How Did Trump Win? Who's Responsible?

There will be many who know, for sure, why Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. And they will love to point out who is responsible and it will be anyone other than themselves. The leaders of the Hillary campaign already did that.

First, though, I must repeat that the statement that Trump beat Hillary is untrue. It is now clear that Hillary Clinton got many more votes than Donald Trump. The only reason Trump will become president is that we still adhere to the horrible electoral college system, which was intended to insure that the votes of the U.S. people did NOT decide who would be president. But there's nothing we can do about that.

So why did Hillary lose? She was a bad candidate although she would have been a great president. She was foolish or worse to use a private mail server in her basement and to allow so much of the campaign to focus on this. She didn't excite young people as much as Bernie did. She wasn't a good speaker. She didn't have exciting policies. FBI Director Comey unfairly and horribly interfered with the election process. There is now solid evidence that Putin in Russia interfered with our election process to help elect Trump, whom he obviously assumes will do things to help Russia. There was definitely voter suppression, demanding that people show id's even when there is no evidence that is needed to insure fair elections, and many Republican leaders cut back on early voting and did other things targeted to lower voting by those they thought, probably correctly, would vote for Democrats. The third party candidates probably drained votes that might have made the election outcome different. The media allowed Trump and his surrogates to lie to the voters and kept inviting them back on their shows to lie more, as if the whole campaign was a joke or a football game. And unquestionably some, possibly many, of Trump's supporters hate African-Americans, women, Muslims, Jews, any immigrants, and others. The KKK and Nazis are claiming some credit for Trump's election and they are right. And, we must sadly admit, some of our fellow citizens hate people who are not like them. At the same time, we have to admit that some people who voted for Trump are having bad lives and/or just want change. Many of them, to our great cheers, voted for Barack Obama before voting for Donald Trump.

All these things are true but they don't matter now. Trump will take over as president on January 20, 2017, and he has Republican majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives, and probably soon on the Supreme Court.

As Senator Elizabeth Warren and others have said, we have to deal with what we have now. Paul Krugman wrote that the answer is not to stay out of politics. The beliefs of those who supported Hillary are fundamentally right, and of Trump and those who supported him are wrong. All people should be treated with respect and fairness. No people should be treated badly because of their religion, gender, or anything else other than what type of people they are. Civil liberties are important and we should never allow our country to be seen as torturers or killers of innocent families of anyone, even terrorists. All people should be entitled to health care. Those who make the most money should pay higher tax percentages than those who make less. College students should not be burdened for their lives by having to pay off education loans. 

We should continue to stand up for these principles, no matter what is going on. After we get over our deep depression -- I don't know how long that will take me -- we should start all over again to protect the principles in which we believe.

Paul Krugman on What We Should Do About the Trump Victory

First, in my opinion, we should remember that Hillary Clinton won more votes in the 2016 U.S. presidential election than did Donald Trump. The only reason Trump won is that the U.S. is the only country in the world that has something called the electoral college, a relic of a time when the "best" people in our country felt you couldn't trust the people to select the "right" person to be president.

That's pretty ironic since the weird electoral college system has produce a winner who is clearly not qualified to be president, while the vote of the people would have produced a winner who was one of the most qualified ever to run for president.

Still, we are stuck with the electoral college system and everyone knew it, so Trump is legally going to be president of the U.S. What do the rest of us do about that?

I think Paul Krugman made the best case in his NY Times column titled, "Thought for the Horrified," which is available at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/opinion/thoughts-for-the-horrified.html?smid=fb-nytopinion&smtyp=cur&_r=0. 

First, we take a little vacation from thinking about this. Do some gardening, watch silly movies, read books we like. I, like so many people, was extremely depressed and each day when I woke up I hoped the election results had been a bad dream.

"First of all, remember that elections determine who gets the power, not who offers the truth. The Trump campaign was unprecedented in its dishonesty; the fact that the lies didn’t exact a political price, that they even resonated with a large bloc of voters, doesn’t make them any less false....  Lies are lies, no matter how much power backs them up.

"And once we’re talking about intellectual honesty, everyone needs to face up to the unpleasant reality that a Trump administration will do immense damage to America and the world. Of course I could be wrong; maybe the man in office will be completely different from the man we’ve seen so far. But it’s unlikely.

"Unfortunately, we’re not just talking about four bad years. Tuesday’s fallout will last for decades, maybe generations." Climate change, Supreme Court Justices, voter suppression, racial discrimination. civil liberties.

"The White House will soon be occupied by a man with obvious authoritarian instincts, and Congress controlled by a party that has shown no inclination to stand up against him. How bad will it get? Nobody knows.

"Trumpist policies won’t help the people who voted for Donald Trump — in fact, his supporters will end up much worse off.

"So where does this leave us? What, as concerned and horrified citizens, should we do?

"One natural response would be quietism, turning one’s back on politics....It’s definitely tempting to conclude that the world is going to hell, but that there’s nothing you can do about it.

"But that is, in the end, no way for citizens of a democracy — which we still are, one hopes — to live. I’m not saying that we should all volunteer to die on the barricades; I don’t think it’s going to come to that, although I wish I was sure. But I don’t see how you can hang on to your own self-respect unless you’re willing to stand up for the truth and fundamental American values.

"Maybe America isn’t special, it’s just another republic that had its day, but is in the process of devolving into a corrupt nation ruled by strongmen.

"But I’m not ready to accept that this is inevitable — because accepting it as inevitable would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The road back to what America should be is going to be longer and harder than any of us expected, and we might not make it. But we have to try."