Reason #5772 - #5774 That Trump Was Elected

A year ago the sun rose and we woke up to discover that Hillary was never going to be President!

I think it's time to retire this thread of posts with:

Salena Zito: America still hasn't recovered from Trump's shocking win

There’s still a sharp pain in Sarah Moberly’s gut. The hurt and disbelief she felt watching the presidential election one year ago remains ever-present.

In fact, it has escalated.

“Honestly, I feel absolutely worse today than I did last year and it just keeps getting worse every day,” she told The Post. “The moment that Hillary conceded, it was a feeling of complete doom. That’s the only way I can put it. I went to bed, I put the covers over my head. I woke up the next morning, I put the covers back over my head, and I didn’t want to get out of bed for like a week,” she said. “I kept thinking, this is a dream and that I’d wake up. Nope, that wasn’t a dream that really just happened.”

America still has not recovered from the shocking victory of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton on Nov. 8, 2016. And while past presidential elections have always led to disagreement between friends and relatives and neighbors, this election has ripped the nation in two. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey of 5,000 adults, the country’s partisan divide has widened even further under Trump, especially on key issues like climate change, race and immigration. There is now an average 36 percentage point difference between the two parties — more than twice the 15 percentage point difference first measured in 1994, the study said.

As a result, people across the land are feeling fractious, fatigued and very angry.

That’s true especially in Michigan, which voted for a Republican president for the first time since 1988. Pundits had largely expected the state to swing blue, but Trump had other ideas. While Clinton assumed the Rust Belt was in her pocket and did minimal campaigning there, the Republican challenger visited the Midwest multiple times, concluding with a massive rally in Michigan on the last day of the race. His strategy worked — he won Michigan by roughly 13,000 votes, helping him seal his Electoral College victory.

Kurt Schlicter: Brace Yourself for Four Years of Nonstop Freakoutrage

The left is trying to come to grips with its utter rejection, and its response to Donald Trump will be to fall back on an endless series of freakoutrages – hyperbolic, unhinged, hack media-fueled spasms of faux moral panic every time he dares do anything.

Appoint someone to a job? Freak out – it’s an outrage!

Go to dinner? Freak out – it’s an outrage!

Actually keep promises made to the voters? Freak out – it’s an outrage!

But it isn’t going to work. Not anymore. Not with the form of the Destructor Hillary and the rest of super smart Team Smugfail chose. Freakoutrage fatigue is in effect. You can cry Wolf Blitzer all day long and nobody cares.

It’s important to understand why liberals are so angry and so scared. They are angry because they believe they have a moral right to command us, apparently bestowed by Gaia or #Science or having gone to Yale, and we are irredeemably deplorable for not submitting to their benevolent dictatorship.

They are scared because they fear we will wage the same kind of campaign of petty (and not so petty) oppression, intimidation, and bullying that they intended to wage upon us.

And their fear tastes like sunshine puked up by a unicorn. . .

Michael Barone: Keep calm and carry on

It’s true that every president since 1945 has had access to the nuclear trigger. And Trump’s insult-laden style and constant tweeting strikes many people (including me) as repugnant and, if sometimes momentarily effective in framing issues, often self-defeating in both the short and long run.

All that said, Trump’s actions, in contrast to many of his words, strike me as comparable to other presidents. One can argue that an office designed for someone as sternly self-disciplined as George Washington is overly powerful and prominent, but no one seriously contemplates restructuring the Constitution.

On a multitude of issues, the Trump administration has operated like others replacing a president of the opposite party. His judicial nominations, starting with Justice Neil Gorsuch, have been just what one expects from a Republican president.

His appointees have reversed predecessors’ regulations: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on college and university sexual assault kangaroo courts, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt on regulations aimed at shutting down coal mining.

The Trump team is operating in a target-rich environment, due to Barack Obama’s legally dubious “pen and phone” executive orders like the DACA “Dreamers” amnesty and spending unappropriated funds on Obamacare’s cost-saving reduction payments. The Congressional Review Act, a 1996 Newt Gingrich innovation that lay dormant for 20 years, has enabled narrow Republican congressional majorities to overturn more regulations than Democrats ever anticipated.

On legislation generally, Trump’s record so far resembles more the hapless first two years of Bill Clinton’s administration than the legislatively more productive initial biennia of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Presidential ignorance and disengagement contributed to the Republican failure on healthcare, and may do so on taxes.

On two major issues — trade and immigration — on which Trump has taken positions at odds with the last ten presidents of both parties, course corrections were arguably overdue.

Trump favors bilateral trade agreements with single partners over multilateral agreements, which have been foundering. The Doha round, initiated in 2001, has failed; the Trans-Pacific Partnership was not completed in time for ratification before it was opposed by both parties’ 2016 presidential nominees.

On immigration, Trump wants to scale back on extended family unification and expand places for high-skill immigrants. Something like this has already been happening since the 2007-08 economic crash. Low-skill immigration from Mexico has fallen to near zero. Relatively high-skill immigrants from Asian now outnumber relatively low-skill immigrants from Latin America. An official policy that accelerated this trend would not be radical. . .

And so with that, I conclude the series. It's not that I won't continue to point out the positive trends, and the hysterical liberal reaction to their programs being slowed if not obliterated, but as a daily task? No mas!

Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" and links.