A sure sign of the trauma that Election 2016 has visited upon the American people are the absence of any words adequate to describe our collective mood. At this point, they all come across as clichés. Our mutual plea, instead, is simply for the election to be over.
Let it end.
Unfortunately, we will not join hands on November 9th and leave this election House of Horrors together, resuming lives and expectations that informed our pre-election understandings. As Thomas Wolfe said, “You cannot go home again.” On Wednesday morning, we will wake up (barring recounts or an Electoral College tie) to confront the full impact of the proverbial wreckage that this election cycle has catalyzed in our government, societal institutions and culture.
While it will not be easily mended, it is necessary and even healthy. Our best first step in the process is to stop talking about 2016 as a mistake or aberration, and consider this year as the election we deserved; indeed, an election that we needed.
A truly sovereign people will ultimately disrupt parties and governing institutions that do not reflect their views. The greater the disconnect, the greater the disruption. Like an earthquake, it will bring down buildings not strong enough to withstand the shaking, and damage others; changing forever the landscape of the future. It is no different in post-election America. A truthful accounting is required.
The Republican Party: The GOP is dead. While there will be a political organization that will continue, the modern coalition forged by Ronald Reagan that remade America in 1980 – based on optimism, principled conservatism, limited government, free markets and an assertive role in managing the US-created international order – was blown apart this election cycle, leaving behind balkanized, feuding tribes that cannot agree on the issues let alone the solutions.
Donald Trump didn’t create this schism as much as he brought it out of the closet, exposing the power and energy of a disillusioned and enraged grass roots that defined candidate acceptability as the antithesis what had previously been political and governing qualification. His candidacy was equal parts emotional catharsis and political rejectionism.
Win or lose on Tuesday, what emerges from the now fractured political right will look very different from anything we have seen before. To the cast of economic, social and reform conservatives, foreign policy hawks and Libertarians, Trump has mainstreamed a white, Christian, economic nationalism, which has found voice rooted in the economic despair and social engineering of the Obama years. It will need to be exposed and confronted.
The saving grace is that at least this coming debate will be honest. No more papering over differences that fester like an infection below the surface. If successful, Election 2020 will be unrecognizable from today’s fights and divisions.
The Democrat Party: Liberal glee at the GOP implosion is misplaced and should be short-lived, as Democrats face two, possibly insurmountable problems.
First, is epic structural corruption. The reviled “GOP Establishment” that the Republican grass roots believed was destroying the country for its own financial benefit actually exists in the Democrat Party. What else can possibly explain Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and nomination?
Mrs. Clinton is at best a mediocre politician, neither visionary nor charismatic. Her most compelling political achievement is epic polarization for a full 25 years before she won the Democrat nomination. She has held prestigious jobs without appreciable accomplishment. She is best known for her spectacular failures, from Hillarcare to Benghazi. Her political viability has always been more important than any core principles or policies, which she discards with appalling regularity. She has fueled ethical controversies for three decades, and now stands on the precipice of indictment for jeopardizing national security and trading on her office for private gain.
This is the best the Democrats can do? It is not as if there wasn’t an alternative with genuine grass roots support.
Say whatever you will about the GOP, but at least they listened to their voters, even if it it results in epic buyer’s remorse on Wednesday morning.
In contrast to the GOP, the Democrats rigged the Party apparatus to ensure that whatever nascent chance Bernie Sanders may have had, would not get in the way of a Hillary nomination. That realization represents a credibility-shredding morass of epic cynicism, selfishness and greed unworthy of America’s oldest party. Win or lose on Tuesday, Democrats need to confront the vile beast that they have created.
The second problem is the true nature of the Democrat base.
At a different point in our history, the GOP and the Democrats could be viewed as two parties that placed different emphasis on otherwise shared values and principles.
Today’s Democrat base, however, is founded on rejection of those shared values and principles. The concepts of sovereignty, constitutionalism, unalienable rights (speech and religion in particular), separation of powers, the very idea of republicanism (small “r”) are an anathema to today’s progressives, which animate the Democrat base.
In these circles, America’s founding is not a point of pride, but of unpardonable sin and disgrace. Societal institutions such as family, school, church, law, and government are merely levers to enforce oppression based on race, class and sex. The Constitution is not an empowering ideal, but a dangerous relic, limiting the only power available to correct the fundamental errors in American creation, and institute the full economic reparations that are owed at home and abroad.
It is a radical post-America Americanism that is anchored in our schools and universities, and increasingly in our courts, and finds voice in our media and entertainment. It must be exposed and confronted.
The Media: 2016 exposed in stark relief what conservatives have known for 50 years; that America’s “Fourth Estate” is in the tank for the Democrats.
But where once it was a function of two distinguished institutions – journalism and Democrat Party – sharing the same values on separated paths, today’s media is little more than a mouthpiece to advance the Democrat Party agenda and candidates. Indeed, the incestuous relationship between the two, where anchor chairs are given to former Democrat operatives and “journalists” do tours in Democrat administrations, makes it hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Courtesy of WikiLeaks, we now know the depth of corruption, with ostensibly “neutral” media personalities emailing congratulations to Mrs. Clinton on debate performances (or snuck debate questions), where stories are cleared by the Clinton campaign, and where media types regularly curry favor with Democrats through political donations, particularly to the Clinton Foundation.
It’s not objective journalism – it’s TASS in America. It is a failed and corrupt institution, and it needs to change if it is to survive.
We can do better.
In the face of far graver national crises over our history, we have found the mettle to adapt and reform. For the sake of our children and the generations unborn, it is our responsibility to dig deep, learn from 2016 and forge a path forward.
So, strap in and prepare for Tuesday night. But as you head off to sleep, thrilled, angry or despondent, know that the actual hard work begins in the morning.