So what now?<\/p>\n
Not everyone is asking that question yet. Emotions are still raw, and it will take time for many to heal. I\u2019m grateful to note that my FB feed is almost entirely gloat-free, and last night\u2019s winners seem to have no appetite for adding to the pain of the Hillary supporters. I take that as a good sign. We\u2019ll need a surfeit of kindness in the days ahead. For my part, I\u2019m strangely at ease with last night\u2019s results. Many people I love are not.<\/p>\n
Prior to the actual returns coming in, I had resigned myself to the reality of another corrupt Clinton presidency, and to have that possibility eliminated was a genuine relief. It was quickly replaced by trepidation about what a Trump presidency will mean. I don\u2019t think anyone knows, least of all the President-Elect himself.<\/p>\n
I think there are several things that it does not<\/i> mean. In the lamentations of the Clinton faithful, I\u2019ve seen warnings that \u201cwomen will lose all access to birth control,\u201d that \u201cgay people will be rounded up and put in prison,\u201d and that Trump\u2019s critics will start to mysteriously disappear. I don\u2019t think any of those things are remotely likely, nor do I believe abortion rights or same-sex marriage are genuinely at risk. I also don\u2019t really worry that nuclear war is in the cards, although the battle over the Supreme Court will likely feel nuclear. The Republicans, for over a year, have refused to consider a legitimate SCOTUS nomination by a sitting president, so Democrats in the Senate will have no qualms about filibustering any and all Trump nominees now and forever. Given the wafer-thin Republican Senate majority and the deep unpopularity of the incoming president, gridlock will be the order of the day.<\/p>\n
Which is fine by me. I\u2019m a big fan of gridlock. The Constitution was written to make government inefficient by design to avoid concentrations of power. Gridlock means that even the worst presidents don\u2019t have the ability to bring down the Republic singlehandedly. I think Trump will soon discover that he can\u2019t do a lot of the crazy crap he thought he\u2019d be able to do, and he is likely to find the presidency a whole lot more frustrating than he anticipated. That\u2019s probably a good thing.<\/p>\n
I also think it\u2019s a good thing to see this election as a referendum on the media as much as the candidates. The smugness of the press was smacked down hard, and it was a smackdown that was richly deserved. This election cycle removed even the veneer of objectivity from most of the talking heads, and many of them will find themselves struggling to get their credibility back. It\u2019s impossible to eliminate bias from any human endeavor, so to see the objectivity pretense exposed for what it is was very satisfying, indeed. For my part, I think we\u2019d be better served by a media that is open and honest about whose side they\u2019re on.<\/p>\n
This should also provide a welcome reminder that nobody in politics really knows anything more than anyone else. Everybody, every step of the way, got this wrong. Everyone, that is, except Scott Adams of Dilbert fame, who eerily got every element of this election right. If you\u2019re not reading his blog<\/a>, you\u2019re really missing out.<\/p>\n Someone asked this morning whether or not it\u2019s time to get rid of the Electoral College, given that Hillary is on track to win the popular vote. Yes, it is. The Electoral College distorts the whole process and leaves out a huge chunk of voters from the campaign. A genuine national election makes much more sense.<\/p>\n EDIT: I’m getting pushback on my Electoral College opposition, and I’m rethinking this to some degree. The idea that elections would then become contests to only persuade huge population centers is problematic and a valid concern.<\/p>\n That\u2019s all I\u2019ve got for now. I don\u2019t know if this helped anyone feel better, or if it only depressed you even further, but I\u2019m no longer willing to let my life be defined by something as squalid as politics. There will always be goodness and virtue in the world, regardless of whether or not there is any in the Oval Office.<\/p>\n EDIT: I’m also seeing some complaints about how third parties somehow made this outcome possible. I don’t think that’s remotely true. I couldn’t bring myself to vote for either party, and without a third party option, I probably would have just left the POTUS slot blank. If someone is disgusted enough with the two major nominees that they’re willing to “throw their vote away,” that’s not someone willing to sign on to one of the parties if their other choices are removed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sowhat now?Not everyone is asking that question yet. Emotions are still raw, and it will take time for many to heal. I\u2019m grateful to note that my FB feed is almost entirely gloat-free, and last night\u2019s winners seem to have no appetite for adding to the pain of the Hillary supporters. I take that as ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4085"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5175,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085\/revisions\/5175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}