Change You Can Believe In
This article was written and published on November 14, 2016
I called that Donald Trump would become the 45th president of the United States after the Republican primary in Florida, in March. He had beat Marco Rubio on his home turf and a few weeks prior Jeb Bush dropped out after Trump defeated him in South Carolina. Both Bush and Rubio were heavily backed by the big money in the Republican establishment, and they had burned through over a hundred million trying to defeat Trump. I knew after Florida that Trump would be the Republican nominee, and that it meant he would be president.
Ted Cruz became the final firewall in the primary for the Republican establishment by default, and by that time the Trump Train was already rolling with a head of steam. Trump shattered the Republican establishment in the primary in what I consider a hostile takeover of the Party.
I knew that Trump would be president if he won the Republican nomination because I was looking at the voting trends and considering relevant variables. Many Democrats feel that President Obama could have achieved much more had he not been obstructed by Republicans in Congress, but Obama wasn’t being obstructed by Republicans; he was being obstructed by the voters. The trends clearly show this.
When Obama was first elected in 2008 the Democratic Party had full and complete control of two of the three branches of government. I say ‘complete’ because they not only controlled the House of Representatives, they had a 60 seat, filibuster proof, majority in the Senate. Since then voters have chipped away at that power in an effort to obstruct Obama’s agenda, beginning with the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts.
Voters in Massachusetts elected Scott Brown after the death of Ted Kennedy explicitly to halt the Healthcare law, not because they were racist and Obama happened to be the first black president. They wanted to obstruct him on Healthcare because they believed Democrats were moving too fast on an issue they cared dearly about --- their healthcare!
Democrats used reconciliation and parliamentary procedures to push the law through regardless of what the people of Massachusetts wanted, and they did it without a single republican vote. In the 2010 midterm Democrats lost seats in both Houses of Congress, and Nancy Pelosi had to hand over her gavel to John Boehner. Overall under Obama, Democrats lost more than 900 state legislature seats, 12 governors, 69 House seats, and 13 Senate seats, as of the 2014 midterm elections. To me it was clear what was coming in 2016. This was the American people speaking, and they were pissed!
The pollsters and pundits failed to recognize this trend because they were looking at Obama’s 2012 reelection as affirmation of his agenda. It wasn’t! There were very significant variables form the 2012 election that the pundits didn’t consider in 2016.
Obama was an extremely flawed candidate in 2012 and he should not have been reelected. I remember Laura Ingram famously saying about that election, “If Republicans can’t beat Obama, with this record, they may as well hang it up!”
Republicans lost! However, it was why Republicans failed to capture the White House in 2012 that told the story. It wasn’t that the electorate approved of Obama’s agenda. In 2012, many voters didn’t vote; at least not for Obama or Romney.
In 2012 President Obama received about 3.5 million fewer voters than he did in 2008. Romney did earn about a million more votes than McCain did in 2008, but preformed slightly worst in the percentage difference between the two candidates. The percentage of eligible voters that participated in 2012 was also down from 2008. These people were out there. They just were not motivated to vote for either of the two major party candidates. I was one of these people who voted for Obama in 2008 and I didn’t vote for either Obama or Romney 2012. I understood who these Americans were. They were Democrats, Independents, and even Republicans who had voted for change in 2008, but were unsatisfied with the change they got. They were still looking for that change, and neither Obama nor Romney represented the change they were looking for.
Another significant variable in 2012 was how the Ron Paul coalition was treated by the RNC. Ron Paul was a patriarch in the Tea Party movement, and when the rules were changed and his delegates were angered at the convention in Tampa many of them refused to support Romney. Ron Paul himself also never endorsed Romney, and Romney never really unified this coalition.
I knew all of these people would return in 2016 to support the right candidate, and real change agent who promises to shake up Washington. The door was wide open and in walks Donald J Trump.
We can debate whether or not the electorate’s desire for change was fair or legitimate, but no one can deny that the 2016 election was a change election. All of the trends were screaming this! It was going to be extremely difficult for any Democrat to win in 2016. It would be impossible for a Democrat that has been in Washington for 30 years, running on a continuation of the status quo; not to mention the mountains of scandal and baggage associated with that candidate. With this understanding I call the nomination of Hillary Rodham Clinton by the DNC nothing short of political malpractice. She was always the underdog!
Here is the rub for all you disillusioned Democrats, especially those protesting in the streets and crying like little babies. You didn’t have any say in who your nominee would be. If Democrats would have nominated a true change agent, like, let’s see, BERNIE SANDERS, he may have had a chance in this change election. I guarantee Bernie, or any other change candidate, would have performed better than Hillary Clinton, who has officially lost in a landslide.
Hillary Clinton was shoved down your throats with the emotional appeal of the first women president. They gambled the people’s desire to have the first female president was greater than people’s desire for change, despite the fact that the electorate had rejected her in 2008 for another unknown change candidate.
Last year when Vice President Joe Biden was considering entering the race, Hillary Clinton’s team sent word to Biden to stand down. They claimed to have a plurality of Superdelegates already committed to her. This was before the Iowa caucuses, so the primary hadn’t even started, not a single vote had been cast, and she was already far ahead of any would be competitor in the delegate count.
Who are these Superdelegates? In essence the Superdelegates are the Democratic Party establishment. In short, the establishment! Neither Clinton nor Sanders earned enough pledged delegates to reach the threshold to secure nomination, not without the Superdelegates. So when Hillary was claiming to have more than 60 percent of the Superdelegates committed to her before the primary process ever started, she was claiming to already be the nominee.
I doubled down on my prediction that Donald Trump would be president after the first Wikileaks dump before the Democratic National Convention. It was explosive! It proved that the Democratic Party working behind the scenes to tilt the nomination to Hillary. It forced the chair of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, to step down. It also angered Sander’s supporters and delegates. Despite Sander’s sincere endorsement of Clinton, the protests outside the convention, and when his delegates walked out of the convention in protest to be replaced with paid seat fillers, it was clear that Clinton would have trouble unifying the Party and that the Democrats would go limping to the finish line.
Trump’s election didn’t come out of nowhere. It had been slowly building for a while and anyone looking at the trends could have predicted his victory. In 2014, when Eric Cantor lost his Congressional seat to economics professor Dave Brat it shook the Republican establishment. It was one of many early clues.
Eric Cantor’s defeat also introduced a new term in the American political lexicon. The verb “Cantored” refers to a small grassroots movement winning a primary challenge against a big Washington establishment candidate.
Everyone was wondering if Paul Ryan would get Cantored this year, or John McCain. Neither of them did, however the fury and voter excitement that had been building to take on the Republican establishment, from the beginning of the Tea Party movement post Bush 43, all came together to deliver a Trump victory.
This is my question for all you liberal progressives trying to make sense of this election, who is going to get Cantored in your Party? When are you going to have a national grassroots movement to clean house in the Democratic Party?
Right now as I write this Donna Brazile is still the chair of the DNC. She is guilty of the same election rigging that Debbie Wasserman Schultz had to step down for. She is also one of the powerful Superdelegates nobody voted for that crowned Hillary Clinton as your nominee.
I applauded all you passionate liberals out in the streets protesting after the election, the ‘Alt-Left’ as I call you. I don’t blame you for being angry, you should be! However, if you are angry and are protesting Trump and his supporters your anger is misplaced. They organized at the grassroots level to challenge the establishment within their own Party. They demanded change and that their voices be heard, not by rioting and protesting in the streets, but through the electoral process. You liberal progressives must replicate this strategy and execute a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party. If you don’t, your Party is done.
I hope you are able to regroup, redirect your anger, and are successful at cleaning house in the Democratic Party. We need a Party that cares about ending unjust wars and an unjust foreign policy. We need a Party that cares about civil liberties and warrantless spying on Americans. We need a Party that puts people before big business, big banks, and Wall Street. I once believed the Democratic Party was that Party, but the Democratic Party hasn’t been that Party in a longtime.
