Facts about the US elections and the reasons for the success of Trump
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Dr. Peter E. Tarlow
Tourism and security expert and academic
Shabbat Shalom ! שבת שלום
Lots of people have asked me to write something about the election. So here goes: it is true that I predicted, as many of you know, a Trump victory. Much, but not all, of what I am going to say, was in that analysis.
Before I begin, let me remind everyone, that an analysis is not about what (or whom) one likes, but about trends and facts. In my case my preferred candidate was Marco Rubio. There may be, however, a great difference between my personal preference and social realty. Thus, in three recent major elections polling has failed. These are: the Brexit vote, the peace vote in Colombia, and now in the US election. These failures ought to put the methods used in polling into question. This missive is not meant to be partisan. Democrats need to examine their failures if they are to remain a viable party.
I am writing to you all from Bolivia. Being outside of the US gives me another perspective: not better or worse, but different.
1). I do not believe that Trump won, but rather that Hillary and the Democrats lost. Along with them the media, the northeast and west coasts, and academics. All were big losers.
I come to this conclusion for the following reasons.
A) people are tired of the Clintons and the Bushes. Americans tend not too like dynasties and both of these families did not know how to exit gracefully.
B) The Clintons are simply too corrupt. The American public was overwhelmed with Hillary’s lies, her misuse of funds looked like another "Dilma" (from Brazil). The State Department was a 19th century den of intrigue reminiscent of the last days of the Ottoman Empire. The public simply ceased trusting her. Despite her machine’s framing Trump as not trustworthy both Sanders and Trump got the point across that her experience proved that she could not be trusted either.
C) She was a bad candidate. Despite the fact that she had the best funded campaign in the history of the world, the full backing of the Democratic machine and a highly inexperienced and controversial opponent, she failed. Clinton did not express her thoughts well, hid from an all too loving media, and screamed too much. She never succeeded in explaining what her vision for the US was and spent more time trying to tear down Trump than providing a reason to support her. The slogan, I am not Trump so vote for me simply failed to resonate with most people.
D) Wikileaks daily showed her to be either a liar or not trustworthy. It was death by a thousand lashes.
E). Her congressional appearances did not help her. All too many people, especially the "deplorable" did not forgive her statement about Bengazhi: "what difference does it make"? Neither did the Lynch – Bill Clinton meeting on the tarmac or the fact that the FBI broke all sorts of rules in interviewing her.
F) Women did not vote along gender lines. It appears that Trump got a majority of female votes, but that may change if we factor in race. The glass ceiling shtick seems to be merely important to a few academic women.
2. The Desire for Change
A great many people simply wanted a change of party. The Democrats have become the party of the elitist past and offered few new innovative ideas. Many feared a party in power for too long loses touch with reality.
3 The suffering of the poor and minorities.
During the Obama administration the poor got poorer. With over 40 million people on food stamps and 94 million out of the labor force the situation was untenable. Chicago is more dangerous than Kabul, and Detroit is a third world city at best.
If we add the disgust that the nation has with the failures of Obama -care, anyone defending the last 8 years was going to lose.
Most wealthy Democrats have no idea about this suffering, have turned a blind eye to the problems of the poor and created programs to keep the poor poor. Blacks and Latinos are now catching on to the fact that wealthy Democrats are similar to Marie Antoinette and her "let them eat cake". These White Wealthy Democrats do not share a meal with the poor, study French, but know no Spanish, and live in a pre-French revolution bubble. Blacks and Latinos came to see the Democrats as the party of the rich and the enemy of the working man.
4. Frustrations. These are many. Chief among the list of frustrations is with the media and academia, and yes I am part of academia!
Academics receive huge salaries, tend to be so arrogant that they do not acknowledge their salaries plus benefits, and are often not only removed from the world but tend to reenforce each other. They are good at lecturing others but have failed to educate, have shown little or no reflective thought and are more interested in their research than in education. Likewise, the .media have lost their credibility and are often seen as mere propaganda machines.
Both are seen as part of the Boston-Washington and Los Angeles – San Francisco axis. These are the parts of the country which look down on the others, see them as fly-overs and believe themselves to be superior. The result is a national divide in which both sides see the other side as intolerant. The people living in the axis corridors tend to see the others as hics who are not very smart or worldly, and the rest of the nation tends to see people living in the axis corridors as G-dless and arrogant fools. Many of these same social divides were present in the months prior to the French Revolution
There is still another frustration, this is with Europe and our so-called allies. Europe does not pay its fare share of NATO, and if Obama is right that Russia is no longer a threat, then why have NATO at all? Europe has been fast to criticize the US and all too slow to support the US. The result? A US public that blames its own élites for being suckers to the Europeans.
5. Failed foreign policies. Despite whatever propaganda the media try to feed the US public, the Obama administration has been a series of foreign policy failures. From Libya to Crimea, from Syria to China, from Iran to Venezuela, US citizens are frustrated with a military that must be rebuilt, a foreign policy adrift, and a continual stream of failures dressed up as policy successes by The NY Times crowd of elitists. Here in Bolivia, not a place with a pro-US government, people stopped me to say thank you that the Obama administration is coming to an end. US prestige has never been lower and the US public often and at times unfairly blame Hillary for a failed Obama administration. Here in Latin America people realize that the US liberal Democrats wanted to create a permanent quase slave class, disguising their plans as bilingualism (better called: English ignorance) and multi-culturalism.
Perhaps the greatest failure of all was that Hillary pretended to be of the people. While Trump is comfortable with the working class, Hillary lives in a world of chauffeured cars and maids. Trump, for all his many faults, is a blue collar billionaire who speaks the language of the working man. The result three parties, the elitist Democrats and academics, the country club Republicans, and a popularist working man’s party.
It is going to be four interesting years.
