In Politics, Honesty is Not Always the Best Policy

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

"For those who have chosen not to support me in the past - of which there were a few people - I'm reaching out to you for your guidance and your help, so we can work together and unify our great country. I promise you that I will not let you down." - President-elect Donald Trump, 11/9/16, who's made a living dodging his taxes and stiffing his contractors.

There are some historic takeaways from last night's Presidential election.

     Donald Trump is the first billionaire we've ever elected President.

     For the first time, we'll know what the First Lady's tits look like.

     Donald Trump lost every state, including his home state of New York, in which he ever put up a casino or a Trump Tower.

     Trump is the first reality TV star ever to get elected President.

     Trump is the first President who's ever been accused of being a child molester, even though the charges were just mysteriously dropped.

     And this augurs well for our nation... how, exactly?

     Is it any wonder why tens of millions of Americans woke up this morning with a less than optimistic feeling or a haunting suspicion that we've finally, irrevocably slipped into the prequel of Idiocracy?

     The circular firing squad had begun when Trump was still only halfway to the Oval Office, long before he'd returned to Trump Tower in New York City when the psychological sideshow of his campaign began on June 15th, 2015, the day before Dylann Storm Roof murdered nine parishioners at an AME church in North Carolina. When it had begun to look more and more as if Hillary wouldn't pull this off, after all, in defiance of the Very Serious People we still, inexplicably, listen to every four years, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews of MSNBC already began blaming third party voters instead of Hillary Clinton's corruption and plain unlikability.

     The suspects are more numerous than in an Agatha Christie parlor room mystery. It's the fault of Millennials, Bernie Bros, Jill voters, misogynists (according to the moronic Amanda Marcotte, the Poor Woman's Gloria Steinem, on her Twitter feed), everybody but the Clinton campaign. And all the so-called suspects are red herrings.

     It wasn't third party voters that slew the dragon. Those who voted for the twitchy and defunct Gary Johnson wouldn't have voted for Clinton in large numbers had Johnson not dropped out so late that his and Bill Weld's names were still found on the ballots (as they were here in Massachusetts). Jill Stein bombed so badly even in her home state that her voters, had they gone to Clinton, wouldn't have produced even a noticeable bump, let alone bridged the split.

     It wasn't Millennials. It wasn't misogynistic Bernie bros who still voted for Stein.

     It was Clinton and her insufficient supporters who were caught holding the bloody lead pipe in the parlor. Get a clue, Maddow.

The Purloined Letters

     It could still be plausibly said that Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election when he was taped making his "47% comment." Or it could have been when he barely waited until just after midnight after the Benghazi embassy was attacked and four Americans were murdered by jihadists then got all the facts wrong and blamed Obama for everything.

     Hillary had several "47%" moments. In fact, it could be said the only people she'd attacked with any impunity were her Wall Street backers and they knew all along she was kidding. She said as much in her locked door speeches for $225,000 a pop. Early in the skein of Podesta emails released by Wikileaks, we'd seen some of the bullet points and they confirmed what we'd always suspected.

     She'd gone out of her way to attack Trump's backers, calling them "a basket of deplorables." She'd gone out of her way to alienate Bernie backers, whose votes she needed, "basement dwellers" (also released in the Podesta emails and backed up by audiotape). And she'd made these nasty comments both publicly and privately. The private moments were made public only with the help of Wikileaks and probably the Russian government.

     Clinton torpedoed her own campaign because she simply couldn't hide her disgust  and loathing of Bernie supporters who saw right through her corruption and disingenuous triangulating. Essentially, Clinton was a super-sized version of Martha Coakley, next to Clinton the most thoroughly loathsome woman in the history of American politics.

     Clinton torpedoed her own campaign by stealing the primaries from the guy whom polls had shown would've beaten Trump had he been permitted to win the primary. Her relentless and hardly restrained hostility toward his base all but guaranteed Millennials and other Bernie Bros would stay home last night.

     Clinton torpedoed her own campaign by not embracing more of Sanders' policies such as a $15 minimum wage, affordable higher education, etc. Even for empty, triangulating populism's sake, Hillary just couldn't do it. She's just not progressive, never was, never will be.

     And this is the final reason Hillary torpedoed her own campaign: We already had a Republican running for President and his name was Donald Trump. She was a fifth wheel.

     Donald Trump is a vile, disgusting man-pig, misogynistic, racist, xenophobic, lecherous and avaricious to the core. But he appealed to his base, brought them to the polls and was willing to say anything to get elected, even if it privately raised his orange hackles.

     Hillary Clinton couldn't even be bothered to do that any more than Martha Coakley could be bothered in 2010 to press the flesh on a rainy day at Fenway Park like Scott Brown.

     Hillary Clinton didn't lose the election because she couldn't hide her dishonesty. She lost because she couldn't hide her honesty.