Well, I never saw that coming — even though, maybe, I should have.
Like pretty much everyone else in the media working on Election Night, I never expected to be sitting in front of a microphone announcing Donald Trump’s ascendancy to the nation’s highest office. Even while the results were coming in, and I worked to analyze them alongside a borderline catatonic Bill Newman, it didn’t seem possible that this country would really elect this billionaire reality TV star the 45th president of the United States.
Of course, it did, and the fallout from that decision threatens to forever redefine the phrase “elections have consequences.” And while the nation struggles to move forward, I’m still stuck on how we all got fooled, especially when there were certain outliers staring us right in the face.
How many politicians these days not named Bernie Sanders draw 20,000- and 30,000-plus supporters to rallies in the last week of a campaign? How many others commit that many “electronic transgressions” during the course of a campaign and still remain standing?
How many others get the chance to run against so flawed an opponent? Many would like to lay the blame for Hillary’s defeat at the feet of FBI Director James Comey, but don’t, as W might say, “misunderestimate” the impact the Obamacare premium increase announcements and the Clinton-related Wikileaks revelations had on Trump’s numbers, that were more reflective of Hillary’s shortcomings than Trump’s upsides.
And how about those pre-election polls? Can we finally admit that it is impossible to extrapolate a national election based on a sample size of 150 random people? If this result doesn’t put that metric to bed once and for all, I don’t know what will.
I actually had a chance to take part in a little informal focus groups that turned out to be one hell of a lot more accurate than some of the “numbers” CNN was pumping out on a nightly basis.
Two weekends before the election, I attended my nephew’s wedding in Connecticut. Mike married Amanda, a very nice Italian girl from Bay Ridge, Queens. It was an interesting mix of people. At some point during the night, I found myself out on a deck in a haze of cigar smoke with a bunch of guys all from varying backgrounds. There were a couple of Wall Street types, a firefighter from Brooklyn, a Boston bar owner, and a few others with thick New York accents, all with one thing in common — they were all passionate Trump supporters.
As the conversation progressed, it became apparent that, besides being no fans of Hillary, these guys very much believed that the government was not listening to them, and that they’d rather take their chances with a someone who had some real-life accomplishments, rather than just another career politician. I remember leaving that deck thinking “if there are 40 million more like them, he just might win this thing.”
It turns out the number was closer to 50 million-plus, and even though they didn’t win a majority, they got “The Donald” to 290 electoral votes, a path previously believed to be unthinkable.
The fallout from the upset has caused many to take to the streets in protest and, as futile as that exercise may seem to some of us, there’s nothing wrong with it — until that civil disobedience begins to manifest itself in the form of property damage, attacks on cops, and burning the American flag. That’s when you lose me, and a lot of other Americans.
As the concept of a Trump administration begins to sink in, my reaction is the same as it was eight years ago when Obama was elected. Let’s give the guy a chance. It may not be all bad. It might even work out, and if it doesn’t, we’ll have plenty of chances to kick the crap out of him down the line, which is something we’ve really gotten good at as a nation.
That detente position, I have quickly discovered, is not exactly being embraced by Hillary supporters, which I might ordinarily chalk up to poor sportsmanship — until I see the utter devastation on the faces of a lot of good people, including many women I respect, for whom this is much more than just an ordinary electoral loss.
To many, it was a repudiation of their gender, not just because the nation failed to elect its first woman president, but because it elected a man many perceive as a misogynist of the lowest order. Agree with that view or not, those feelings need to be acknowledged and respected if we are ever going to begin to unify as a nation.
That’s perhaps my biggest concern moving forward. A lot of the focus over the next few months will be on policy changes and initiatives, as it should be. But if this president is truly interested in representing all Americans, he has got to find a way to dress the many still-open wounds that were very much his creation, and not just summarily dismiss them as the cost of doing political business.
If he doesn’t, the next four years may very well be a social and political nightmare from which this country will have a difficult time waking.
Chris Collins, who worked in local radio in a number of capacities, has observed political life in Franklin County for years. He also is a former staff reporter for The Recorder and a Greenfield native.