Last summer, a young conservative writer penned an interesting opinion piece for the New York Times, in which he expressed a mea culpa for the role he played in the election of Donald J. Trump as president. The Trump administration was just a little over 200 days old in office and this writer, Julius Krein, who wrote for the National Affairs journal, thought he’d had enough of Trump’s “unforced errors” and the political chaos he was creating in the country.
The article drew over 5,200 rejoinders, certainly one of the most thought-provoking opinion write-ups published by the “Paper of Record” in recent times. What I found remarkable about the piece, however, was that the author ---- a conservative Republican ---- discovered both the thoughtfulness and the courage to declare the error of his ways and make a volte-face. But the mind-boggling thing for me was how he could have failed ---- as bright as he must be ---- to have a sense of what was coming with Trump. Trump, give him credit for that, did not prevaricate about what he was coming to Washington to do. He was going to take a rock breaker to all the institutions of liberal democracy that make this great nation what it is.
Trump didn’t win because he had Krein’s support; he won because he had a lot of support from the Left in a variety of ways. Many Democrats, Liberals or Progressives, didn’t consider Hillary Clinton “likable enough”, “authentic enough”, or put another way, they thought she was “corrupt” just because Bernie Sanders, her primary opponent, drove us all deaf with that mantra. So they stayed home. Others voted for Trump to spite Clinton. And yet some others cast protest votes for third-party candidates because they could not “stand” the very candidate who espoused their own values. They forgot that it was not all about the candidate, but more about those values. They forgot that not long before, President Barack Obama’s prerogative to fill a vacancy at the Supreme Court was stolen from him by Mitch McConnell pending the outcome of the election.
Now, let us not forget that there were equally many on the Right with a disdainful view of Trump that veered towards outright hate. But unlike many of their counterparts on the Left with a tunnel vision and a memory not much longer than that of your average goldfish, the Right ---- Conservatives and Evangelicals in particular ---- retreated to their redoubt to secure victory for their candidate and worry about the unattractive things about him later. In holding their noses to vote for Trump, they knew what was in play: the Supreme Court. Today, they’re the jubilant beneficiaries of a slew of bizarre, activist rulings that have come from that court, the latest being the Muslim travel ban by Trump.
As those of us this side of the aisle lament and wail over these rulings, it is important to remember how it all began. If you voted for Clinton, your lamentation is legitimate, and I lend you a shoulder to lean on as I hope you’ll extend yours to me too. And to those of you on our side of the aisle who facilitated Trump’s election either by not voting at all or by voting for him, or by wasting your votes for a third-party candidate like Jill Stein, that woman of irremediable political odium, you lack every rationale to grouse until, like the young fellow in the Times op-ed piece, you confess the foolishness of your ways and enlist as a foot soldier in the several battles ahead.
Below is a piece I did for another forum in a similar frame of mind as above, following the Women’s March on Washington, January 21–22, 20017:
HOW IS IT WORKING OUT SO FAR?
By Mudiaga Ofuoku
Never in the history of American democracy has so much been achieved by so smart an electorate. The following group of people should be very proud of themselves for helping to midwife an America now on its way to being "Great Again."
1) The so-called "Movement” that wanted him to take an axe to the system and hurl flames onto the fundamentals of the country's cherished democratic order.
2) All those who despite receiving all the Warnings about him --- including the ones effectively sounded by the Obamas almost tearfully --- still decided he was the better of the two candidates.
3) The media that stoked, then fed fat on all the stories about "Benghazi" and "emails" ginned up as scandals by her political "enemies". In the time since her loss, no one has heard about those “scandals” again. Cute.
4) Maureen Dowd, Joe Scarborough, Mike Brzezinski, and those of their tribe who, egged on by a narrowness of vision, and showing no shame, brownnosed the man until he was crowned king.
5) Those who otherwise would have voted for her but who didn't because they either did not "trust" her or hated her so irrationally.
6) Those men who saw her through the lens of misogyny and dismissed her as incapable of the office of the president of the United States just because God in His infinite wisdom has given her an anatomy that’s opposite theirs.
7) Those women who listened to the men actuated by the above attitude and decided to despise and betray one of their own.
8) The Black folks who stayed home because Obama was not on the ballot.
9) The liberals who voted Third Party or pulled the levers for him or stayed home because they adjudged her "inauthentic”, unlike their beloved Bernie. “She’s unlovable", a Bernie follower once tweeted at me in a fit of temper.
10) And Bernie who threw a monkey wrench into her bid by pulling her all the way to the Left where elections are hardly won, and by calling her those ugly names that helped to damage her even before the man who would become king emerged as the other side's candidate.
Protest all you want, the damage is already done. Your marching and howling and screaming of expletives at him won’t undo it or stop him from doing what he warned you he was going to do in the first place. You don't shut the stable door after the horse has bolted. The Republicans are not going to save you by removing him. Before him, they quake and fold like a cheap suit. Worse, they won't bother because they have as Speaker a man who’s just as mean-spirited, who cares much for himself and naught for you. That is the Republican orthodoxy anyway.
Elections have serious consequences. You are just beginning to see the least of those consequences from a man with whom you could be stuck for the next four years, if not eight. Please, buckle your seatbelts and brace yourselves for the rollercoaster.
