There are so many reasons why Hillary Clinton, an eminently qualified and entirely capable Presidential candidate, lost the election to a dishonest, narcissistic, authoritarian con artist professional rich guy from New York, Donald Trump.

One is that the Electoral College denied Clinton, the winner off the popular vote, the Presidency. It needs to go, and the sooner the better. It might have redeemed itself by refusing to elect Trump, since I mistakenly thought that one of its most important roles was to make sure that nobody who is unqualified to become President becomes President. Donald Trump is up to his neck in conflicts of interest, on top of which he lost the popular vote by a historic margin. He is refusing to attend intelligence briefings, which is unfathomable for someone as inexperienced in world affairs as Trump is. I can’t imagine anybody less qualified who would ever, by any means possible, make it to President-Elect. So I guess their only reason for existence is to make sure that the Midwest, rust belt, conservative-leaning states can decide who becomes our country’s President. New York? Fuhgeddaboudit. L.A.? Irrelevant. In fact California, which is, if not the fifth, at least the sixth-largest economy in the world, might as well be in Antarctica, as far as presidential candidates are concerned. Such a huge state with an immense population is not relevant to who wins the Presidency, since Cali is not a swing state. The candidates know that the only states worth their limited time and money are the ones whose electors hold the keys to the White House, by virtue of not being predictably red or blue. To me, this is laughably absurd. We are some form of government, a republic I guess, but certainly not a democracy. In a democracy, the winner of the largest number of votes wins the office. To repeat: I live in a republic, which has become an oligarchy, but I do not live in a democracy.

Another reason Clinton lost is because of the unfortunate James Comey, the director of the FBI, who threw a monkey wrench into the election nine days before the national voting deadline. Here’s a free piece of advice from yours truly to any future United States Presidents: do not, ever, appoint, or keep on from a prior administration, a member of the opposition party to a key decision-making post. I don’t know if Comey deliberately threw the election to Trump, against strong advice from his superiors. Honestly, I doubt it, not consciously. But I’m sure that, had Comey been a Democrat and not a Republican, he would have cared enough about his party not to commit such an egregious violation of the Hatch Act. Incidentally, he stood by the law and recommended against disclosing the FBI’s ongoing investigation into Russia’s manipulating the election, citing concerns about the closeness to the election and the possibility of unfair influence. Partisan political concerns seem to be of paramount importance in this set of circumstances.

Donald Trump won because he played the national media like a violin. He said so many outrageous things and told so many bald-faced lies that it was impossible to keep up with him. By the time the political punditry started dissecting one lie, he had already told five more. He went against all the conventional political norms, and he did it in such a way that, to his supporters, his mendacity and outrageous conduct became a virtue. They thought: “This guy is a real man. He say what he thinks and does what he wants. He wants to make America white again. And he’s not afraid to come right out and foghorn his prejudices. Dog whistles and political correctness, i. e. respect for others, is for sissies”. But one thing I would like to note: Trump vilified Muslims, Arabs, Asians, Hispanics, but he was afraid to be honest about his prejudices against black people. That was one of the few lines that he would not cross. He dog-whistled it at first, pretending that he didn’t know who David Duke was, but Trump cowardly backed down later and disavowed the KKK. But he has as his closest advisor a man who has given a platform to anti-Semitism and white supremacy, Bannon. So Trump is clearly anti-black, as shown by the New York action against his company, but he is too cowardly to say so. So much for his courage. He says what he thinks white people want to hear, but even for him, there are a few limits.

Going forward, I bet Mitch McConnell (the coward who refused to allow Obama to appoint a Supreme Court justice, and who made it his priority to make Obama a one-term President) and the viciously anti-poor Ayn Rand acolyte Paul Ryan, the Senate majority leader and the speaker of the House respectively, are high-fiving each other. They are in a win-win situation. They are fine with Trump as long as he allows them to appoint his Cabinet and he doesn’t go too far in his conflicts of interest, but if Trump becomes a liability, the Republican legislators can simply begin the process of impeachment. Trump would never allow himself to be vilified in an impeachment proceeding. He would simply resign, and Vice-President Pence would take over. Unlike Trump, who is merely an opportunist, Pence is a true conservative. He is anti-woman, anti-labor; all the right wing’s agenda is Pence’s agenda as well.

The Republicans are now on the verge of controlling all three branches of our government. I shudder to think who they will nominate for the Supreme Court. The right wing extremists will soon completely control our government. But they had better tread carefully. This country was founded by a revolution, and it could be undone by another revolution if it ceases to represent the people who supposedly have the power to vote them in. There are consequences for bad behavior, and reactions to malfeasance. The dishonest, manipulative, scheming Republican party could possibly go too far. What a shame that would be.

It has been obvious, to me anyway, for a while now that the Democratic party represents the good in people, and the Republicans represent the bad. By bad, I don’t mean evil or sociopathic, although our president-elect likely is a sociopath. I mean selfish and self-dealing and me-first, you second, if at all. That’s why I have such a hard time, for example, watching a debate on MSNBC between a Republican pundit and a Democratic one. I have calmed down a lot, as my house mate will attest to, but I just don’t see the equivalence. Let me make a list of wrongs by the national Republican party, followed by the Democratic party.

Republicans:

1. On the day following Barack Obama’s election, a bunch of Republican bigwig politicians and strategists got together and decided that they would make it their priority to make Obama a one-term president, opposing him and blocking him at every turn, even if he is advocating one of their favorite positions, and even at the expense of the good of America.
2. Following Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia’s death, the Republicans refused to allow President Obama to appoint a replacement, leaving the court one member short for a year.
3. Republicans have promoted and defended state legislators’ bills passed intending to make it more difficult for Democrats to vote, citing  non-existent voter fraud as the reason.
4. Republican politicians, almost every one, refuse to recognize climate change as the emergent crisis that it is, putting the future of the planet in jeopardy.
5. Their stance on entitlements is pretty much repulsive. They want to take away benefits for welfare recipients and working poor. And most of them call themselves Christians. I have never seen a passage in mainstream Christian literature that says to abandon the poor and comfort the wealthy. Hypocrisy is too kind a word.
6. Republican president George W. Bush cut taxes, started an illegitimate war as well as a justified war, and put both on the national credit card, exploding deficits and destroying the economy. They give Obama no credit for getting us out of the ditch.
7. The Republicans call themselves national-defense hawks and patriots, but gave Obama no credit for killing the architect of 9/11.
8. They are masters at divide-and-conquer strategies. Starting with Nixon’s southern strategy, Republicans have appealed to white voters’ racist stereotypes in order to get them to vote against their own best interests. Lee Atwater, George H. W. Bush’s campaign manager, as he was dying of cancer, explained to a reporter how they used race in order to win elections.

Democrats:

1. Obama was too wishy-washy in Syria, allowing ISIS to get a foothold and increasing the suffering of Syrian civilians. He turned his red line about Assad using chemical weapons into disappearing ink, making him look weak and feckless.
2. Democrats have refused to fight fire with fire. President Obama naively played into the Republicans’ hands during much of his presidency, refusing to accept the fact that the Republicans are not honest brokers. They would never have compromised. Their idea of compromise was and is: What’s ours is ours, what’s yours is negotiable. They would never be in favor of any true compromise. Obama wasted a lot of time trying to cut a deal with them.
3. Hillary Clinton is guilty of political ambition while being a female. Also guilty of too much honesty, and holding back too much when bullied by Bernie Sanders in the primary. It is a lie that Hillary is dishonest. Politico rated Hillary the most honest candidate in the 2016 race. That lie was started by the Republican party some 25 years ago, and it was amplified by Sanders and his supporters. It was accepted because of her gender.

Now we have a president-elect who is coming into office encumbered by a business that basically makes it impossible to function in his office. Everything he does will be second-guessed. His properties are terrorist targets. He bullied his way to the nomination, and the election, by smearing his opponents, by promoting lies and conspiracies, appealing to white voters’ bigotry. He says that in a couple of weeks he will announce plans to divest himself of his businesses. I don’t believe him because he has lied so shamelessly for so long that he has no credibility. If he just turns it over to his children and promises not to discuss it with them, it won’t be enough. That is when the road will start to his impeachment. Vice-President Pence is a conservative, but I think he is much better qualified to be president than Trump is. The sooner they get rid of the dishonest businessman, the better, and we can start to heal from the wounds that the dishonest businessman inflicted on our democratic processes.

“I’ve looked at life from both sides now, from win and lose and still somehow, it’s life’s illusions I recall. I really don’t know life, a-at all”. So sang Judy Collins back when I was a boy. This politics that is taking place these days is presented as a zero-sum game: Either you’re on my side or you’re not. And if you’re not, you’re my sworn enemy, and I will fight you to my dying breath. I wrote a blog like this some time ago, and in a way, it feels wimpy. If I throw an olive branch to a right-winger, I’m as likely as not to get said olive branch broken over my head. That’s how things are nowadays, and I’m not one to take disrespect lightly, especially if I tried to initiate a dialogue.

The thing that’s going on is, in a large part, tribalism. One accepts things from a member of their own tribe that they would never accept if it came from an opponent. That is how right wing voters can say with a straight face that Hillary Clinton is crooked and belongs in jail, while they turn a blind eye to the immense conflicts of interest inherent in a Trump administration the moment he takes the oath of office. C’mon for gods sake. The Clinton Foundation is a philanthropic organization, and much ado was made about, supposedly, contributors being able to get face time with Clinton as Secretary of State. Now we have a situation where the President has direct control over a massive for-profit real estate empire, and he is talking business at the same time he is dealing with political issues concerning countries in which the Trump organization has holdings. Self-dealing, profiting from a public office, explicit quid pro quo corruption. It makes Hillary’s supposed conflicts look like a kid’s game in comparison.

I have a hard time believing that there are so many bad, evil people who voted Trump into office. Like I have said, the left has left much to be desired, and much to be criticized about. The Democratic convention was a fest of LGBT, black activism, and identity politics. It featured the mothers of black men who were shot by police, the implication being that every one of those shootings was unjustified. I don’t believe that to be the case, as there have been major discrepancies in the cases of at least a couple of these shootings. Not to mention that young white men are oftentimes themselves the victim of police brutality. The implication that the police force is a bunch of racists is offensive to many people and ignores the facts in some cases. Not only that, but it seems to have encouraged a spate of murders of innocent cops. Of course I’m not saying that there have not been “bad shoots” by the cops. There needs to be some kind of intervention, like a nationally mandated series of classes on diversity for police officers. Those who don’t take the classes lose their jobs. However, I believe that identity politics and college-campus-style political correctness have made my Democratic party a target-rich environment for Republicans looking to do harm.

What needs to happen, as people as opposite as Glenn Beck and Michael Moore have stated, is that there have to be some people willing to put pride aside and risk the wrath of their tribal community by reaching across the gulf and saying that, while there is much that we don’t see eye-to-eye about, there is much that we do agree on. We all want jobs that we can live and raise a family on. We all want to be able to live in a world free of chemical dangers in water and air. The way the Republicans have operated for many years has been by using social issues to advance their pursuit of an agenda that benefits the wealthy and disadvantages the middle class and the poor. If we could somehow agree on some basic common goals, we could show that agenda as the fraud that it is. As long as the right wing is able to successfully use tribalism to cloak their harmful agenda, it will continue to do so.

It is hard for me to say, because I like a fight as much as anybody else. I like to feel morally superior as much as anybody else. But with the incoming Trump administration poised to change America as we know it, we middle-class and lower class members would be well-advised to seek common ground and stop demonizing each other. The Republican party needs to know that it can no longer succeed in using a divide and conquer strategy to advance their radical agenda.