Before the election Donald Trump was saying that the election was rigged. It was, but not the way he meant it.
It was rigged by Republican legislatures elected in the off-year elections of 2010 and 2014. In the 2010 election Republicans won control of many state legislatures, such as Wisconsin. First they gerrymandered legislative districts to ensure Republican congressional majorities. Then they began passing laws to suppress voter turnout by Democrats and minorities.
This was a project that had long been in the works. Recognizing demographic trends, Republicans started their voter suppression campaign during the Bush administration, when Alberto Gonzalez fired US attorneys who wouldn't play ball.
It wasn't enough to prevent Obama's re-election in 2012, but over the next four years, with the help of the Supreme Court's neutering of the Voting Rights Act, they got their voter suppression machine into high gear in time for the 2016 election. Trump won several states by the thinnest of margins, entirely due to changes in election laws enacted by Republicans to prevent their enemies (and that's how they think of Democrats and minorities) from voting.
I can't say that I predicted this election's outcome, but I have always disputed the nonsensical myth that Democrats can't lose a presidential election because of shifting demographics. "The numbers," we were told, make it impossible for a Republican to win the presidency.
The problem with this is two-fold: the first is Republican voter suppression of Democrats and minorities, and the second is that much of the Democratic voter base is less experienced, less committed and less reliable than the elderly white people who have for centuries gamed the system to get what they want. For example, as contradictory and crazy as it seems, it looks like about a third of Latinos voted for Trump.
I have also disputed the value of polls in predicting election outcomes in recent years. Once upon a time they might have worked, but they are worthless now. In this age of endless telephone scams, no one with a brain answers the phone without caller ID. And no one responds to a telephone poll unless they're hopelessly naive and altruistic, or they're trying to game it.
Poll respondents are self-selecting. Selfish and self-centered people won't bother to waste their time on a poll. That means Trump voters were not adequately represented in the final tallies, just as his campaign claimed.
Even though Trump won the electoral college, it appears that Clinton won the popular vote: 59,163,675 votes nationally, to Trump's 59,027,971 — a margin of 135,704.
Trump will be the second president in 16 years to be elected by a minority of the voters. This is possible because of the electoral college: small rural states, which are more Republican, get more electoral votes per capita than large urban states, which are more Democratic. Republicans now control the presidency, the Senate and the House with comfortable margins.
The last time we gave Republicans this much control we got the World Trade Center Attack, the Iraq War, tens of thousands of dead and wounded Americans, handouts to big Pharma, Hurricane Katrina, warrantless wiretapping, the Great Recession and the Wall Street Bailout. Plus an endless litany of scandal after scandal: Bush ignoring the intel on Al Qaeda, his lies on WMDs, Jack Abramoff, Hurricane Katrina, the creation of ISIS by Bush's blunders in Iraq, Alberto Gonzales' resignation when the voter suppression firings were uncovered, the missing emails from Karl Rove's secret account (odd how no Republican ever mentioned that during this entire election cycle). And on and on.
By contrast, the last time we gave Democrats this much control we got health care for everyone.
George Bush's daddy issues and his lack of attention to detail got us into endless war in the Middle East. But Donald Trump makes Bush look like Einstein: Trump knows nothing about foreign policy, military doctrine, law, governance, or the economy.
Trump has a huge rat's nest of financial conflicts of interest. Every move he makes will immediately bring into question whether it's for the good of the country, or to feather Donald Trump's gilded nest.
Worse, Trump has a whole host of psychological problems: racism, misogyny, narcissism, greed, an inability to concentrate for more than a few minutes, an endless thirst for vengeance, and a constant need for attention and showing off. And then there's his incipient Alzheimer's.
Given the horde of sycophants and lackeys Trump has surrounded himself with, his administration is shaping up to be the most incompetent and corrupt in living memory.
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