So who do I blame? The Zeitgeist mostly. I do not think this could have been pulled out no matter how much more Hillary did, or Bernie did, or the few Stein or Bernie-write-in voters did, that this election could have been save.
And if you think it's because they didn't like "crooked" Hillary, or the emphasis on the emails, or the last minute James Comey kerfuffle, yeah, that was all part of it. But this was the year of the dumb white man. The gross white man. The angry white man, who says what he wants and isn't going to be pushed around any more, by liberal elites, by his nagging wife, by the Boss. He's mad and he's not going to take it anymore.
"Turn the other cheek?" Real men don't turn the other cheek, they sock the other guy in the jaw.
"Suffer the little children?" Bugger the little children.
"Get those money changers out of the temple?" Whoa, there, those are my money changers, my money, my pay day loans.
He could clean up his act, cut his hair, put on a suit and tie, or just roll up the sleeves on his blue dress shirt, and they would kick his butt back to the manger.
"Hippy!" "Communist!" "Faggot!" "Jew!" Maybe even, with a name like Jesus, "Mexican!" He wouldn't last through the Primary.
So when people say "Bernie Sanders would have won," I wonder. I thought that might have been true, but looking at the numbers, at the votes in the job-loss places, I'm not so sure. I think they would have eviscerated him, a 74 year old Socialist Jew from the Northeast. It's easy saying it's just about jobs, but even if Hillary went to those places, what could she offer that the Orange One didn't? Or, let's look at what he offered that no other candidate ever has - permission, permission to blame the other, permission to let our your inner demons. I think this election hinged on not out and out racism of the disaffected voters, but a xenophobia that neither the Democrats nor the mainstream Republicans had a panacea for.
So, in a match up between the billionaire buffoon urging hate, and the rebel Senator from Vermont urging restraint. No, they would torn him apart. they never would have believed he could get them their jobs back, but they were willing to believe Trump. Why? Even though he was crude and lewd; even though the had gone through fortunes like water, they identified with him. Why? Maybe they welcomed the chance to cut loose their own crude lewd, racist thoughts, the ones they'd been held back from by their perception of the stranglehold of "political correctness." Maybe they liked that he was a multiple bankrupt, like so many of them, mortgaged and impoverished. Only of course, we know he was never impoverished, no matter how many bankruptcies he had.
Maybe they thought they could BE him someday, and he would teach them the secret, or they would get it by osmosis once he was in power. Who knows, but here we are. There he is, and where we go from here is anybody's guess.
Nobody ever wanted to be Jesus, or Bernie sanders for that matter. They never got to have their own TV Show. It may be just simple celebrity. Whatever it is, we just ain't got it.
