I am a Watergate baby. I heard it all from the womb. I was literally in gestation during that year, and perhaps because of this I developed such an aversion to political chicanery.
In 2008, I, like everybody in my family and most of my friends, was a devout Hillary supporter. By the time she conceded to her Democratic opponent, I even grew to love her scratchy voice.
All that changed in 2015, and I, along with most of my friends and family, defected. I voted Richard Milhous Nixon yesterday because if I voted for Trump, my partner (who left the presidential options blank) would have been furious. There was no point in creating domestic strife when your presidential vote is meaningless anyway: I live in California.
No, I am not a typical Trump follower. I hold three advanced degrees, and I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. My mother is Hispanic and my father is a Jew from New Jersey. I was raised a Democrat.
This election with all of its lies, exposed manipulation, and suppression of competition succeeded in alienating me completely from the Democratic Party.
They tried to scare me to vote for Mrs. Clinton by fabricating lies about what Trump would do to blacks, Hispanics, and gays if he were in power. It had nothing to do with what he actually said or did. Nevertheless, they thought that because of their education and class they could distort reality and justify coercion to accomplish their ends. They accused him of every “ism” but felt perfectly justified in their own bigotry. They refused to see the hypocrisy because the media reinforced their self-righteousness, and college campuses bolstered them.
They were arrogant, aggressive, and worst of all, smug. They insisted on pushing through a criminal and screwing everybody else over. They thought they had a lock on the electoral college, and the media perpetuated their fantasy.
They thumbed their noses at people of integrity like Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley because they thought the Democratic machine was all-powerful and they could force the deceitful, mercenary Mrs. Clinton on the world. They pretended Bernie was divisive when they knew he was a gentleman. They refused to acknowledge that he would have been a “first” as a Jewish president. They made fun of his followers.
They were obsessed with the idea of “firsts” without contemplating that being the first candidate to run while under an FBI investigation was disqualifying.
They excused Mrs. Clinton’s self-serving behavior and turned a blind eye to the collusion between the DNC and the media. Before their party reigned in the White House, they spent eight years being indignant about W’s dissembling, supposed manipulation of the branches of government, and executive overreach. Nevertheless they were okay with Mr. Obama authorizing the attorney general to force the FBI to exonerate Mrs. Clinton. They did not wince when Mr. Obama exculpated the former Secretary of State ahead of the conclusion of a non-partisan investigation. They knew it was wrong, but they didn’t give a damn.
They thought it was acceptable to refer to working class whites as a “basket of deplorables.” They were gleeful repeating it. Not one of them was willing to interpret it for what its creator meant when she concocted the clumsy phrase. She meant white trash. Trash goes in a basket.
They thought they would shame us into accepting their moral waywardness. Coercion through Indignation and outrage has been, until now, their winning modus operandi.
It is time for progressives to inspect their own souls and abandon their finger wagging.