So it begins

As perhaps the most improbable presidential inauguration in U.S. history approaches, some observations on things Trump.

• That Russia didn't, as far as we know, hack the election. What it appears to have done is hack the emails of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign manager John Podesta during the campaign, by no means the same thing.

More precisely, there is no evidence of any kind for what one poll says 52 percent of Democrats believe--that Russian hacking compromised the actual vote tallies of states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan and thereby "stole" the election for Donald Trump. The failure of the media and Democratic partisans to emphasize this distinction can only have the effect of undermining, to a far greater extent than Russia's behavior, belief in the integrity of our electoral system.

The frantic Democratic search for scapegoats has already coughed up racism, sexism, voter suppression, fake news, the FBI, and now Russian hacking; everything, that is, except a bad candidate with an empty message and a misguided campaign strategy.

A look in the mirror would suggest that when you allow a race against someone like Trump to remain close enough that the FBI or Russian interference could even remotely have an impact you're doing a lot of things wrong.

• That Trump's cabinet appointments have been more impressive than expected.

The claim that many of those appointees have been critics of the agencies they will be heading is the best possible argument in their favor because reining in an out-of-control administrative state might be the most urgent task in the project of restoring American self-government.

Within this context, the devastation suffered by the Democratic Party in recent years at the local and state levels and in Congress hasn't worried it much because it still controlled the presidency and an unelected federal bureaucracy that was constantly expanding its powers into every nook and cranny of American life.

Under such circumstances, a Democratic president like Barack Obama could issue constitutionally dubious executive orders as a means of circumventing the will of Congress (and thus the people Congress represents) and direct executive branch agencies to issue edicts, regulations, and legal interpretations that had the effect of law by a different name.

In short, as long as Democrats could continue to shift power from the states to Washington and within Washington from Congress to the executive branch, and as long as the growing demographic strength of the "new Democratic majority" kept the latter in Democratic hands, there was nothing to worry about. Now there suddenly is.

How refreshing it will be to have the Department of Health and Human Services headed by one of the most knowledgeable critics of Obamacare (Tom Price), to have the Environmental Protection Agency led by a former state attorney general who sued it for exceeding its authority (Scott Pruitt); and a Department of Education presided over by someone (Betsy DeVos) that our corrupt teachers' unions fear and loathe.

• That perhaps the funniest moment in the left's ongoing meltdown was Meryl Streep's efforts to turn the Golden Globes into an anti-Trump political rally.

Her logically incoherent diatribe was praised as "bold" and "courageous" by a fawning media, but could there by anything less bold and courageous, and more pathetically predictable, than spouting such sentiments before an audience that probably voted 99 percent for Hillary Clinton? And when, for that matter, did it suddenly become brave to be liberal and bash Trump in Hollywood?

Most amusing of all was the continuing obliviousness and lack of self-awareness: that every time an airhead celebrity gets on their high horse and hectors the American public the object of their ire only gains more support. The temptation to engage in moral preening and condescend to the Neanderthals in flyover country apparently can't be resisted by such twits.

When bewildered political scientists look for a concise explanation for why Trump won, they will do worse than the five-minute YouTube clip of Streep.

As for Hollywood celebrities, they wouldn't be acting any differently if they were on Trump's personal payroll.

• That the Democratic Party needs to not only get over it, and fast, but to figure out a strategy for the future that makes it competitive on a national basis, particularly at the local and state levels that serve as farm systems for national office.

Alas, all indications are that their response to losing more than 1,000 elected offices nationwide during the Obama era will be to go still deeper down the politically correct identity politics rabbit hole.

The British Labor Party was crushed in the 2015 elections because it had moved too far left. In reaction to that defeat it decided to move even further in that direction, and is now politically irrelevant and on the verge of dissolution. The great irony is that, as political parties enter their death throes due to extremism, the extremists invariably inherit what little is left.

So what will now happen to the Democratic Party in this center-right nation if, as appears likely, it is incapable of ideological correction and can only move ever-leftward at a fever pitch under the influence of Nancy Pelosi, George Soros, and Black Lives Matter?

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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 01/16/2017

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