Thesis
I am one of the roughly 50% of the population who believes that Donald Trump should never have been president. Period. He is a blowhard and seemingly mediocre businessman, and not in any way suited to lead. And he proved that in his first term.
The first time, he should never have won, but he did - mostly by being the "tough guy" and telling people whatever they wanted to hear. And then he lost re-election, and we were all better for it - even if some people didn't realize it.
The guy is a conman and a criminal. And of course a convicted felon.
But, for some reason, the Supreme Court decided to grant him immunity for many of his transgressions while in office. That's something that should never have happened.
And now that he has won again, his past problems simply go away. I have a lot of issues with that. Probably the greatest is the fact that he has proven that he is above the law. Those 34 felony convictions, those almost 90 charges related to the federal government, the potential that he may have committed some act of treason or something else; all of it just goes away.
It flies in the face of everything we know and everything we believe in - part of our democracy is the right to a fair trial, and he had multiple fair trials and was convicted - and yet gets to serve as president and essentially forget about all of that. Grumble. He apparently is above the law. Making him a tyrant.
The Senate had a duty during his first term to convict and remove him from office for his two (!) impeachments, but they chose to be derelict in that duty. They said "let the people decide" - which they did, and then somehow these same senators still supported him when it came to the next election. Self-serving ass holes are they. (I'm looking at you Marco Rubio)
Now to be fair, I have to give trump a small amount of credit for something that he pulled off early in his first presidency: He moved the GOP money under his "Make America Great" banner - so essentially all money that was donated into the GOP had to come through him. That meant that everyone in the GOP was beholden to him; and it kept everyone aligned on what the message was, what they needed to do, and how they needed to support him. It is kind of genius in its own nefarious way
And here we are.
Sadly, he won another term, and will become the second president to have two nonconsecutive terms. On the campaign trail, he said a lot of things that he planned to do early in his administration. A lot of those things are very harmful to very many people and it's kind of a scary thing. But whether he follows through on all of them, some of them, or none of them - or perhaps adds new ones - is anybody's guess.
Remember that this is all about him; the grift and being powerful like a king or a tyrant was the goal, so he's gotten what *he* wants.
That said, I have no doubt that he'll do some things that will be harmful, but what and how far...no one can say. Though he'll go after things that affect the poor and wealthy alike.
Climate change? That's a hoax. Food safety? Who needs it. Regulations that affect every day life in a mostly positive way? Eh, companies can be responsible and don't need to be supervised.
And legislating from the Oval Office via executive order seems to be in the plan. So expect the unexpected to come for you. He has no real guardrails and can do as he pleases. Again, see the word tyrant.
Run up to the election
For what it's worth, the election itself was kind of....I'll go with interesting. The Democrats in many ways shot themselves in the foot by not having a primary and letting Biden be the incumbent nominee, even though he was fairly old.
And then he finally decided it was time to step aside, but it was too late to hold a primary, so his vice president became nominee, which is fine, I guess, and a movement formed in backing her.
Still, both of these were a bit of an issue.
Kamala really did a lot to draw people in - and it was kind of crazy cool to watch how that came together. But some how, some way, things went awry.
But on the actual election. I'm not quite sure what happened, exactly. It would seem that a lot of people, including myself, were deluded into believing that Kamala would win, possibly by a large margin. I admit that maybe I had a bias, but I find it hard to believe that my judgement was that clouded, and that I was that deluded. No, there had to be more.
The polling - up until the debate between Biden and Trump - showed Biden was probably going to win. It would likely be by a very slim margin, but it seemed to be tilted in his favor. But, after the debate it was pretty certain that Trump would win but again - but also by a fairly small margin.
Biden steps aside, and Kamala comes in and she starts that momentum I mentioned. Its a movement! Polling starts showing that she will win by the same small margin that Biden had, and then its starts to grow into something greater. She's much more dynamic, she's much more engaged, she's got people behind her, she has an enthusiastic campaign built on hope. Polling shows her up, everywhere.
Now, you can say that the polls were wrong. They are not to be trusted. That there are other factors included in here and maybe you're right. It's hard to know.
Polling had been a good source of information up until about 2016 when the polling went off the rails. Then in 2020, they appeared to correct and seemed to be more or less accurate again. So it certainly seemed like this would at least be a close race, even if she might lose it would be by a small margin and the "Swing states" seemed to favor her to a large degree, in any case.
But in the end, she lost by a crushing margin, which makes no sense given everything that we know. All the swing states went his way, and even some moderately safe states swung much further red.
How did this happen?
Afterward, Democrats were (and are) going around and blaming a lot of different things, including each other, the polling, what happened during this election cycle, some of the things that were said by someone or anyone, policy decisions that alienated voters, etc.
But those all feel like excuses, and get us nowhere. Will anyone actually do a post mortem (and this does feel a bit like death, doesn't it?) and figure out how to not let this happen again?
By the numbers.
This is my presumed starting point, the percent of voting population allocation, based on what I saw in polling:
By some estimates, somewhere around 35% of registered voters were all in on Trump. They didn't care, they were never going to change their minds.
He sold an ideal to people. Things about how white men matter, how you can say whatever you want, and do whatever you want, and of course how you too can get rich just like him. It's the pyramid scheme in a way. Or maybe like a cult, because basically if you believe hard enough, you can be like him too!
And on the other hand, you had around 45% that we're going to either vote for Kamala, or vote against Trump.
Then you had some people in the middle you had some of the electorate who weren't entirely sure what they were going to do, and when RFK Jr came on the scene and started spouting his nonsense a large percentage of that group backed him.
A little later in the campaign.
| Support | Change | |
| Trump | 40% | +5% |
| Kamala | 45% | No change |
Undecided | 10% | No change |
| No plans to vote | 5% | — |
| Total | 100% | |
At some point, RFK offered that voter base to Kamala in exchange for something, and she said no. So he offered that vote to Trump in exchange for something and he said enthusiastically yes! Now here's the thing - these were mostly people who didn't like Trump or Biden. They were lukewarm on Kamala. When interviewed by various outlets, many of them said they were either going to vote for Kamala or simply not vote.
And then…
| Support | Change | |
| Trump | 48% | +8% |
| Kamala | 47% | +2% |
Undecided | 0% | -10% |
| No plans to vote | 5% | No change |
| Total | 100% | |
Of the undecideds, many were people who mostly had been Trump supporters in the past, but were looking for a reason to vote for someone else. And they called themselves undecideds. Perhaps a little more than half voted for him anyway.
We also heard a large-ish (and certainly larger than the republicans or independents) number of democrat-registered voters didn't vote in the election, knocking her number lower, perhaps.
In the end, those number may work, and show us what happened in voting. But it still doesn't feel right. There's more to it.
Other factors?
I'm no conspiracy theorist and I generally don't like espousing conspiracies, but sometimes... you have to wonder just a little bit.
If we take a trip back in history to the 2008 election - the first time Obama was elected - there were stories that a GOP-aligned group had created some sort of software. They called it some amusing name (like gateway or dominion or some such). Their goal was to disrupt the vote counting, and allow John McCain to win the election. But there was a group of hackers who found this code and were able to disable it; preventing that from happening.
Say what you will, but I can not believe for even a moment that the GOP supporting army just gave up on trying to swing elections their way.
Of course, gerrymandering, voter registration laws, purging voters from the rolls, and voter influence / intimidation are along the same lines. And are very much in the public eye.
My question is whether those overt things are just some kind of window dressing to distract from other more nefarious activities that we aren't privy to.
It's nothing more than speculation when we hear hints and whispers about attempts to make voting outcomes that one side wants. But nevertheless, these rumors happened in each of the subsequent cycles of elections; there was the potential for some sort of hacking or interference.
I emphasize potential. Because there is no evidence whatsoever that it ever happened. And maybe it didn't.
The possibility of Russian influence.
And then came 2016. The Russian influence campaign was strong. There were a number of documented things that Russia was doing - going into the voter rolls accessing information, perhaps doing something more nefarious. And when the election cycle happened, it looked like Hillary was probably going to win, but then Trump wound up winning - again by a fairly large margin and he (surprise!) took the swing states
There were dossiers, memos, and other pieces of evidence. But, unfortunately, most of this was never investigated because he became the president. It was easy for him to just "bury it." And by the time Biden took office, there were so many other things, so many other priorities, that as far as I can tell, he never went back to it. That's shameful, but the court cases that started were slowly chipping at the edges.
By the way, after that election, there was some supporting evidence that the vote totals didn't quite align and there were "irregularities" in places. But I must stress that there were no irrefutable facts to support any sort of fraud or manipulation. But do remember the preceding paragraph that Trump could squash any further inquiries.
That brings us back to 2024. Trumps campaign gets started up and again we hear whispers about Russia's involvement.
Elon Musk gets involved.
You also had the Elon Musk factor. Elon controls one of the largest social media networks, and has no moral issues with peddling influence. He also has a satellite system that he uses for his own purposes and lets people have it or not have it depending on his own whim. That technology could be used in many ways, perhaps even related to an election.
Elon publicly has stated that he wants to become the world's first trillionaire (such an obscene amount of money!). Getting behind trump meant that he would now be able to control his own future. No pesky regulations to hold him back - and he'll have access to classified information to gain other advantages. (And don't sleep on the fact that we learned recently that he is essentially an illegal immigrant, and here he is rising in power, rather than being deported)
There were stories that Musk talked to Vladimir Putin. That may be true or not (we really don't know), but we do know that there was a large volume of Russian propaganda appearing on Xitter.
And of course, he offered the $1 million prize daily for people who pledged to vote for Trump. That's an incentive for a lot of people who were maybe thinking about voting for him anyway - or even some people who might've voted for Kamala but when presented with a get rich quick moment, I would assume some people thought "why wouldn't I do that?"
There was also this very nebulous campaign organization that he was funding. It was supposedly a grassroots organization intended to go around and help get out the vote for Trump.
In most campaigns, people do this out of the goodness of their hearts. They canvas in support of a candidate as a volunteer. But in Musks organization, people were getting paid to do this.
Plus, there were stories about offering people cash for their vote, and at least one story about these campaign people being asked to go to very specific individuals and offer them some money for some support - under the guise of it being campaign related. And yes, this story mentioned the word "bribe."
In summary, you get a sense of there was WAY more happening than ever met the eye with having a several technology companies could potentially help in some way.
Back to Trump
There were also reports that Donald Trump talked to Putin; but whatever conversations happened between them are unknown and undocumented. But keep in mind that this would be illegal because he was not the president and he was not the president-elect at that point.
But no one chose to do anything about it. Let him run amok. Why not?
Donald Trump came out and said he was going to broker a cease-fire between Ukraine and Russia, and it was already in the works. No doubt that it will greatly benefit Russia, but this did not happen in a vacuum. There has to be some quid pro quo that happened between him and Putin.
And then came Election Day.
I find it interesting that in the closing days before the election, Kamala had what at least "seemed to be" a nice lead. But as we closed in on election day, the polls were narrowing in all these different states. But I never heard about a single person who might waver from their belief in Kamala. Where did these people suddenly come from?
There was another factor: some polling organizations were set up specifically to make the polling look better for Trump. But the media never really caught on, and kept talking about the lead narrowing. On the surface that's not a bad thing because it brings out more people to vote. But there must be a reason they were doing this, right?
And on election night, somehow Trump won, by larger than the margin of error in the polls. It kind of doesn't make sense how that worked out. I'm not saying it's impossible. But it seems unlikely.
He won in places he never led. He won by margins that made no sense. I'm not going to try and make sense of it, I'm simply trying to accept THAT it happened. And shut out the voices that say somehow it was a stolen election of sorts.
Of course, we will never know if any of this is right, wrong, indifferent, accurate, inaccurate, or wildly lying because no one will ever investigate what happened beginning in 2016. Oh sure, in 100 years from now we may find out some truth, but not in my lifetime.
The "beautiful thing" about this anonymity in voting is that no one will ever be able to determine the truth. Those records are behind a wall and we can only rely on the reported vote totals which we have to assume to be accurate.
And on to the future
Okay I'll say it. This sucks.
Now we have a very uncertain future ahead. It's a weird thing that's going on; we know that there are going to be bad things that happen. Some may affect us directly. Some may alter the nation we love. And some may just make life easier for the über wealthy while making it more painful for average folks.
But there is one certainty. We know that he's in it for himself. We know that there is no end to the lying. He will say whatever and do whatever he thinks is right, and it doesn't matter if there's truth or not.
And unfortunately, we'll continue as society to not value truth nor science. To not value anything that's rational and real. It will all be about this mystery this ideal that we can be somehow be "Great" - whatever that means
Sadly, in a way we're getting exactly what we deserve. After all, we are the nation that consumes social media, watches vapid reality TV, works off of wild conspiracies, and doesn't value reason.
I weep for our future. And hope that the American experiment that our nation undertook, and lasted for nearly 250 years, does not end here.
Nevertheless, we still have hope! And what's important is to maintain that hope, and be good people. We can fight for democracy in intelligent ways, while supporting others - even if we know that (essentially) that some of them joined the "cult of ignorance"
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