2016 Election Results Update - Trump Wins White House

It is very early in the morning on the day after Election Day in America. It is so early, that it is still dark outside.

In a few hours, daylight will rise, and at least locally here in New Jersey, but there will be a certain lingering darkness.

The results of this election, and particularly the presidential election, are an embarrassment. We as Americans should be embarrassed with this result.

Frankly, we should be embarrassed with both of the major party candidates, who both shared record high unfavorability ratings for major party candidates. Neither of them were trusted at all, often even by members of their own party. 

Ultimately, the results of this election are seen as a shock by many. Republicans won across the board, but the biggest and most obvious win for them was the presidency, with Donald Trump winning it outright, and convincingly at that.

The results were stunning for many, myself included. Many people did not see this coming, and I will admit to being one of them. Frankly, as disappointed as I have been with the results of past elections (particularly 2004), I did not think we would stoop to a point where the nation would elect to the White House a man who bragged about the size of his penis during a presidential debate, who boasted about all of the women he grabbed by the pussy and had sex with, and who insulted whole groups of people, including but not necessarily restricted to women, blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, the disabled, and veterans. 

Man, was I ever wrong!

The election was close, at least in terms of the number of popular vote. It is still not impossible that Clinton might wind up winning the popular vote, although she certainly did not come close to winning the electoral college. Trump managed to win enough states, and moreover, managed to flip some traditionally blue states - particularly Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. 

Just unbelievable.

Now, America upped Britain by having it's own election to, pardon the expression, trump Brexit. Yes, this was America's Brexit, and the world's financial markets were already reacting well before Trump had officially won the election. 

You know, with such a tight race, it makes me wonder what the future of both of these two major parties are.

A couple of weeks ago, Hillary looked like a lock, and I remember some prominent Republicans were seemingly calling for Trump to step aside.

My, how things have changed.

Let me be honest and state clearly that I could not stand Hillary Clinton, and frankly, I hope that the Clintons finally take the hint with this and just go away. There time has come and gone, and they clearly did not offer anything really new to inspire the country. They are political animals who only move on a position once it is deemed politically profitable, and that is not the kind of leadership that this nation needs.

That said, now that the improbable prospect of a Donald Trump presidency will become reality, I am fearful. I thought about my son, and thought about Trump's overly easy mentioning of war, of the carelessness of his words, even in relation to our staunchest traditional allies when he mentions that they are not paying their part. I am worried about just how serious he will be with deporting immigrants, and I am fearful about his skepticism of the reality of climate change.

In so many ways, this was the wrong direction for the country to take. Like with Trump's stance on climate change, the country is in denial about certain realities. And what makes this particularly alarming is the staggering anger of so many of Trump supporters, and their tendency to believe what they want to believe, without any support from the facts.

I think of my son right now, who most likely is asleep and will wake up to the prospects of a Donald Trump presidency, and I worry.

This election result is more than just a national embarrassment. It is a national disgrace, one that will linger for a long, long time to come. Americans watched Britain become the scapegoats and the laughing stock around much of the world following the Brexit vote, but the United States has now surpassed that, and has become the laughingstock of the world by voting a joke gone too far, a clown, into the White House, into that prestigious position that has been held by the likes of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy.

Once again, we are showing the world how the mighty have fallen. And the saddest aspect of that inconvenient fact is that his supporters believed that he truly represented a change from the fundamental unfairness of the system that we live under, even though he himself manipulated that very system, and screwed many, many people along the way, in order to get to where he is now. They probably believed that this country was in decline, which is is, but that he will actually restore America's status to greatness, even though he is a proven liar, lacks class, and reacts to provocation far too easily, while not giving enough thought to serious and weighty matters.

What is the expression about sleeping in the bed that you make?

Again, it is a sad, sad day in America. Reagan had those famous commercials about it being morning again in America, and indeed, right now, it literally is morning. But it is a morning where we find a classless man who embodies the very worst that this country has to offer has been elected to the highest and most prestigious office in the land. I cannot shake that nasty feeling that this country became the laughingstock of the entire world with this election, that we revealed a dark side about ourselves, our collective stupidity, and our blind anger and prejudices.

These are unbelievable, and very strange time, in our country, and in our world. Yet the sad reality is that we keep seeing so-called "leaders" who are probably the last people we should ever allow in positions of power. That tradition continued with the results of yesterday's election.

And I am worried...