RUTHFULLY YOURS

Donald J. Trump’s unlikely defeat of Hillary Clinton is a political earthquake of a kind that rarely disturbs American politics. Not since Andrew Jackson has a winning candidate so defied the settled order, for better or worse. The political and media establishments are bewildered, and markets are unsettled, and no doubt many voters are too.

But Mr. Trump winning was always an outside possibility, and the political analysts and Wall Street forecasters who wrote the Republican off as doomed ignored the multiple surprises of this disruptive year. Hillary Clinton called Mr. Trump in the wee hours Wednesday morning to concede after Mr. Trump crossed the 270 Electoral College majority by winning convincingly in the Southeast through the Upper Midwest to the Mountain West.

If Mr. Trump’s election is nonetheless a moment of intense uncertainty, voters understood the choice, and their judgment can’t be dismissed as merely a fluke of an unconventional and bitter election year. Mr. Trump can congratulate himself for seeing around corners to spot political opportunities where very few did.
Mr. Trump’s support is a testament to the democratic power of discontented voters. It turns out that many of them live in states like Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin that Mitt Romney didn’t carry but Mr. Trump did. President Obama has too often governed as if their needs and preferences are illegitimate, and this contempt was bound to generate a political challenge.

The lesson the political class should have learned—we include ourselves here—is to be more respectful of voter sentiment and the refusal of the American public to accept economic decline without a fight. We didn’t expect the Obama counter-reaction to take the form of Mr. Trump, who lacks any political experience and whose convictions on public policy are especially elusive.

The businessman likely didn’t win on his program, to the extent he has one. Voters decided he was an agent of change and rejected the progressive agenda and the third Obama term that Mrs. Clinton represented. Above all, Mr. Trump is a walking rebuke to the general liberal indifference to economic stagnation, as if the status quo is the best this country can do. CONTINUE AT SITE

The principles that America stood for – liberty, freedom of speech, free market capitalism – were eroding. Government had become isolated from those it governs. Political correctness, arrogance, hubris, hypocrisy, fabrication, mendacity, vilification, divisiveness had become common. Washington’s establishment and the media were blind to the rumblings of the earth beneath their feet. Even Britain’s vote to leave the European Union did not alert those who stood deaf and blind to changes around them.

To borrow a phrase from Donald Rumsfeld, Donald Trump’s victory means America has taken a chance on an unknown, rather than continue ahead with a known. Mr. Trump is the oldest person ever elected President. He has never help political office. He has never served the United States in the military, or in any other capacity. On the other hand, his competitor was well-known. Hillary Clinton has been in the nation’s public eye since her husband was elected President twenty-four years ago, when he famously told the American people they were getting two for the price of one. She served in the U.S. Senate for eight years and as Secretary of State for four years. She is probably as experienced as any candidate since John Quincy Adams. Yes, the American people do know her and because of that (or despite it) they rejected her.

Donald Trump should express humility at the awesome task before him – not only of returning the country to its democratic roots, but of healing the divisions that exist and that this campaign has magnified. He must reach not only across the aisle, but down it. He must help bind up a wounded nation. He must restore America’s faith in government, by making it worthy of respect. But he should not forget the the factors that have brought him to this pinnacle – corruption and cronyism; a sluggish economy; an immigration policy that keeps out too many of the aspirant and lets in too many of those simply seeking assistance, and who have not gone through the legal process; trade policies that ignore their effect on millions of workers; inner city schools that cater to unions, not students; and a sense that Washington, its tax policies and regulation, favor the status quo over the creative and innovative.

Donald Trump must rid himself of those expressions that cause people to think him misogynist, racist or xenophobic – words that had allowed the media to create a cartoonish character. He must let the people know the character of those individuals who will advise him.

Everything is about to change. Daniel Greenfield.

This wasn’t an election. It was a revolution.

It’s midnight in America. The day before fifty million Americans got up and stood in front of the great iron wheel that had been grinding them down. They stood there even though the media told them it was useless. They took their stand even while all the chattering classes laughed and taunted them.

They were fathers who couldn’t feed their families anymore. They were mothers who couldn’t afford health care. They were workers whose jobs had been sold off to foreign countries. They were sons who didn’t see a future for themselves. They were daughters afraid of being murdered by the “unaccompanied minors” flooding into their towns. They took a deep breath and they stood.

They held up their hands and the great iron wheel stopped.

The Great Blue Wall crumbled. The impossible states fell one by one. Ohio. Wisconsin. Pennsylvania. Iowa. The white working class that had been overlooked and trampled on for so long got to its feet. It rose up against its oppressors and the rest of the nation, from coast to coast, rose up with it.

They fought back against their jobs being shipped overseas while their towns filled with migrants that got everything while they got nothing. They fought back against a system in which they could go to jail for a trifle while the elites could violate the law and still stroll through a presidential election. They fought back against being told that they had to watch what they say. They fought back against being held in contempt because they wanted to work for a living and take care of their families.

Most of what we read about the election of 2016 was untrue. Here are the most glaring of the election fables.

Hillary would have been better off politically to come clean long ago
We hear a few on the left lament Hillary’s two-year stubbornness in stonewalling, lying, and distorting the facts surrounding her unlawful use of a private e-mail server — as if her problems were largely a result of not being candid soon enough.

Nothing could be further from the truth if we define “better” as “more politically viable.” Had Clinton in spring 2015, from the outset, confessed that she had violated federal law in her transmissions of classified material, or admitted that she had deleted some e-mails under subpoena that contained government business, or had she apologized for allotting, as secretary of state, time to Clinton Foundation patrons of her husband, on the basis of their donations and honoraria, she would have lost the primaries to Bernie Sanders and landed in jail.

Had the president and the Democratic National Committee not intervened to massage the political climate and help to warp the primaries, or had Donna Brazile not continued to sabotage the sanctity of the debates, Hillary might well not have found herself on the eve of the election tied or ahead in the polls for the presidency. Had Bill Clinton not met Loretta Lynch on the tarmac, James Comey might well have acted earlier and with greater effect — and avoided his flip-flopping.

In other words, in all these cases of malfeasance, Clinton calculated quite correctly that Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the entire Obama administration, as well as the media and the liberal establishment, would rally to her side, even when it was evident that her denials were empty and her conduct ethically bankrupt and clearly illegal.

Lying paid off. It got Hillary this far; it could win her the presidency, and there is little likelihood in this world that she will pay a price — and some likelihood she will continue to benefit from smooth prevarication. Cosmic justice will come, as it always does, but probably in her dotage — or somewhere else.

The truth is that for all her campaign weaknesses (voice, demeanor, stamina, etc.), she remains an effective liar and cynically and correctly believes that she is largely immune from accountability — a fact borne out by the 2016 election.

‘They go high, we go low’
Clinton enjoys quoting the supposed hip ethical platitudes of Michelle Obama and, by association, her husband (of campaigning ever more nobly while Trump campaigns still more ignobly).

In fact, the Clinton campaign has matched all mud thrown by Trump, toss for toss — perhaps even more so, given its far greater cash reserves. This final week, she and the president of the United States were falsely alleging that Trump welcomed the official endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan — as if Trump had sat on a bench at a rally of the KKK the same way that Obama once had described himself as being mentored by the racist, anti-American, and anti-Semite Reverend “Audacity of Hope” Jeremiah Wright.

Republican Donald Trump has a good shot at defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton in today’s election but late polls still give Clinton an advantage.

Whatever happens in the presidential race, Republicans seemed poised to retain control of both houses of Congress – albeit with reduced majorities. Whether Republican lawmakers would suddenly develop a spine and resist a President Hillary Clinton after President Obama steamrolled them for years is a separate question.

Democrats seem unlikely to wrest control of the Senate from Republicans and extremely unlikely to take over the House of Representatives. Current standings in the Senate are 54 Republicans and 46 Democrats (including Independents who caucus with the Democrats). If the Senate is split 50-50 which is possible but unlikely, then the party that wins the White House will control the Senate because the new vice president becomes the presiding officer in that chamber and gets to break tie votes.

Current standings in the House are 246 Republicans to 186 Democrats. It would be next to impossible for Democrats to knock off enough Republicans to reach the 218-seat threshold that gives a party control of the 435-seat House.

In the Senate, the Wisconsin incumbent Ron Johnson (R) might get bumped off by former Sen. Russ Feingold (D). Ditto for incumbent Pat Toomey (R) in Pennsylvania who is slightly behind challenger Katie McGinty (D). In Illinois, incumbent Mark Kirk (R) seems a safe bet to get knocked off by Tammy Duckworth (D).

In Florida incumbent Marco Rubio (R) seems likely to beat back a challenge from Patrick Murphy (D). In Missouri, Democrat Jason Kander (D) whose campaign and rhetorical style is very much like Trump’s, has been nipping at incumbent Roy Blunt’s (R) heels. In North Carolina, incumbent Richard Burr (R) may barely hang on in a contest with Deborah Ross (D). It’s close in New Hampshire but incumbent Kelly Ayotte (R) seems likely to defeat challenger Maggie Hassan (D). In Nevada Joe Heck (R) is slightly behind Catherine Cortez Masto (D) but given the turnout machine put together by Big Labor and retiring Sen. Harry Reid (D), Cortez Masto seems likely to keep the seat in Democrat hands.

I realize that most of the polls have Hillary ahead by a few points, the polls in the battleground states are very close, and it is difficult for any Republican to win the Electoral College because the Democrats have a solid advantage with California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, and other large states.

But given all that, I find it difficult to believe that a person as corrupt as Hillary will be president of the United States. We have had elections where there are clear differences in the policies of the candidates, such as Mondale vs. Reagan and Nixon vs. McGovern, but we have never had a candidate who everyone admits is corrupt and lies like Hillary.

The main recommendation for Hillary seems to be that the FBI’s Director Comey does not believe that there is “clear evidence” of criminal intent to violate the statutes dealing with classified information. It is undisputed that she acted with extreme negligence by using a private unsecured email server and that there is evidence of criminal intent, although not clear enough for Comey. We still have no reasonable credible, innocent explanation why she used a private email server that endangered our national security.

The only reasonable explanation is that she used the private server to hide the pay-for-play scheme in the Clinton Foundation.

Hillary’s entire public service career reeks of corruption and lies, starting with her representation of a 41-year-old man who raped a 12-year-old girl and then cackling about how she got the charges reduced by attacking the credibility of the 12-year-old victim while she knew the rapist was guilty. This is important because she has always held herself out as fighting for women and children, yet her conduct shows her hypocrisy. Just as she attacked the 12-year-old girl, she attacked the female victims of Bill Clinton’s sexual misconduct.

We have the selling of a pardon to Marc Rich, Whitewater, Travelgate, FBI files on Republicans, lying about Benghazi, attacking the families of the victims of Benghazi, appeasement of Iran on the nuclear deal, and the general mess in the Middle East.