#NotMyPresident:  Why I Can’t Really Be Bothered With the Pantsuit Nation (A Post-Election Analysis)

I love the critically acclaimed television series, “The Wire,” because it is a powerful and brilliant social commentary about the costs of living in a country that is okay with being one way for one group of people and another completely different (and dangerous) way for another.    

I wanted the lead in of today’s post to be a clip from an episode from Season 3, because it pretty much sums up my feelings about where things are two days after Election Day 2016.  We’re seeing an uprising on the streets and on social media, deriding the fact that business mogul, reality TV star and provocateur Donald J. Trump was elected president via Electoral College vote. 

Before I get into my rant, let me spend a few moments setting up my point with a series of pretty maps of the current Electoral College numbers and a state-by-state distribution of votes.  It’s important to note here that not only did Donald Trump win, the Republicans won control of both the House and the Senate (will we make it to the mid-term elections? Only time will tell).

The NY Times has a fantastic interactive webpage that shows how and why Trump took back a number of the states that Obama won in 2008 and/or 2012. Check it out; I highly recommend it.  

I’ll even post up some pretty maps illustrating the states that Obama won in 2008 and 2012 so you can see the shift for yourself.  The first map is the map from 2008 where Obama won the election against Senator John McCain; the one following is the map from 2012 where Obama won the election against former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

In short, where we ended up in 2016, where Donald J. Trump squeaked by Hillary Clinton to win the White House, started long before 2016.  (And I’m not here for the arguments about her winning the popular vote:  We all know how the game goes, and I hope that Pantsuit Nation won’t embarrass itself by mounting a legal challenge similar to what went down in 2000).

The shift began after 2008, once Obama got in office, and people began to see that his change and hope agenda wasn’t living up to its hype. People also balked at the fact that most of his administration was made up of political insiders who were status quo all day long.  

For the record, I love President Obama; I voted for him in 2008 and 2012, and I have a great deal of respect for him and what he was able to get done in the face of tremendous opposition from Congress.  And yes, I got a bit of psychic satisfaction from his wins.  I don’t see that as being out of line with other groups feeling a similar way when their man or woman wins.  However, I feel very strongly that he could have done more to not only address the socioeconomic and quality of life concerns of marginalized populations in general and African Americans in particular, he could have been unapologetic and ruthless about it. 

Look, politics is a messy, dirty game and sometimes it’s okay to take a level-headed, long view like Cutty the old head, but other times, you have to be ready to lock and load like Slim Charles in The Wire.  Anyone who watches House of Cards can attest to this - sometimes you gotta be okay with getting a little blood on your hands.

In my opinion, outgoing president Obama left a lot of loose ends dangling, and so much will hang in the balance as it relates to public education, police brutality, extrajudicial state violence and environmental injustice (think Flint Michigan, fracking, etc), among other issue areas.  With a Trump administration and a Republican-controlled Congress reigning supreme for at least the next two years, I don’t see a whole lot getting done in these areas; as a matter of fact, I predict that Trump’s law and order platform will mean more extrajudicial violence and killings; he will scrap existing education policy and replace it with something that favors more privatization of urban public education; and he will be completely okay with de-regulating our natural resources.  In other words, get ready because your water and air is about to get dirtier. And forget about GMO regulations.  I shudder to think what might happen with our food supply.

Anyway, I get that Obama was measured and thoughtful, clean, articulate and intelligent and all that, in part because he may not have wanted to play into the Angry Black Man stereotype, but I wished that he had shown more fire in the belly and chin checked those suckas in Congress who were being obstructionists basically because they could and they knew they could get away with it.

That’s why the Luther the Anger Translator skits were brilliant.  
 

Anyway, people were disillusioned by Obama’s perceived failure to make good on his change and hope agenda (not understanding or caring why it was derailed) and in human fashion, sought out someone who could speak to their concerns.  Trump did that because he was an (insider) outsider, and he knew what buttons to push to get people - mainly disenfranchised White men - to mobilize and vote their interests.  Sure he played to the lowest common denominator.  But America has always been about that - playing dirty is what we do.  The cognitive dissonance around this is fascinating.

The maps show us that people used their vote - the only power they believed they had - to send a message to the Establishment that they wanted something different.  That’s why you saw states that were blue in 2008 and 2012 turn red.  It turns out that that “something different” we ended up getting is a agitator, a degenerate with orange hair and a big mouth.

I mean, look at him.  Really, look at him. 

You can hate Donald J. Trump for his fear-mongering and divisiveness along racial, gender and religious lines.  Believe me, I do; he makes me sick to my stomach.  I do not relish the idea of him being president. At. All.  That doesn’t mean I can’t or shouldn’t be critical of Hillary Clinton or the Democratic establishment!  I believe they blew it big time.  

It bears repeating that the Democratic establishment had a chance to fight fire with fire in Senator Bernie Sanders (whom I supported in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary.  I hate that I never got a chance to hear him speak live, and I have friends and comrades in the struggle who worked very hard on his campaign and I salute them).  

Full disclosure:  I was one of those protest vote degenerates.  To make it clear, that’s not why Hillary Clinton lost, though, so thanks for scapegoating us.

The Establishment had a chance to address the populist desire for change by putting up a candidate that would embody that push.  They had a chance for someone to lead the ticket who had a way of getting everyday people fired up and excited.  Sanders showed that he could build a diverse intergenerational coalition across racial, religious and socioeconomic lines.   I believe that Sanders could have given Donald J. Trump a real run for his money in the run up to the general election.  If nothing else, we would have been looking at two outsiders duking it out. It would have been an apples to apples fight and it would have really reflect the current mood of the country. 

Instead, the Establishment chose to ignore the shifting political winds. They put their resources and energy behind a candidate who obviously is a darling of the establishment (if the leaked emails prove nothing else, they prove this for sure).  Not only that, the mainstream media (which has been shown in no uncertain terms to be in the tank for Clinton) totally misread polling in the run up to the general election and ended up with egg on its face and its pants completely down around the ankles!! They proved to be a bunch of privileged chicken shits and now they are mourning, crying into their collective beers and gnashing their teeth and pulling out their hair  If it was all about keeping the White House blue, they could have fooled me.  It seems to me that they really didn’t want that.  They wanted something else.  I’ll get to that in a moment.

It pisses me off to know that the Democrats completely threw Sanders and by extension, his millions of supporters, under the bus and missed an opportunity to really take the bull by the horns.  Like I said, if the goal was to retain the White House, I couldn’t tell.  So please forgive me if I’m a bit apathetic about Tuesday’s loss.  

There are a lot of people online who are upset and angry, going so far to say that they can’t believe that racism, sexism, misogyny and hate won the day.  If you can, check out the #NotMyPresident hashtag on Twitter.  If you notice, many of those who are tweeting under this hashtag are White female Clinton supporters.  I’m pissed off at them because they are couching their selfish, self-motivated concerns (the fact that they feel aggrieved that they were denied (once again) the White House) in language (oh boo-hoo, racism/sexism is everywhere and now I see it!) that they think will garner sympathy (and support from non-Whites and others).  I’m not buying it.

When you look below the surface, they were salivating and chomping at the bit over the possibility of making history.  And now they are mad that perhaps the rest of the country wasn’t feeling the same way.  

Now they know how it feels to be Black, to have their wishes, hopes and dreams, DENIED.  Real talk.  

But as I wrote before , I can’t get behind the manufactured outrage that’s brewing around Tuesday’s outcome. Because it’s just that, manufactured, selfish and shortsighted.  On its face, it scapegoats Donald J. Trump - an extraordinary creepy guy to say the least - as this superhuman force of nature that unleashed a virulent, insidious, and evil strain of racism, sexism and xenophobia on an otherwise good and wholesome America. 

What a load of bullshit.

It wasn’t the racism and sexism behind the dead or bleeding bodies of black and brown men, women and children at the hands of the police over the last decade that shook them up and got them protesting on the streets of NYC.  

Because by speaking out against police brutality, they would, in effect, be speaking out against the men (and women) in Blue who are their fathers, uncles, brothers, husbands, and friends.  The implications of doing this would be grave on so many levels.  So they left that up to #BlackLivesMatter, and by sitting that movement out, they could keep their hands clean.

It wasn’t the racism behind the wholesale closing of schools in cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, New York that disenfranchised and dislocated hundreds of thousands of black and brown students.  Oh, no.

It wasn’t Flint.  

It wasn’t drone strikes against innocent brown bodies overseas.

It wasn’t redlining or wealth inequity because it wasn’t really directly affecting them.

What this “anger” and manufactured outrage is all really about is the fact that Hillary Clinton was denied the White House (again). This is about the ultimate prize that continues to elude them, and they’re angry as hell.  I saw it coming and I was hoping that it wouldn’t come to pass.

Problem is, they really can’t see their own unconscious biases, and won’t really work on them to win people like me over to their side. This is business as usual.  And for that, and their inability to be honest, I can’t be bothered. 

Additional Sources

Electoral vote changes during US Presidential elections. Wikipedia.  Accessed November 10, 2016 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_vote_changes_between_United_States_presidential_elections#2012_vs._2008

Florida election recount.  Wikipedia.  Accessed November 10, 2016 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_election_recount

Season 3: Amsterdam.  HBO.  Accessed November 10, 2016 from http://www.hbo.com/the-wire/episodes/3/29-amsterdam/synopsis.html