Trump’s Triumph is defeat of Liberal Hypocrisy and sense of Entitlement
- In American Elections 2016
- 02:08 PM, Nov 10, 2016
- Mayuresh Didolkar
Dear Liberals, Please start owning your defeats as well as your victories.
Hillary Clinton did not lose because she is a woman. She did not lose because of some conspiracy hatched by cigar smoking old white men in some old boys club and most definitely she did not lose because of the evil Russian dictator Auric--- I mean Vladimir Putin.
Clinton had an unprecedented two American Presidents stumping for her. She had endorsements from a zillion media outlets, from almost all of Hollywood and a dozen or so foreign leaders. What she did not have was someone in the campaign to tell her the truth. The truth was the two states (WI and MI) where she lost primaries, were full of hardworking Americans who rejected her in favour of Sanders, and when DNC took no cognizance of their feelings, they turned to Trump. Clinton never went back to WI even once after winning the Democratic nomination. In 2012 Obama had carried some of the states in Mid-West and North on the back of black and Latino people voting. It is clear from the results that Hillary did not attract them in the same proportion. Again- not the blame of the voters. They voted the best choice they saw.
Media outlets also need to introspect why they are getting opinion polls after opinion polls wrong rather than writing self-serving op-eds expressing their disappointment in American voters. Due to the vitriol media directed at Trump and his supporters, it was clear that many voters would prefer to keep their preference to themselves for the fear of being bullied. The way the opinion polls got it wrong, it is clear that either the pollsters gave doctored numbers (unlikely and counter-productive but hey what do I know?) or the respondents, while answering the pollsters chose not to reveal their orientation. Either way, it paints a very bleak picture of present day media. Like Brexit, today's results also conclusively proves that for all the bandwidth hogged by mainstream media, its ability to shape narrative is nearly non-existent.
The gang of rabid left liberal social justice warriors too must rethink their contribution. I remember during the primary stage, a staunch Democratic supporter wrote on twitter that he wished Hillary did not scream so much during her speeches. The poor man was immediately attacked by trolls who took his opinion about their candidate's delivery as 'patriarchal'. Unfortunately, rather than reigning in the lunatic in their ranks, Clinton campaign chose to unleash them on Sanders supporters during the primary season. Bill Clinton himself accused Sanders supporters of sexism. Well, it seems most people think of themselves as ok kind of people and most people hate it when they are accused into submission.
The biggest piece of this blame, however, rests squarely on the shoulders of the fixed, broken system that the Democratic Party represented. Instead of stacking the deck in Clinton's favour from the start, if DNC had allowed the pieces to fall where they would, Bernie Sanders might have won the nomination and the result might have been dramatically different. As Trump's campaign manager told to CNN today- Ordinary people are tired of Washington and its politicians.
As someone who leans towards the liberal principles in personal life, I implore Democratic Party to chuck this permanent victim-hood rhetoric and think about engaging with your ideological opponents instead of trying to bully them into submission. As today's results showed- bullying will give you the opinion poll you want, but once that average Joe or Jane walks in a polling booth, he /she is on their own.
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