democratic primary.
But here’s what they do care about: electing Clinton one day, only to impeach her the next because she’s seen as a liar. Lie to Congress? Get impeached. It got her husband, didn’t it?
The thought of having to go through an impeachment process in a similar way that her husband was impeached was enough to make people elect a guy more famous for his misogyny than his message. Having to endure scandal after scandal, I believe drove people to the ballot box against her, or drove them away from the ballot box because they couldn’t be in favor of her.
People are MAD at Hillary Clinton for being able to get away with criminal intent to mishandle national secrets, for the scent of racketeering that surrounds the Clinton administration, and for blatant dishonesty about it all (Fox News.com and Sean Hannity radio program).
In the next election, I believe there will be a further repudiation of corruption in the American system. Michael Moore, film director and self-described political junkie, predicted it from the beginning. “I believe Trump is going to focus much of his attention on the four blue states in the rustbelt of the upper Great Lakes – Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Four traditionally Democratic states – but each of them have elected a Republican governor since 2010 (only Pennsylvania has now finally elected a Democrat). In the Michigan primary in March, more Michiganders came out to vote for the Republicans (1.32 million) than the Democrats (1.19 million)....From Green Bay to Pittsburgh, this, my friends, is the middle of England – broken, depressed, struggling, the smokestacks strewn across the countryside with the carcass of what we use to call the Middle Class….this is their chance! To stick it to ALL of them, all who wrecked their American Dream! And now The Outsider, Donald Trump, has arrived to clean house! You don’t have to agree with him! You don’t even have to like him! He is your personal Molotov cocktail to throw right into the center of the ******** who did this to you!”
But now that the cocktail has been tossed, the explosion has splattered the news, and the ricochet is still heard echoing across the planet, I’m left to question what kind of country will they get now?
Will lawlessness become the rule, violent crime and rioting become normalized behaviors? Will lying on things like taxes be thought of as ‘smart’ and will an attitude of ‘if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying’ attitude be tacitly expected now a la the Trump attitude cheered at his rallies and debate performances?
Who knows.
Oh, but...heh....little known fact...dollar is going to tank in the next 4 years according to a bunch of money news channels that I use for background noise when I study. I don’t need to understand a whole lot to get it when someone tells me our country is $20 trillion in debt and counting, and even if we tried to balance our budget and reign spending in we’d tank our ‘spend, spend, spend’ economy overheating in the face of a war torn world not necessarily safe for travel (my own conclusion based on anecdotal experience).
Now what?
I believe the 2016 election should be looked back on and studied if you want to avoid losing like a Clinton. I think you could write an interesting term paper while sitting on a big brown couch about how to win elections, and in the process lose a country. I don’t think popcorn buckets and super delegates are a credible way to decide who presidential nominees for The United States of America….geez…the bell weather light of the world….should be. Why’d Hillary lose?
The system is broke, and it is rusting out like a Michigan factory. The people called, and they want their jobs back in those rusting out factories.
Please.
Get the picture?
Image Credit:
LDS Freedom Forum
Sources:
http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/16/news/economy/health-care-costs-rise-most-in-32years/
https://www.healthcare.gov/fees/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/29/world/middleeast/obama-troops-iraq.html
