The sun rose this morning. I took my dog out for his walk. The streets were unusually quiet, less traffic, but otherwise, a normal day.
"Processing" is what we are all doing now.
Thoughts bubbled up:
1. Conspiracy: All those votes collected locally have to be entered into computers at some point, collected centrally and sent on. Despite the cute little cartoons about how this happens they were playing on NBC, fact is, like so much else in modern American life, it's so high tech, we really don't know how this happens and where a hacker could change the results. The Russians have hackers...
2. Realizing all the pundits, political scientists, TV experts, Nate Silver, Politico, pollsters were wrong. "The math is very difficult for Donald Trump." But I was never polled, and I live in New Hampshire. I don't answer my land line or my cell phone if I don't know the number. Most people don't answer their phones when the "ground game" people call. So, if people are unwilling to be polled, how can the polls be reliable? Another article of faith: The ground game. The ground game is so 20th century. Donald Trump didn't need no freakin' ground game. We were wasting our time. Well, we were learning about voters, but it didn't help win.
3. The elephant in the tent: That old story--there's an elephant in the tent and outside the tent are people who have never seen an elephant, have no idea what it is and each reaches through a crack in the tent. One feels the trunk, one the tail, one the ears, one the feet and each one describes what is under the tent differently, depending on the small part they can feel or see. Nobody can see the whole, because it is too big and hidden from them. That's the way I felt canvassing in New Hampshire. I could not see what was happening in the rest of the country, or even the rest of the state. All I knew is what I could see in my small space, and around here, it looked like there were a lot of angry, aroused people who wanted to throw a brick through the glass window of Washington, wanted to vent their rage and to shake things up, just as Michael Moore described.
4. Bernie and the DNC: Bernie tapped into that urge for change, for revolution. My friends and family said, "Hey, we're doing okay. We're getting taken up into the ruling hierarchies. We don't want revolution." Could Bernie have beaten Trump? I thought so at the time. Thought he would have been a better bet than Hillary. But I thought Hillary would be a better President, so I worked hard for her once she won the nomination. But it bothered me she beat Bernie by beating him in states she didn't have chance of winning in November: the entire South and Southwest. Didn't anybody else notice this? We chose our Democratic nominee on the basis of her performance in the South? Bernie, meanwhile was doing great in the rust belt. Didn't that mean anything to these power brokers?
5. Trump, bad as he is, is still better than Ted Cruz. Trump at least has no actual real deep seated beliefs. Problem is, he is surrounded by the most unappetizing scoundrels, that guy from Breitbart or whatever that reactionary website is, Rudy Guliani, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, the demented Ben Carson. The President appoints thousands of officials and his will be really virulent. And his Supreme Court nominees will insure the Supreme Court goes Scalia for a generation. Kiss Roe v Wade good-bye. Abortions will become illegal again. I'm not all that unhappy about abortions after 21 weeks or even after 18 weeks being illegal, but going back to the coat hanger in the back alley days will be nasty.
It's a new world today. An earthquake happened. The humbled have risen up and turned the world upside down.
In some times and places that change spelled doom for some people: Jews, who were living at the top of society were stripped of their homes, their clothes and sent off to concentration camps. Is that likely in the USA? In the Jew-SA? Hopefully won't happen to Jews. But what about Muslims? Are those Muslims Donald Trump saw celebrating on the New Jersey roof tops after 9/11 in danger? And what about Mexican Americans, Central Americans living illegally in the USA? Will the goon squads come around to round them up?
It will be fun watching them build the wall, though. All those Kentucky coal miners down there building the wall. West Virginians, too. I'm looking forward to seeing all that. Oh, and did I mention, Sarah Palin for Secretary of State. She can see Russia from her porch. And Vladimir thinks she's pretty hot.
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