Commentary

BRADLEY R. GITZ: Reactions to an earthquake

The Brits voted to leave the European Union and the Cubs won the World Series, so maybe it was only fitting that a reality TV star won the presidency.

The idea of President Donald Trump hasn't fully sunk in yet (and might never), but some random thoughts, nonetheless.

• That the left/liberal reaction to Trump's victory--hysterical, condescending, and utterly clueless--goes a long way toward explaining that victory.

Members of the white working class that were once the bulwark of the Democrats' New Deal coalition are now accused of sexism, racism and all kinds of other unsavory things because they didn't vote in sufficient numbers for Hillary Clinton.

Incurably oblivious inside their hermetically sealed bubble, liberals seem incapable of understanding how anyone could view the world differently than they do, or that dismissing decent, hardworking Americans as bitter "clingers" and "deplorables" might not be the best way to win their votes.

All along Trump was blessed by having the right kind of enemies and his biggest asset was always a liberal/left that views most of their fellow citizens with contempt. This time around they weren't able to conceal that contempt very well. And after the election, they stopped trying to.

• That the eruption of violent protests after Trump's victory was more disturbing than the fact that he won.

The unavoidable logic of the democratic process is that you win some and lose some, but the left apparently only accepts elections when they win them. The protesters carrying signs saying "this is what democracy looks like" miss, in their glorious lack of self-awareness, that what they are protesting against are the results of democracy, however distressing.

Unfortunately for them, there's no codicil in the Constitution which says that if you burn enough cars, desecrate enough flags, and throw enough rocks at cops you get a re-vote.

• That the election outcome represented a racist "whitelash" (in the words of resident CNN race-baiter Van Jones) doesn't hold up to even a cursory inspection of the facts.

We all know that liberals have to find a way to make themselves feel better after such an unexpected defeat, and that playing the race card is always the go-to move, but how explain that Trump appears to have done worse among whites and better among blacks and Hispanics than Mitt Romney did? Or that he essentially won the presidency by winning key counties in states like Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that went solidly for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012?

Guess those places somehow became a lot more racist in just four years.

• That the post-election violence committed by our social justice warriors brought back all those horrible memories from 2012, when Mormons sacked Salt Lake City, Tea Partiers stomped on American flags in the streets of Omaha, and Young Republicans burned Obama in effigy in Indianapolis after Mitt Romney lost.

Or maybe not.

• That liberals who applauded Obama's use of constitutionally dubious executive authority to circumvent a recalcitrant Congress on issues like immigration and guns apparently never thought the shoe might end up on the other foot, that no precedents were being set and the GOP would never again win the presidency.

It is now Trump, of all people, who has that "pen and phone." The hunch is that the left won't like how he uses them, but has only itself to blame.

• That the primary reason Obama's "accomplishments" won't be preserved is because his most important was devastation of the Democratic Party.

In the words of the Washington Post's Philip Bump, "Since 2008, by our estimates, the party has shed 870 legislators and leaders at the state and federal levels--and that estimate may be on the low side. As Donald Trump might put it, that's decimation times 50."

The lone consolation was that Democrats had kept the most powerful office of all, the presidency, and could use that and the federal bureaucracy and court system to unilaterally enact at least parts of their agenda. But that has now also been lost.

• That the most monumental reversal of political party prospects in American history occurred within just a few hours on Nov. 8.

In the afternoon it was assumed by most pundits (including this one) that the Republican Party might not survive the outcome; that, at a minimum, it was entering a long period of internal civil war and recrimination. By midnight the Democratic Party was the one entering a long period of internal civil war and recrimination, compounded by the losses at all levels of American politics noted previously.

• Protesting a fair and open election because your side lost is staggeringly dumb, but perhaps even dumber is the "Not my president" movement.

So for those who flunked their high school civics classes, a brief refresher: There was this thing called an "election," mandated by this other thing called the United States Constitution, which also mandates that the candidate who gets 270 of the things called electoral votes in that election wins an office called the presidency.

Not all that hard to understand, is it?

• That the only problem with liberals promising to move to Canada to escape a Trump presidency is that Montreal and Toronto are still too close.

------------v------------

Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.

Editorial on 11/21/2016

Upcoming Events