You have probably heard by now that we recently had an election. The lady who was supposed to win did not, and the shittiest job in the world just went to the guy who seems to be realizing now that he never really wanted it in the first place.
In the waning hours of Tuesday the 8th, a bit more than half the country began mourning its loss. It was the second time in three presidencies that a Democratic candidate won the popular vote and lost the election at the hands of an electoral system that is unanimously regarded as obsolete.
The rest of the country, after a few hours of jubilation and hate crimes, started to lose a day or so later as our President Elect began to backpedal on pillars of his campaign stump one at a time.
It started with the wall, which by Thursday had turned into a fence, and by this week seems to look more like a policy of mass incarceration. Promises of getting money out of politics went by the wayside as he stacked his transition team with lobbyists. A week after swearing up and down that the Affordable Care Act would be repealed and replaced, he reneged to say that much of it was good, and it just needed some work (which, btw, is essentially verbatim to Clinton’s position).
He cried out to #DrainTheSwamp. To rid Washington of the establishment goons that have ruined America and replace them with fresh thinkers. Then he appointed Reince Priebus, literally the single most establishment Republican there is, as his Chief of Staff.
This year we watched everyday political attack ads devolve into the manufactured drama usually reserved for reality shows. We watched an incidentally uninformed electorate grow into a deliberately misinformed electorate. And we saw backpedaling from campaign promises reach cartoon status.
The American political system, in 2016, has become a caricature of itself.
There are, apparently, no winners in this election. No winners except for cynicism.
You’ve heard it. Clinton won the vote but lost the election. It was always rigged against Bernie. Trump won’t fulfill a single promise, but has stacked his cabinet with a chilling combination of neo-Nazi ideologues, anti-science scientists, and brutally efficient policy men.
Trump rode a wave of populist anger to our highest office, but it feels now more than ever like the will of the voters is unheard in Washington. This election dashed the hopes and dreams of half the nation that we would triumph over a divisive campaign and elect a female president. The first week of Donald Trump’s presidential transition may set the stage to dash the hopes of the people who put him in that office.
We’re facing, now, a 2020 election in a nation of cynics. Where the feeling of hopelessness transcends political affiliation and We The People disengage from the political process because it doesn’t make a difference anyway.
That will be a mistake.
In the same way that we need to continue to hold Obama accountable for campaign promises like closing Guantanamo, we need to hold President Trump accountable for his promise to fix national healthcare. His promise to return prosperity to the American Middle Class. His promise to get money out of politics. His promise to erase corruption from Washington. His promise to quash international terrorism.
The Candidate Trump made a lot of promises that we can all get behind, and he will take office on January 21 with a Republican controlled legislature. Trump has all of the momentum here, and if he can’t fulfill his promises to improve the quality of life of Americans, then it’s our job to find someone who can.
We do that by holding our elected officials accountable to the promises they made to get our vote, and by participating in every election (not just the ones with half billion dollar ad campaigns).
Mid-term elections are two years out. And whether you’re disillusioned by the results of 2016 or the flacid promises of a blustering showman, that’s the time to make your presence felt.
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