By Julio Espinoza, Staff Writer
Many Americans went to bed feeling sad and woke up feeling scared after the so-called Trump Shock. Many Americans were quiet and grieving the morning after. A sound reality check had shaken the entire political intelligentsia in our country and the wold. The unbelievable came true and many Americans were not ready to come to terms with the results of the presidential electoral process.
President Barack Obama shakes hands with President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Thursday, Nov. 10, 2016. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
This is a process that started with a myriad of candidates, mostly Republican. Nobody expected that President-elect Trump could have defeated the elite of the Republican Party and then take over the elite of the Democratic Party. Most commentators predicted a tight race up to the end with a favorable result to the Democratic Party, but they were half right and half wrong. Clinton’s defeat perhaps can be explained by three variables: 1) The independents and swing voters in battle ground states waited until the end to make up their minds and did not vote for Clinton. 2) The e-mail scandal and the FBI’s role in the last two weeks of the campaign caused many people to have doubts about the integrity of Secretary Clinton, and the email affair just validated their gut feeling of not voting for the same old school political elite that hides their scandals. 3) The Democratic Party chose the wrong candidate from the beginning because they were lacking good presidential candidates (just compare the number of contenders in the GOP primaries) and the result was a candidate with great qualifications but lacking the public’s trust and approval.
The victory of President-Elect Trump was a combination of factors that ultimately mirrored the will of the majority of counties and states in our country. The electoral map of the U.S. turned red in a general cry of frustration with the status quo. Democrats failed to understand that people wanted change. The Democrats will have to do a lot of soul searching regarding what they did wrong during the last 8 years because moderates, the elderly and the disenfranchised voted for a change. It seems that the referendum of the Obama Administration was not favorable for the Democrats because the GOP won almost everything.
It is sad to be opposition. In 2012 Mexicans voted for President Pena Nieto, the most unfit candidate in the race, because of the unpopularity of the war on drugs of President Calderon. It was a punishment to the political elite that backfired upon the whole country, as you can see now in the news. Pena Nieto’s approval ratings are the lowest for an incumbent president in modern Mexican history, and the Mexican public has lost faith in his leadership as the polls show uncertainty about the country’s future. The same happened with Brexit: a general election that was a referendum of the E.U. integration effects, not about the long-term national interest of the U.K., turned out to shock the entire world as the U.K. public voted for leaving the E.U.
There is a constant pattern in the three above events: there was a referendum on a set of public policies that was not necessarily an informed decision with long-term sight. The U.K. will face the consequences of leaving Europe soon and might want to come back to Brussels. Mexico is already feeling the consequences of a poor electoral choice. America stepped into the dark and we need to figure out how to move forward, because there is no way back. Half of Americans are disappointed and frustrated and we can see it in the nationwide demonstrations protesting the electoral results. The Democrats lost for many inconsistencies that they need to amend.
As President Obama stated on November 9, we all are patriots. Therefore, it is time to put aside our differences and work together for making America great. If we all are rooting for America to prevail, we need to support President-elect Trump, be engaged with our community, speak up to our local and state representatives, take to court our disagreements, trust our neighbors’ intentions, and believe that the American way of life will always prevail no matter how dangerous times could be. Welcome, President-Elect Trump, and thank you Secretary Clinton for your leadership.
P.S. Please, do not move abroad; stay and help us fix the country.