In one corner - The
most experienced candidate ever to run for President Hillary Clinton
In the other corner -
The most outrageous inexperienced candidate ever to run for President Donald
Trump
For those of you who take the 2016 presidential campaign so
seriously that you are blinded by hate, overwhelmed by fear, and terrified by the
thought of losing, well, I really do not know the antidote to help you make it
through the long, dark night.
Had President Obama been successful in legalizing marijuana
perhaps there might have been a joint strong enough to help but such was not
the case. You might consider an extended
vacation in Colorado where you could remain on
a Rocky Mountain Nova Scotia
to settle in if you lose.
How long ago it seems this campaign for the ages started
with a line up of highly qualified Republicans in the shape of governors,
senators, former senate candidates, males, and a female, quite an all-star line
up. Many thought it was the best and
most qualified field of candidates ever assembled. Of course, the GOP had two
former presidents ready to come to the aid of the heir-apparent of the GOP
dynasty, the Bush family.
On the Democratic side was the pre-emptive favorite to win
it all, a former White House First Lady, senator, secretary of state, and
career politician who just happened to also be a multi-millionaire. Waiting in the wings was another former popular
president known for his wit and charisma who expected to whisk his wife back
into the White House, Bill Clinton.
The Democratic field was "fixed" for Hillary but
the Republican field was expected to be a blood bath between the conservatives,
the more conservatives, the radical right-wing conservatives, and those who
wore both suspenders and belts, along with a quiet little voice from a
libertarian in the wilderness named Rand Paul for diversity.
The odds on favorites to square off in the fall election
were Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, the legacy candidates with the blue blood
and access to a couple of billion dollars for the campaign.
Then someone opened the gates of Hell, most likely an
innocent bureaucrat who was tired and pulled the wrong lever.
The Outcasts Emerge
One should expect the unexpected when two certain losers in
the eyes of the news media and politicians materialize on the scene. One was wrapped in gold and stepped out of an
escalator from heaven while the other suddenly appeared through a fog of
socialism and appeared older than Moses.
The news media laughed and immediately condemned them to the
scrap heap of presidential trivia mocking their intent and ridiculing their
credentials.
I mean, Trump, the Republican candidate, never ran for
political office before. Fact is he was
a Democrat before he filed and a long time contributor to left wing causes
including previous campaigns of Hillary Clinton.
His claim to fame, he build VERY big buildings and was more
or less a billionaire. Most knew him as
a reality talk show host who gave bombastic a new definition, knew almost
nothing about what a president does, and considers his best advisor to be the person
facing him in the mirror.
On the Democratic side came a candidate who was not even a
Democrat but a registered Independent riding his own wave of socialism for the
masses, and standing for about everything America hated. A socialist might be a Stalin, Hitler, Castro,
or some figment of our imagination but not a real person in the citadel of
Democracy.
We had a history of destroying socialism in wars and
elections since 1776. As if not being a
Democrat and being a rabid socialist were not enough to get the Democratic
nomination, add to that the fact Bernie Sanders was also as old as Moses and Jewish
to boot. If elected, he would be the
oldest person ever elected to the presidency.
Enter the time
machine and come to the present.
The pre-emptive president Hillary Clinton is coming upon the
last primary elections of the presidential year and lo and behold, pesky old
Bernie Sanders is still around drawing tens of thousands of young people disenfranchised
by Hillary to campaign rallies and causing a rather significant number of worry
lines in the already battle tested face of Clinton.
As for the Republican challenger to the Clinton
machine, perhaps even more remarkable than Bernie, is the brash and brazen
golden boy from Queens who virtually destroyed
the entire field of highly qualified Republicans on the way to the nomination.
The impact of Bernie Sanders on the election is rather
historic while the impact of Trump on the election just might be cataclysmic.
You see, Bernie was a conventional politician, even a
sitting Senator, an indentured member of The Establishment, who used the system
to poke holes in the Clinton
mystic. I suspect because he was from Vermont , and the first
socialist mayor of a big town, few people ever heard of him.
Trump, well he had other ideas on how to win. Having never run for office before, he had no
loyalty to conventional rules, experience, or consultants. In fact, he had no clue what they might be.
What he did have was a sixth sense of the mood of the public
and he tapped right into a sense of frustration and disgust with the political
establishment and the news media establishment by the people. Whether by design or accident, he knew people
were not interested in experience or flowing promises and policy platforms.
People were mad as Hell, and there was no better person to lead
them in their anger and frustration than Donald Trump, the outsider from
politics, the man who got things done. He
may not have the answers, he may twist facts and exaggerate, but they could count
on him to fight for the little people against the ironclad political
establishment running and wrecking our nation.
The result, the election rules, and decorum went out the
window along with every rule of survival in politics. Even our vaunted fourth estate, the press,
was steamrolled by Trump because of his free wheeling style and most unusual
approach.
Bernie calls for a revolution, Trump already shoved it down
the throats of The Establishment, and we have not even reached the conventions
to nominate the party candidates.
Nearly a month before the end of the primary elections and
two months before the convention Trump finished demolishing the entire sixteen-person
field running against him.
Already he has turned his machine gun barrage of charges
against Hillary and at times it has resembled the Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago .
No one has a clue as to what will happen the last six months
until the election. Trump has already
surged into a tie with Hillary. Leaders
of foreign nations have condemned Trump, and still he climbs in the polls.
Nothing will ever be the same in politics and maybe not even
in life, as we know it. Some people have
long held the belief that people grow into the responsibilities of the
presidency. Students of history can
point to many examples and even our most recent president, Barack Obama, has
overcome many issues with inexperience to grow into the job.
The survivor of this raucous campaign, whether Hillary
Clinton or Donald Trump, face many challenges if elected president, and will
most certainly be tested by our friends and enemies around the world. Healing America after the election will be
the greatest challenge. For our part, we
must help America
heal.
.
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