I've been wondering since yesterday whether to reproduce my contribution to The National's excellent coverage of the Trump victory. But it was cut, for space or at least I hope, to fit its page design and it didn't seem right to publish the pre-edited piece (you can see it as published here). As soon as I saw Bill Taylor's Facebook post, of which this is an unedited reproduction, I knew my dilemma - wanting Salut! to have something, not sure what - had been resolved ...
We should never have called her Hillary…
A good few words have already been written on the subject and many more will be written about how Donald Trump could possibly have won the election. A couple of people (three actually, two in emails, one in person) have asked me today what I thought.
So, at risk of being simplistic and stating the obvious (when has that ever stopped me?), here’s what I think. If nothing else, writing it down is good mental therapy, It might even help me sleep tonight:
First and foremost, calling Trump “Trump” and Clinton “Hillary” diminished her. We may have been comfortable calling her that but it took away a modicum of dignity… gravitas, maybe. And it was only the shortest step from that to Trump’s inspired – yes, I believe it was – “Crooked Hillary”. In this era of tiny byte-sized slogans, it lodged itself easily in the brain.
And then there were the brains… the people who voted for Trump weren’t all stupid or hillbillies or xenophobes; they were people with their own disparate agendas and when he spoke to their particular hope or fear, it was easy to shut out all else.
So what that the guy was/is a congenital liar, bully, abuser of women, egomaniac and – accused, anyway – financial fraud? He’s going to lower my taxes or he’s going to keep out Muslims or he’s going to keep out Mexicans or he’s going to kick out illegal immigrants. Whatever/whichever, he’s promised to ride my hobbyhorse, so all else is secondary.
There’s a very direct parallel with the US election and the Greater Toronto Area’s continued widespread support of Rob Ford. So what that he was a crack-smoking, alcoholic wastrel? He was going to lower our taxes, too; he was going to give us subways, he was going to make it easier to drive our cars into the city. What could his private life possibly have to do with that?
Clinton spoke in more general and inclusive terms, meaning there was less for the average voter to glom onto. A small detail is always easier to take in than a big picture. In many ways, this was a 140-character election.
Whatever she said, too many people heard “she’s going to take our guns, she’s going to raise our taxes, she’s going to allow unrestricted entry to refugees”. Trump kept it simple and hammered away at that.
There was widespread outrage when, at the end of their final debate, he called Clinton “such a nasty woman”. Yeah, but it stuck.
As did the words private server, secret emails (thousands of them!) and FBI. Even though she was cleared of any criminal behaviour, the thought remained that there could be no smoke without fire.
Trump, on the other hand, DID release his medical records (in the popular, Dr. Phil-watching mindset, anyway) and he COULDN’T release his tax records because he was being audited. Yes, the IRS said he absolutely could release them but they WOULD say that, wouldn’t they? A typical big-government ploy. And Trump was going to reduce the size of all that oppressive officialdom.
A scary man to have in control of the nuclear-access codes? That’s sci-fi stuff, beyond the grasp of the average post-Cold War mind. We’re far more concerned with the assault rifles that Clinton – Hillary. Crooked Hillary – is going to take away from us.
And, while we’re about it, we’d better vote the straight Republican ticket. Let’s not take the risk of Democrats getting control of the House or Senate.
Will the chickens come home to roost? Will voters realise there’s a big-picture downside to their small-picture personal visions?
Maybe, maybe not. There’s been little sign of anyone in Ford Nation finally grasping that their boy Rob was an unprecedented disaster as mayor.
In the last 24 hours, America has become smaller, narrower, scarier, nastier. Altogether diminished. That’s at least partly due to the way Democrats from the outset diminished their candidate and the country’s best, perhaps only, hope by calling her Hillary.
* My footnote, also from Facebook:
French TV's eve-of-election coverage included the Franco-American manager of Trump's NYC hotel explaining why he looked up so much to Donald. He described him as his mentor but, in a lapse from the pronunciation of Moliere, said menteur. Meaning liar. The interviewer David Pujadas's face lit up as he corrected it; our Trump-voting New Yorker was a little red-faced
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