Well.....it's over. The seemingly endless 2016 election is over. Without a doubt, this was the longest, ugliest, most expensive election ever. Some of you are ecstatic with the result. Others of you are despondent. Still others, like me, fall somewhere in between. Regardless of your political leanings, it's time to look back on this election and try to determine what we've learned. I'll do my best to try to do this recap without offending anyone...
2016 was "The Year of the Political Outsider": It's a thing that first arose during the primaries. The two candidates who were perceived as the political outsiders gained the most buzz. On the Republican side, it was businessman/reality star/loose cannon Donald Trump who drew huge crowds to his rallies and who gained a large, devoted following by speaking his mind and appealing to those frustrated with business as usual in Washington. On the Democratic side, it was former independent, self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders who drew a large following (especially of millennials) with his anti-establishment, big government viewpoints. While the latter was not able to gain his party's nomination (partly due to unfair tactics by his own party), Trump did. In a year in which so much press and excitement was generated by these non-traditional candidates, I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise that Trump emerged victorious, especially since he was running against a candidate who was the very definition of a political insider. The political outsider theme also played out in the Missouri gubernatorial race, where Navy SEAL/Rhodes Scholar/never held public office Republican Eric Greitens tapped into the anti-establishment momentum to win over a well established Democrat. 2016 was the year in which "career politician" became a popular insult thrown in the direction of entrenched members of both parties.
Except That It Wasn't Always: Interestingly, in a year where political outsiders received so much press, virtually every incumbent Senator was re-elected. People constantly complain about how much they dislike Congress and yet all but two of the incumbent Senators (Mark Kirk in Illinois and Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire) won their re-election battles. So, we hate Congress but yet we re-elected almost all of the people we say we hate. This baffles me. I personally advocated the "vote the bums out" approach and voted in that manner, but it appears that most people are hypocrites on this point. This is another reason why I advocate for term limits, because it may be the only way to create any churn amongst our elected officials.
It's Really Hard to Three-Peat: Very seldom in sports does a team manage to win three championships in a row. The same is true in politics: it's very difficult for a political party - either Republican or Democrat - to win the White House three elections in a row. In fact, since 1950, it's only happened once- when the Republicans won three straight presidential elections in 1980 (Reagan), 1984 (Reagan) and 1988 (George H.W. Bush). Other than that one instance, no party has been able to hold onto the White House for more than 8 years since the FDR/Truman dynasty of the 1930s and 1940s. Not even in 2000, when the Democrats had the economy in great shape as Bill Clinton was finishing up his second term, did the incumbent party keep the White House for a third straight time. With that in mind, perhaps we shouldn't have been surprised that history repeated itself and the Democrats were denied a three peat.
Perhaps Trump is Smarter Than We Give Him Credit For?: One of my earlier blog posts relayed my opinions about Donald Trump, so I won't rehash them here. (To read more, see my earlier blog post "The Inevitability of Donald Trump" from March.) However, I think we may have to acknowledge that Trump got the last laugh and that maybe he outsmarted everyone. He ran his campaign his way. He broke all the rules and did all of the things you'd advise a candidate NOT to do and he still won. He said incendiary things and poked his own party leaders in the eye and still won. When pollsters and the doubters and the naysayers and even his own party said that he could never win this election, Trump smugly said that he could and would. And he did. He saw the energy and size of the crowds at his political rallies and told everyone who doubted him that they were wrong. As unlikely as that seemed, he was right.
The GOP Gambled Big...and Won: In retrospect, the GOP's decision to stall on filling the Antonin Scalia vacancy on the Supreme Court worked. I was critical of it in an earlier post and still think it was an abdication of their duties, but it worked out for them. If Clinton had won, I'm guessing the lame duck Congress would have held hearings on Merrick Garland and confirmed him because they would have perceived him as being more moderate than whatever candidate Clinton would put forth. Of course, they risked Obama rescinding Garland's nomination and replacing him with someone less moderate. But, they rolled the dice that they could win back the White House and fill Scalia's spot with a conservative and they won big.
There are a Lot of Angry Americans - and That's Unlikely to Change: If there's been a theme to the last several years in the country, it's been anger. From the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter to the pissed off working class voters who embraced Trump's campaign, there are a lot of angry people in this country. Unfortunately, I don't see that changing soon. Instead, we'll just have a new group of angry people. Where the right was upset with nearly everything Obama did for the past 8 years, I suspect the left will be upset with nearly everything Trump will do the next 4 years.
Time will tell whether or not the results of this election will be a good thing or a bad thing for the country. I'm sure everyone has their opinion now, but we also can't predict the future. For those of you who are happy with the outcome of the election, I ask that you be magnanimous toward those who are upset. For those of you who are upset, I ask that you not lash out at those who are happy. At the end of the day, we are all Americans and we are all human beings trying to make our way in this crazy world. No election result changes that.
Thanks for reading.
