Is it me or are the media missing one of the critical backstories of the 2016 presidential election?
It goes like this … I believe.
Right up until Election Day, the media were reporting theĀ pending demise of the once-great Republican Party. The GOP, media types reported, was in need of an extreme makeover. Their presidential candidate was about to get creamed by Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Batten down the hatches! A storm was a brewin’ within the Republican Party ranks, they said.
Then a funny thing happened on Nov. 8. The GOP presidential nominee won. Donald J. Trump collected enough Electoral College votes to be elected president of the United States of America.
What the … ?
Now it’s the Democratic Party that’s in need of that makeover.
The candidates for Democratic National Committee chair are facing searing, probing questions about how they intend to lead a party in near-panic.
Clinton lost the election. Democrats failed to win the U.S. Senate majority they anticipated getting; nor did they make any substantial gains in trimming the Republican majority in the House of Representatives.
This remarkable turnaround occurred within a span of, oh, about seven or eight hours the night they were counting the ballots for president.
Polling now suggests that the next Democratic Party presidential nominee should be someone few of us have heard about … another candidate as unknown as, say, Jimmy Carter needs to take the stage.
It well might turn out that Republicans might regret lining up behind a candidate such as Trump, who seems to lack any fundamental core principles that guide him. He once was pro-choice on abortion; now he’s pro-life. He believes gay marriage is now the law of the land; many within the GOP believe quite differently. He thinks free trade is a scam; RepublicansĀ embrace free-trade policies. And, oh yes, we have some conflict-of-interest matters to slog through.
I’ll stop there. You get the point.
But, hey. The guy won! Elections have consequences, eh? Oh, brother, do they ever!