Scrap that.
Prior to Mr. Trump’s
victory, a Hartford Courant political writer instructed a Talk of Connecticut
Election Luncheon audience that “The Donald” was sub-human, and Bill Curry, whose support of socialist
Bernie Sanders quickly shifted to Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton once Mrs. Clinton had bumped off Mr. Sanders,
declared that Mr. Trump was “emotionally unbalanced, a fascist, and a fraud”.
Perhaps after Mr. Trump has been in office a couple of years, Mr. Curry will readjust his depreciation of President Elect Trump, even as
he has frequently adjusted his politics between the now abandoned Mr. Sanders
and the re-embraced Mrs. Clinton.
Nationally, people
will be disputing the real meaning of Mr. Trump’s stunning victory over Mrs.
Clinton for months to come, but none of the premises that put a smile on
Democratic faces before Election Day held up under the withering fire of what
turned out to be a Huey Long populist campaign. Connecticut's Federalist Society, Lawyers Division will be holding a post election "Happy-Sad Day" on November 10 at Vaughn's Public House, 59 Pratt Street, Hartford CT.
The women’s vote did not carry Mrs. Clinton across the finish line. Mr. Trump, who had some harsh
things to say about Mexico during his campaign, was not fatally punished by Hispanics. The African American vote, an overwhelming force in President Barack
Obama’s two elections, proved to be a spent storm, even though Mr. Obama had
campaigned vigorously for Mrs. Clinton, who was, Mr. Obama repeatedly said, the
most experienced nominee to run for president in modern history. Unfortunately,
Mrs. Clinton was running at a time when the wrong experience had doubled the
national debt, saddled the nation with a highly defective Obamacare health-care
system, produced anemic job growth and left the Middle East in the bloodied
hands of Islamic terrorists. Most alarmingly from a Democratic point of view,
the Republican Party, shattered into a thousand pieces by Mr. Trump’s
take-no-prisoners Primary, mobilized at the last moment to hoist Mr. Trump into
the White House. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Governor Scott Walker are credited
with delivering Wisconsin to Mr. Trump, the fulcrum that turned the election
towards a sweeter and milder Republican Presidential candidate we glimpsed in
his victory speech.
The fractious
Republican Party now commands the heights of American politics: The
Presidential office and both Houses of Congress now repose in shattered
Republican hands.
Here in Connecticut,
Republicans won seats in both Houses of the General Assembly. In the House,
Democratic numbers are down to 79-72, owing to an eight net gain by
Republicans, and the Senate is now evenly split 18-18 between the two major
parties. The state GOP has been making steady gains in the General Assembly
ever since Governor Dannel Malloy won office and booted Republicans out of the
room where Democrats and State Employee Unions, Connecticut’s fourth branch of
government, shaped Connecticut’s budget.
Following losses in
the General Assembly, a ragged tailed remnant of moderate Democrats now allow
that unforgiving progressives, chastened by voters, will at long last have to
deal with Republicans. A bridge-building Democratic Senator, Paul Doyle of
Wethersfield, says it plainly: Having lost so many seats in the General
Assembly to Republicans during the last few elections, Democrats must relearn
the art of governance. Governor Dannel Malloy, still bending reality to his
will, now implausibly insists that he is a bridge-builder used to involving
Republicans in his important decisions -- this from a Governor who has numerous
times banished Republicans from the budget decision-making table.
Mr. Trump’s successful
campaign is a rebuke to: a national Republican Party that lacked the courage of
its often professed convictions; a foundering President who already has
squandered his legacy before a single stone had been set in the foundation of his inevitable Presidential Library, Mrs. Clinton’s defeat having put a period
to his efforts in refashioning the American Republic; family dynasties, the
country having said NO to both the Bushes and the Clintons; a progressive
driven media that still cannot understand why voters in the Naugatuck Valley,
Connecticut’s Trump corridor, find the President Elect’s unalloyed brashness
liberating; Connecticut Democrats with national ambitions who soon will be returning
to a government wholly in the hands of the opposition; U.S. Senator Dick
Blumenthal, who this political season gave his Republican opponent only ONE opportunity
to debate him, and who, along with Mr. Malloy, implausibly insists he is a
Pontifex Maximus (literally, the "greatest bridge-builder,” the high priest
of the Collegium Pontificum in ancient Rome.) With the blessing of the Hartford
Courant, Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional Delegation has become a college of
pontiffs. In ancient Rome the Pontifex Maximus was appointed for life. So also
in Connecticut, if one is a Democrat with the proper left of center
credentials, election to the U.S. Congressional Delegation becomes in practice
a life term and a permanent rebuke to democracy.
Perhaps Mr. Trump’s
greatest gift to democracy American style was to demonstrate that anyone really can be elected
President, even sub-human proto-fascists.
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