Patrick Henningsen
21st Century Wire
Today American will choose its next president.
What can you say that hasn’t already been said in this, the most over-analyzed political contest in history?
No matter which side of this salacious Vaudeville ticket you are on, everyone will agree that this has been the most raucous and divisive contest in electoral history. No matter who wins today, half the nation will be in pain, not least of all the Founding Fathers who have been rolling in their graves for the last 18 months.
More than ever, America is a nation divided. An increasing number of people are now completely immersed in hyper-active social media environments, and so it’s very easy to get caught up in their respective partisan echo chambers; ‘our way is the best way,’ ‘our side is right,’ ‘the other side is bad for America,’ ‘we are the true party of the people’ etc. Many simply will not venture off of their assigned party or pseudo-ideological reservation, much less talk to anyone whose views seem to oppose theirs. In public, Americans now only huddle with those who share the same team colors, and in private each flees to his or her prefabricated partisan media outlet and ‘social’ networking group. The virtual political system is now systematically divided in this way. There is nothing in between; no middle ground, no real commons, and no respite from the onslaught of partisan media. Herein lies the fundamental aspect of 2016 politics – and why the fall-out from this election will be ongoing long after the results are announce tomorrow morning.
To make matters even worse, this election season has featured two highly flawed candidates in Donald J Trump and Hillary Clinton. Many commentators contend that these are the two worst US presidential candidates ever. Essentially it boiled down to Mickey Mouse vs Cruella de Vil.
Let’s quickly profile the two candidates:
Since the 1990’s the Clintons have been synonymous with one word: scandal. The 90’s was a dodgy decade for the First Family: Bill, Monica, Whitewater, the Arkancide epidemic, and selling White House’s Lincoln Bedroom for 50 grand a night. Take your pick. None of this has helped Hillary in terms of public trust, where she’s polling even lower than Donald Trump. On top of all the old Clinton baggage, you have two huge new scandals originating from her tenure as Obama’s Secretary of State – including becoming the latest member of her family to lie under oath to Congress over her private email server cover-up, and multiple pay-to-play corruption allegations at the Clinton Foundation.
As result, Hillary Clinton embodies the avatar of Cruella de Vil…
Her campaign breaks down like this:
‘Fighting for Woman and Children’
If you support Hillary Clinton then you believe your candidate represents the ascendency of the female species, and especially all women who have been held back by the cruel customs of an American patriarchal society. You also recognize her brand: Clinton. She’s the wife of the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton, which leads you directly into the second half of the campaign pitch: “She has the experience, having been around the White House for 8 years.”
Since the beginning of her first campaign in 2008, Clinton the woman was the main identifier and the primary reason why she should be president. Instead it was “the first black President,” so she had to wait 8 years. At the age of 69, she’d still be the first woman president, and therefore, “an inspiration to women everywhere” as the marketing slogan says. She is also the champion of all minorities, as well as the poor – which are also traditional Democratic Party staples, although “poor” point is hard to square, seeing that the Clinton’s have amassed a net worth in the hundreds of millions in the short space of 15 years. Regardless, her supporters see her as their champion, rallying around a familiar set of leftwing social issues: inequality/redistribution of wealth, pro-choice/abortion, amnesty for undocumented/illegal immigrants, and man-made global warming/climate change.
The novelty of Trump is like no other before him. At first, it could be explained like this: for some strange reason, it’s a tradition in America that a certain number of people each year will cast a write-in vote for Mickey Mouse on their ballot. This is regarded as the ultimate protest vote – a vote for Mickey is a vote against the establishment. So it should be no surprise that when he arrived on the electoral scene last year in June 2015, his support base was already waiting for him – Trump was their 70 year old, 6 foot 3 inch, 236 lbs Mickey Mouse…
Trump’s campaign breaks down like this:
‘Make America Great Again’
If you support Trump, then you believe this is the story of a true underdog, the consummate outsider taking on the political elites – a man with absolutely no experience in political office (other than writing cheques for nearly all them), uncorrupted by corporate money (because he has his own) and shunned by the self-serving political and media establishment who have done nothing for the country’s working class and rapidly disappearing middle class. While some of this is true, as a reality TV icon, a billionaire property magnate and career playboy, Trump is certainly no ‘man of the people’ in the Horatio Alger sense. Despite all that, judging by most major polls, nearly half of the United States population is behind him. To them, he is their champion. He’ll lower taxes and bring back the jobs from overseas, rebuild the military, and most importantly, he doesn’t want any money from corporate lobbyists. When crowds chant, “Drain the swamp!” referring to Washington DC, he’s the man they want to hire to do that job. Trump’s response to them is simple: “I only work for one special interest group, and that’s you the American people.” In this sense, Trump has run the most unconventional political campaign ever.
Love him or loath him, that message resonates and for good reason. The door to the cess pit is now open and many are horrified at what they see. Through the incredible WikiLeaks Podesta Email trove, many Americans now have an inside look into the incestuous elite political scene in Washington. Clinton was hit pretty hard by the WikiLeaks revelations, as was the already shaky credibility of the Clinton Foundation. With the help of the US media though, she battled though it and emerged from that mêlée.
Facing much less in terms of institutional corruption scandals, Trump did not fair as well as Clinton. With each passing week, he was hamstrung by an endless string of media traps, Twitter gaffes and internal campaign tedium. Dogged by the media and his opponents, Trump couldn’t hold his tongue or stay off of Twitter, and so his retaliatory tirades turned into negative headlines. For intelligent pundits and moderate supporters, the constant gaffes and distractions made it almost impossible to consider Donald Trump as a serious candidate. To the casual observer, it would appear that The Donald was nothing but a stalking horse for Hillary.
The same could be said for Democratic primary challenger Bernie Sanders (photo, left). Up until the moment he entered the contest in July 2015, party favorite Hillary Clinton was essentially running unopposed. It’s almost as if Sanders drafted into the race at the last minute in order to make it look like a real race, and then at an opportune moment – he would pledge his allegiance to the party favorite. That’s exactly how it played out. Early on Sanders chances were practically DOA because of the Democratic Party’s pre-rigged ‘Super Delegate’ system. Still, he fought on and pulled bigger crowds than Hillary. Then the real bomb dropped when it was revealed through the Democratic National Committee (DNC) email leaks how party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Shultz along with party elites, conspired to railroad the Bernie Sanders campaign. That’s right, Bernie was shot down by his own party in order to make way for Hillary’s coronation. Not very democratic of the Democrats. Wasserman-Shultz even resigned as a result. Sanders didn’t seem to mind (in public anyway) and voluntarily capitulated, and Hillary enjoyed a steady climb afterwards. From this we can deduce that the Clinton-Sanders contest was likely a contrived affair from the onset, although one WikiLeaks email shows that Sanders may even have been blackmailed into bowing down to Clinton. It seems that the DNC and Clinton never expected Sanders to capture the imagination of the nation’s youth like he did, which also speaks volumes about the acute lack of enthusiasm for Clinton’s White House run – even within her own party. Sanders was a rock star, Clinton was pop star. That’s a big difference in the eyes of millennials who place a lot of value on authenticity.
Then came the debates. The first one broke all ratings records for a political debate with an estimated near 100 million total viewers. It was Gladiator meets Jerry Springer. Then the New York Times leaked some of Trump’s tax returns and the media had a field day. Later in October, a barrage of bombshells would besiege the Trump campaign, one after another, ranging from allegations of groping on a first class flight in the 1980’s, to a porn star upset over Trump’s manly advances – each of them suddenly appearing in the media right before the election to complain about being sexually harassed by Trump. After the first debate, a rather lurid, leaked off the record audio conversation from Access Hollywood in 2005 appeared which nearly upended his campaign, immediately followed by a new string of women coming forward with more allegations sexual abuse. This devastated Trump in the polls, and became the 24 hour obsession for Democratic Party-linked networks like CNN and MSNBC. Amazingly, every one the accusers has since disappeared from the scene. The damage was done though, and this became the basis for the Clinton campaign, her TV ads and her surrogates anti-Trump message. Just like with Hillary’s Podesta emails, it was non-stop media chaos. The attacks and counter attacks were many – too many to mention here.
Somehow, he crawled out of that pit and rebounded in the polls.
Trump was also been attacked in the media for proffering that the “system is rigged”. In all seriousness, does anyone not believe this? Still, critics have called this “extremist” rhetoric from Trump. From a media standpoint however, America’s democracy is rigged – and clearly in favor of the Democratic Party. WikiLeaks proved this – starting with the corruption between DNC acting chair Donna Brazile who cheated the debate process by passing questions from the network CNN – directly to Hillary Clinton. If that wasn’t bad enough, it was later revealed how the DNC tried to provide CNN anchor Wolf Blizter with questions to ask Donald Trump, and how DNC staffers offered CNN’s Jake Tapper questions to ask during another interview on the network. The online journal Politico’s editor Glenn Thrush was also caught stage-managing coverage with the Clinton campaign. There were many other incidents, too many to list here. Total collusion between the so-called “press” and the Democratic Party. So, yes, the system is rigged.
‘When They Go Low, We Go High’
The Clinton campaign combined with pro-Clinton Super PACs upwards of $200 million on TV ads – the majority of which are negative ads characterizing her competitor as a racist xenophobic womanizing misogynist. By doing so, the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party has effectively made their pitch to voters as a referendum on political correctness. In other words, “we can’t allow this disgusting human being to win this election.” The other big Clinton TV ad buy was, “We can’t let Donald Trump get his hands on the nuclear codes.” This ad was based on the ridiculous premise that a US President could just walk into the Oval Office one day and start launching ICBM warheads around the world for no reason – completely bogus thesis if there ever was one , but apparently the campaign think the public are that stupid as to believe a fictional scenario like that. As result of the all the negative campaigning, Clinton spent very little if any, substantial time speaking or debating on the details of domestic issues and her chequered foreign policy record, particularly regarding the horrendous failures of Libya and Syria. Instead, on numerous occasions, especially during the debates, she would refer people to “my website” – as if that’s what people really wanted. Normally, people want to hear it from the candidates mouth, but the internet has offered a nice respite for politicians who prefer not to get tangled in discussing real issues in the flesh.
It should be noted that from the beginning, the gender argument has been pervasive in all Clinton messaging, almost to the point of entitlement. “It’s about time for woman to become president. We’re going to make history with the first woman in the White House.” For many Americans, however, this message based purely on identity politics tends to push discussion of the candidate’s credentials and policies to the background. It is also used to fend of any criticism or inquiry into policy specifics. Not surprisingly, Clinton has mostly steered away from specifics or making any promises – like her predecessor Obama did when he promised everything imaginable for his first ‘100 Days’ in order to attract votes – including closing the offshore eyesore, Guantanamo Bay Prison, and bring the troops home from Iraq on his first day. None of this actually happened, which fuelled a lot of disenchantment and skepticism from younger voters this time around. Clinton’s gender platform has also been augmented by a racial plank, and the campaign constantly reminds its supporters that blacks and other ethnic minorities should have common cause with women, inferring that their liberal cohorts have also been held back by the cruel customs of a white male-dominated, Anglo-Saxon patriarchal society. In 2016 Democrats have also reintroduced the topic slavery as a major talking point. Result: more tension. Clinton’s slogan is “Stronger Together,” but one could argue that it’s possible the Democratic Party’s obsession with promoting identity politics has done more to foster political divisions (and subdivisions), than to unite all of society. This is a debate which should happen, but few dare to challenge the political left on that issue. Some food for thought: a recent Rasmussen Poll concluded that race relations in the US have deteriorated under President Obama, the highest dissatisfaction mark since he was elected eight years ago – up 18 points since 2014. Why have ‘race relations’ gone down hill? These poll results appeared for a reason, and it’s probably not because white America was upset they elected a black president in 2008, although this is what Democrats insist when you show them this particular poll. It could also be related to the caustic, relentless confrontational identity politics agenda being pushed by ‘agents of change’ on the new radical left. Or maybe it simply reflects a fundamental failure of leadership which only panders to their own side of the aisle – and shuns the other. America will remain divided unless both Democrats and Republicans, ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’ can figure one how to overcome this flaw.
Although Bill might be his wife’s greatest asset, but he is also her biggest Achilles heal. Hillary has built her entire political career on the back her two-term husband – with the former First Lady slipping seamlessly into brand Clinton and a ready-made political legacy. After Hillary unleashed the misogynist card on Trump, Bill soon came under fire over his own sordid history of sexual deviance. After that, Bill was used sparingly in pubic. Instead, the campaign relied heavily of the White House – the President and the First Lady, Barack and Michelle Obama, to do many of the big campaign stops.
Collectively, it seemed like Hillary’s VIP surrogates did more campaigning than she did herself. Multimillionaire celebrity surrogates lined up to stump for Hillary, including Katie Perry (image, above), Bruce Springstein, Bon Jovi, Robert DeNiro, Jennifer Lopez, Madonna, Leonardo DiCaprio, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Jay Z, Beyonce and even LeBron James.
Looking cool with the kids.
Even with all of that celebrity power though, Trump still attracted vastly bigger crowds on his own. But how? Why would a minimum of 15,000 at every stop turn out just for Trump?
With more than a touch of irony, the one person who articulated this phenomenon better than anyone else was a radical left-wing icon, filmmaker Michael Moore. He recently filmed a one man show entitled TrumpLand where Moore’s said this:
“I know a lot of people in Michigan that are planning to vote for Trump and they don’t necessarily like him that much, and they don’t necessarily agree with him. They’re not racist or rednecks, they’re actually pretty decent people, and so after talking to a number of them I wanted to write this:
Donald Trump came to the Detroit Economic Club and stood there in front of Ford Motor executives and said, “if you close these factories as you’re planning to do in Detroit and build them in Mexico, I’m going to put a 35% tariff on those cars when you send them back and nobody’s going to buy them.”
It was an amazing thing to see. No politician, Republican or Democrat, had ever said anything like that to these executives, and it was music to the ears of people in Michigan and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — the “Brexit” states. You live here in Ohio, you know what I’m talking about. Whether Trump means it or not, is kind of irrelevant because he’s saying the things to people who are hurting, and that’s why every beaten-down, nameless, forgotten working stiff who used to be part of what was called the middle class loves Trump. He is the human molotov cocktail that they’ve been waiting for. The human hand grande that they can legally throw into the system that stole their lives from them.
And on November 8, Election Day, although they lost their jobs, although they’ve been foreclose on by the bank, and next came the divorce and now the wife and kids are gone, the car’s been repoed, they haven’t had a real vacation in years, they’re stuck with the shitty Obamacare Bronze Plan where you can’t even get a fucking percocet. They’ve essentially lost everything they had, except one thing — the one thing that doesn’t cost them a cent, and is guaranteed to them by the American constitution: the right to vote. They might be penniless, they might be homeless, they might be fucked over and fucked up it doesn’t matter, because it’s equalized on that day – a millionaire has the same number of votes as the person without a job: one. And there’s more of the former middle class than there are in the millionaire class.
So on November 8, the dispossessed will walk into the voting booth, be handed a ballot, close the curtain, and take that lever or felt pen or touchscreen and put a big fucking X in the box by the name of the man who has threatened to upend and overturn the very system that has ruined their lives: Donald J. Trump. They see that the elite who ruined their lives hate Trump. Corporate America hates Trump. Wall Street hates Trump. The career politicians hate Trump. The media hates Trump, after they loved him and created him, and now hate. Yes, on November 8, you Joe Blow, Steve Blow, Bob Blow, Billy Blow, all the Blows get to go and blow up the whole goddamn system because it’s your right. Trump’s election is going to be the biggest fuck ever recorded in human history and it will feel good.”
For many, including Michael Moore, Trump might not be the ideal vehicle for such a profound movement, and yet, he is that vehicle.
Granted, half of the American population have been conditioned to hate Trump for various reasons. But many of them are missing the key point in the Trump story, just like they did in the Sanders story. Trumped offered millions of voters something profound: the idea that even in today’s insulated political fortress in Washington DC, anything is still possible in American politics.
This concept should not to be underestimated. It’s a fundamental tenet of the American culture. As flawed an individual as he might be – at this moment in time, Trump is the avatar who embodies this idea hope.
In today’s political reality show and infotainment media environment, timing is everything and America loves a comeback. Trump’s late October surge in the polls certainly reflected that public sentiment and overall enthusiasm. Trump has flown more miles and visited more cities than any other presidential candidate in memory – so he’s not leaving much on the table in terms of energy. Will this translate into votes in key swing states? We’ll see…
Sure, when it all started, Donald Trump was Mickey Mouse, but somewhere along the way, the novelty has transformed into a bona fide movement. The fact that Trump, a candidate with zero political experience, bested a total of 16 other GOP primary candidates – all of who were season, career politicians – revealed just how profoundly unpopular establishment party stalwarts are with the general electorate. No amount of TV advertising can gloss over this realty. What began as a ‘protest vote’ for so many who no longer trust, no feel any affinity with elite politicians, morphed into a powerful mandate for change.
Trump victory in the GOP primaries was historic – it signalled an outright rejection of the party establishment, of the constant banal Republican bickering over who is the “most conservative,” and the traditional construct of the polished politician.
On the Democratic Party slate, the exact same phenomenon unfolded, with candidate Bernie Sanders gathering tens of millions of anti-establishment and anti-war voters in the 12 months preceding the Democratic Party Convention. In modern media terms Sanders couldn’t be any less appealing – with his unkept hair, the dandruff flaking off of the shoulders of his dodgy suit coats, and the semi-hunchback look. His supporters couldn’t care less. The legions of college aged students, didn’t seem to care about the looks or the lack of Clintonesque cleverly scripted sound bites. As Sanders rightly pointed out, unlike Hillary Clinton, he voted against the Iraq War in 2003. This resonated with the grassroots base. Unlike his opponent, Sanders was not pandering to Wall Street and accepting large sums of money from elite financial interests.
To his base, Sanders was the real deal – and for the same reasons that Trump’s base is still behind him. The political and media establishment have gone to great lengths to conceal this reality, but in doing so they are only delaying their eventual demise.
This is a long tail trend which is not going to reverse itself, and it’s not confined to the US either – it’s international. We saw this to some extent with the BREXIT vote this past summer which defied the political media establishment’s version of consensus reality. Political stalwarts and generational glad-handers will try their hardest to ignore it, but it’s a clear public mandate – away from the carefully controlled establishment model of politics. Last year in Britain, millions of voters shunned the Labour Party establishment and mainstream media favorites, and instead threw massive support behind the current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Like Sanders, Corbyn is not a media poster boy. Before this year, you’d have been hard-pressed to spot the aging Corbyn clean-shaven, or wearing a suit, much less a tie. This political shift confounded all of the ‘experts’ and has triggered a tectonic shift in the Labour Party itself, as acolytes and devotees of former Prime Minister Tony Blair have all but thrown their toys out of their prams over the Corbyn issue. Like with Sanders, the people gathered in droves behind a brazenly anti-establishment and antiwar leader who was cast aside by the party establishment and media operatives.
In Italy, a similar populist movement is well under way with the Five Star Movement, originally launched in 2011 by Italian comedian and entertainer Beppe Grillo. Five Star are now in Parliament. The term ‘Five Star’ symbolizes five key issues for the party: public water, sustainable transport, sustainable development, right to internet access, and environmentalism. Similarly, Spain has recently seen the world’s first crowd-funded political party with Podemos (translated ‘We Can’). This is the future.
If Clinton wins you can expect a huge celebrity-studded Gala Ball in Washington DC, followed by 18 months of Congressional hearings, indictments, impeach hearings and general gridlock.Expect the usual cast of suspects in her Cabinet, surrounded by all the usual insiders. Expect Bill to be named Hillary’s “economic Tsar.” Expect the Clinton’s net worth to sky rocket. With so many scandals already on the boiler, it will get ugly, and it will stay ugly. There will be gridlock well into 2020. Like Obama did with race, Clinton will certainly make gender the defining issue of her presidency, as well as continue hammering home the idea that America has a ‘race’ problem. So expect those Rasmussen numbers to continue on their present trajectory. Expect Trump supporters to call foul on ‘vote rigging’ too. Sooner than later, you can expect an escalation of rhetoric and talk of ‘No Fly Zones’ and military confrontation with Russia and Syria, and possibly even Iran.
If Trumps wins, the mainstream media will be in a state of shock, followed by a state of panic, followed by a state of chaos. Expect the likes of George Soros and MoveOn.org to unleash wave after wave of flash mobs, who will protest, riot, smash and burn their way on to CNN’s 24 hour news rotation. Expect Occupy 2.0, and #BlackLivesMatter to rage. You can also be certain that Clinton, the Democrats and their media operatives at CNN, MSNBC and others, will accuse Vladimir Putin and the Russians of ‘hacking’ the US election in favor of Trump.
Regardless of which person wins, expect FBI director Jim Comey to resign after this election.
Expect both candidates to prosecute their ‘war on ISIS’, their ‘war on poverty’, their war on drugs’ and their ‘war on domestic extremism.’
Expect a heavily divided and half bitter nation.
Expect serious political party alternatives to emerge.
Tomorrow, history will be made for either the outsider Trump, or the insider Clinton.
When you’re talking about the outsiders though, whether it’s Trump, Sanders, Corbyn or Grillo, no matter how pious or forthright, they will ultimately get caught in the gears of government, with all its trappings of nepotism and institutional corruption. The outsider eventually becomes the insider.
If there’s one lesson to be learned by this year’s US presidential race, it’s certainly an old lesson by now. Despite his epic shortcomings in social engineering, old Karl Marx did get one thing right when he said, “Elections give the people the right every few years to choose which member of the ruling class will misrepresent them.”
Or as someone once said, “No matter who you vote for the government always gets in.”
READ MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 Files