(A piece I wrote for a local paper, but was kicked at the last minute, then died of old age.SPECIAL NOTE: I understand there are many, many more issues related to Trump's election, and particularly what led to the results. No need to point them out.)
By Roger Malone
I’m a member of a secret Facebook group called Pantsuit
Nation. It can’t be found by doing a search, and you can only join by
invitation, sort of like the Illuminati, but much less powerful or cool. Until
the wee hours of Wednesday in Zagreb, the page was filled with inspirational
stories and pictures of women in pantsuits, Hillary Clinton’s campaign uniform.
Then the bottom fell out, and against all expectations,
Donald Trump was elected president of the United States of America. There he
stood, a racist, misogynist, xenophobe – the list of ugly labels seemed endless–
thanking voters for making him what many people call the leader of the free
world. I sat in my darkened living room in Zagreb numb, watching an America I
didn’t recognize.
Postmortems of the results will be written for decades. My
short instant thesis: the Republican voters – particularly less-educated white
guys – trained for decades to focus on social issues like abortion, gay
marriage, and gun rights, suddenly realized GOP leaders had stole their economic
wellbeing. Trump, with all his many obvious failings, promised change, and
these carefully trained voters could not stomach voting for a Democrat. I know other factors vie for supremacy, but
ultimately president-elect Trump was created by decades of Republican programming.
But change comes with a price, and no one – maybe not even
Trump himself – knows what the ultimate price will be. After spending more than
a year recklessly insulting immigrants, women, the disabled, judges, his
political rivals of both parties, and many others, the reality show actor
suddenly became a statesman. He gave an acceptance speech that hit all the
right buttons, congratulating Clinton for a good fight, promising unity, and so
forth. So, is this now the real Trump? Who knows? As a product of working class
parents, I’m not holding my breath. He lied consistently on the campaign trail,
and old habits are hard to break.
Whatever the price, it will be paid in the United States, in
Croatia, and the rest of the world. One joke making the rounds is that his
wife, Melania, is Slovene, and a Trump administration would push Croatia to
accept Slovenia’s territorial claims in the Piran Gulf. If it only stopped
there. The specter of a global recession has been raised, which could devastate
Croatia’s climb out of recession. Efforts to combat climate change could be set
back, and the US commitment to NATO has been called into question.
In meantime, life goes on. For the moment, tree-hugging
liberals like me will have to turn to faith for comfort. We must have faith
that our democratic institutions, particularly the courts, are strong enough to
rein in the excesses of Trump’s apparent instincts. Faith that even though Republicans
control Congress, some level of reason will prevail and establishment
Republicans will not be entirely powerless. Faith that the weight of the office
of US president will sink in and President Trump (there, I’ve written it) will
be a different person than candidate Trump. Faith that progressive Americans
have learned a lesson and will start mitigating the damage by electing a new
Congress in just two years and a new president in four.
The biggest leap of faith is perhaps my last point, because
the true tragedy of this week’s US election is that Americans just could not be
bothered to act. The 2016 vote was the most important US presidential election
in a generation, if not longer. Yet only about half the eligible voters in the
United States cast a ballot. Early numbers suggest voter turnout was about 54
percent – roughly in line with that of Croatia’s last national election, by the
way.
More than 100 million Americans could not take time away
from chatting on social media, shopping, playing computer games, discussing
football, or doing something equally important. Granted, some of those who
didn’t were stopped by voting restrictions. And the strange habit of holding
elections on Tuesdays, a work day, is also a problem, though somewhat eased by
early voting opportunities in many states. But in key states, Clinton lost by
less than 150,000 votes, often by much less. Trump won the election with 1 million fewer
votes than Mitt Romney received in 2012, and Clinton lost the election with
almost 6 million fewer votes than Barrack Obama got in 2012.
The hidden villain in this election is American apathy. And
the ugly truth is that turnout this week was on the high side compared with that
of US presidential elections since I started voting in 1980. This was not good
enough, especially in an election with so much in the line. And there’s always
something important on the line in an election.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that Pantsuit Nation would
be celebrating today if those 100 million voters had gone to the polls Tuesday.
They could have all voted for Gary Johnson, the libertarian candidate who
didn’t know Allepo, couldn’t name a single world leader, and wanted to
eliminate the minimum wage. But, you have to have faith.
