Brexit in the USA

I'm not typically going to fill a column with separate thoughts; I rather pride myself in constructing pieces that make a structured argument or discussion toward a particular conclusion or in an organized defense of a point.

Tuesday, however, was not typical in any way whatsoever, and so I have been having these random thoughts strike me about the election results that do not lend themselves to a consolidated conclusion.  If they are all of a piece, to make a weak pun, so be it.  But to me they are nothing alike and are far better as bullet items.  Unconnected thoughts, as in:

- I will not have to hear that awful, screaming, grating voice of Hillary Clinton's addressing her deplorable lackeys and toadies, ever again.  My ears may heal by this time next week.

- The Brexit vote in the UK could have been looked at as a one-time thing, in a vote that was polled wrong, and badly polled wrong, right up through the voting day.  But it wasn't, now that we look back on it through the lens of the Donald Trump election Tuesday, which was equally wrongly supposed by the polls as impossible.

- Larry Sabato, the University of Virginia political scientist who is an expert in election forecasting and whom I greatly respect, went on TV yesterday.  His first words were "We were wrong", and so were most of his next 40 words.  More than that, he pointed out that being so wrong meant that election forecast models were themselves broken, and the whole methodology of polling and sampling had to be scrapped.

-  Hillary Clinton lost the election first not on Election Day, but when she called Trump's voters "irredeemable" and a "basket of deplorables."  That's the day she lost the pulse of America, showing her utter arrogance and contempt for, well, me.

- We should expect, at least for four years, not to have to be so roiled about silly things like transgender bathrooms; not that the people are worth any less, but the issues are so inconsequential they should not occupy either the public discourse or a moment of the time of the president of the United States.

- Donald Trump will get to say "You're fired" to some people who richly deserve it, starting with Loretta Lynch and every political appointee in the Justice Department.  Every one of them.  They have embarrassed their agency by politicizing what should be the least political part of government.

- Hillary didn't not win because she was a woman, nor did she lose because of it.  Ultimately, her gender was a net nothing, certainly no conscionable number of voters voted against her because of it, but apparently few voted for her just because of it either.  We all would be fine seeing a female president; just not that one.

- The shock and awe on even the Fox News people's faces when Wisconsin was called for Trump was palpable, his having already won the three states he "had to have", Florida, North Carolina and Ohio.  The one commentator (might have been Brit Hume) who said at that point that Trump had broken through the "Blue Wall", was utterly shocked as he spoke, realizing that Trump was actually going to win.

- I had only hope, not faith.  There was no real reason for thinking that Trump was going to win, given the difficult electoral road he had to navigate.  I'd like to replay the evening, knowing what I know now.

- Trump's people had a whole lot better quality polling and research than anyone else did, as illustrated by his last-minute decision to go to Minnesota for a rally.  He didn't win the state, but his people saw something that the other pundits didn't.  This is a moment for extraordinary intellectual humility on the part of the entire forecasting profession.

- Kelly Anne Conway, Trump's campaign manager who took over fairly late in the campaign, is really, really good at what she does.

- Trump has access to some truly great people to populate his administration with -- Ben Carson, Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, Gen. Flynn, to name a few -- who are in tune with what the voters were saying Tuesday and would be committed to delivering solutions for the problems left by Barack Obama, in the Trump Administration.  And that also includes the list of Supreme Court candidates Trump already put forth, about which there was no contention (had there been issues about any of them, Hillary would have been all over it).

- My ears are already healing, by the way.  Hillary's concession speech was sufficiently subdued as to be irritating only in its content, and that content was only a little bothersome (and it needed to have been delivered ten hours earlier when her campaign people were still there).

- Trump ran his campaign as if it were mostly his own money -- on time and under budget, same as his rebuilding of the Post Office building in DC that he just finished.  That's how I want my government to run.  I'll take eight years of that.

- He must not sleep at all, which is fine too.  He has a lot of work to do, not the least of which is having his lawyers figure out quickly how to divest himself of his business interests so the media won't be second-guessing him all the time.

- Washington is a pretty big swamp to drain.  But first you have to want to drain it.

- Melania Trump will be as elegant and classy a First Lady as we are ever going to have.  Not that it would have been a shred of a reason to vote for her husband.  I care what he does, not his wife.  The USA has a lot more to worry about than that.  But those people who couldn't wait to write books about the "style" of Michelle Obama before her husband was even inaugurated, well, let's see if they do the same for Melania.

- Ground game?  Hillary was supposed to have this great ground game, right?  Donald Trump's ground game was a long and busy series of rallies, at which 20,000 people routinely showed up no matter where it was.  First, that's why he spent so much less money.  Second, it is a model for the next candidate who can raise great excitement about his or her campaign.

- If I had to bet, I'd say that Trump tells his new Attorney General to let the FBI run its investigation of the mishandling of classified material as it sees fit, hands off by Trump -- but to tell the FBI to spend what it needs to on the investigation into the Clinton Foundation.  That, friends, is a RICO investigation that needs to be done to completion, lest someone else ever try to set up a corrupt foundation to route money to themselves, and serve as a funnel to sell influence to a Cabinet official.

- Already the left is rioting in the streets.  Don't recall that from 2008, because conservatives don't do that.  But that's what the left does.  It is not an endearing quality, and it does not get their ends any sympathy.

- Finally, it is a point of wonder whom the Democrats will put up to run next time.  Hillary was so entitled that no one dared run against her in the primaries by pointing out that her time had come and gone.  As a result, while the Republicans going forward have a decent number of younger senators and governors with new national platforms as a result of this campaign, the Democrats are pretty barren.  Hillary will be 73 next election, Bernie Sanders 77 and Elizabeth Warren 71.  My take is that their ideology is so hollow, that they cannot attract younger leaders who would bring the party out of the leftist pit it has put itself in by putting Obama forward.

I'm going to get some sleep, real soon now.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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