FEATURE ARTICLE

Temple Chima UbochiWednesday, November 23, 2016
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Bonn, Germany

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FACTORS WHICH DETERMINED THE 2016 UNITED STATES' PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION'S (2)

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Continued from Part 1

Do not mock a pain that you haven't endured (Chalene Ftero)

Sometimes you get the best light from a burning bridge (Don Henley)

Stop looking for happiness in the same place you lost it (Melissa Strichland)

At some point, you just have to let go of what you thought should happen and live in with what is happening (The Funny Beaver)

President Obama as a Factor:

lthough President Obama wasn't on the ballot this time around, but most of those who voted for Donald Trump had him in mind, when they stepped into the voting booth on November 8. Just like many other politicians, President Obama promised a lot, but achieved so little. The man many people thought was sympathetic, and would carry their hope and help achieve their aspirations, became a disappointment. During his tenure, racial tensions became rife, more than during the tenure of any other president in recent times, and he did a little to sort the problem out. The minorities placed their hope on him to help pigeon-hole racism, but instead, no other administration, since the 1980s, was confronted with racial animosity and hatred, against the minorities, especially the African-American, than Obama's (ironically, racism and ethnic discrimination have heightened since his tenure). President Obama, a black man, never instigated any bill or proposal on how to solve racism in America, and the minorities still live in fear, more than any other time since the 1980s, and that's too bad.

President Obama, who's an African-American, was considered by many, as a man who would protect the minorities, more than any other American president in history, but, lo, it was during his tenure that more people, especially the minorities, were deported, than any other time since the 1990s.

Many also thought that President Obama would have helped the African Continent, the continent of his father, more than any other president in history, but he was the worst president, when it comes to dealing with the African continent: It seems that Obama despise Africa, and turned his back on it; he did little or nothing for Africa, that even President George Bush did a lot more for Africa, many times, than what President Obama did for Africa. For Africa, Obama was a big failure, and didn't show much sign of interest or attachment to it, other than visiting Kenya, his father's country, few times.

President Obama had the opportunity to be the Ronald Reagan of our time; he had everything going for him, and he almost helped his party win the presidential election for the third time, in a row, but due to his own faults, the faults of Hillary Clinton and his democratic Party, he saw history evading him, and in the end, he didn't become "Ronald Reagan". As Yahoo News noted, "Not only did Clinton lose anyway, but once again the party saw itself denied power in Congress and banished from statehouses! Last week's election was 2004 all over again, only this time with a laughably unprepared opponent who had virtually nothing by way of campaign infrastructure at his disposal".

As I pointed out in a previous article, it was president Obama that really "lost" the election to Trump, because his legacy will be on the line, as President Trump and the Republicans, on Capitol Hill, might try to reverse everything he worked hard to achieve. Do I need to repeat myself that President Obama has been very arrogant; and if not that President George Bush has a lower IQ, and was not as vibrant as President Obama, one can safely say that the latter became more arrogant than the former, as president, and the irony is that the latter was elected because of the excesses of the former, but the latter ended up exhibiting those loathed characteristics of the former. President Obama, instead of identifying more with his base, deviated from the core values which got him elected in the first place.

More to that, Americans weren't ready for a new record, as they didn't want the democrats to rule for three times at a stretch, just as heavy.com explained that voters often choose a president's polar opposite. The Washington Post reported that, if Clinton had won, one party would have been elected three times in a row - "something that has happened only once since the middle of the 20th century. The incremental, intellectual Obama was a reaction to the brash and visceral George W. Bush. The proper, traditional George W. Bush was a reaction to the libidinous Bill Clinton. Ronald Reagan was a reaction to Jimmy Carter. Bill Clinton was a reaction to George H.W. Bush. And so on".

President Obama didn't perform as most of us had expected; he disappointed many people, as he promised a lot, but delivered so little. Just an example: During his campaign, President Obama promised that he will surely close Guantanamo Bay detention centre within months after taking office; but he's now leaving office, without fulfilling that promise. And now, he blames the Congress for his not being able to close the detention centre, while doubting if Trump will do it. According to Newsmax, the US President, Barack Obama, in his first post-election news conference on 14 November, addressed one of the issues that have plagued him throughout his eight-year presidency - the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention centre. The president said, referring to his 2008 campaign promise to shut down the facility, "It is true that I have not been able to close the darn thing". The president then pointed out that his administration managed to reduce the inmates.

Although President Obama was a bit success economically, as millions of Americans had better life during his tenure, but still, there were many more millions who were left behind. In 2010, Candidate Obama promised to create more jobs, so that the unemployed will be succored, but he didn't achieve much, and Trump capitalized on this failure for his own electoral gain. Just like Candidate Obama in 2010, Trump promised to bring a positive change to those suffering, and many voters bought that message. Whether he will achieve it, will be another story - only time will tell.

The Wall Street Journal, on October 6, wrote that over 94 Million Americans are outside the labor force, and that's almost certain to rise, and warned that a growing but aging country will likely swell the number even if action's taken to boost participation. WSJ wrote: At first blush, it's one of the most startling statistics about the U.S. labor market: Over 94 million Americans over the age of 15 do not have a job. Republican Presidential candidate, Donald Trump, has repeatedly highlighted the statistic and Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, has hailed it as a sign of economic decline".

The above points, and more, made it possible for Trump, a man known for hate, bigotry, division, and was endorsed by a racial hate group, Ku Klux Klan (KKK), to do well with Hispanics and African-Americans. Minorities are usually the core democratic party's voters, but for the fact that many of them were left out of the good life America promises, during Obama's tenure, made them to look towards Trump, "who doesn't like them anyway", this time around. More Hispanics and African-Americans voted Republican, in this election, than in previous ones. The Street wrote that Hillary was a flawed nominee (as was he), whose unfavorable ratings were consistently so high. In the end, voters didn't really like either one of them, so the personality and character part of it was a wash. Whereas he won the votes of discontented people, including a higher percentage of the Latino vote than Republican candidate Mitt Romney received in the 2012 presidential election, despite insults about illegal Mexican immigrants, Hillary Clinton gained support from donors and voters who are reasonably satisfied with the status quo. Trump tapped into a nerve among many people who see the media as arrogant and superficial, ignoring the depth of their angst.

So, while Hillary went after the big (money) guys, Trump went for the downtrodden and the left outs, and it worked out for him! The rich usually vote Republican, but in this year's election, the wealthy, for the first time in decades, voted more for a Democratic presidential candidate. For Stephen Kraus, chief insights officer and director of the Ipsos Affluent Survey, "the affluent vote seems to be more about the concerns over Donald Trump than the enthusiasm for Clinton".

Infact, Hillary Clinton counted her chicks before the eggs were hatched, and she paid a big price for that, just as Medium.com noted that Clinton ran a weak and uninspired campaign, when it wrote that "Once she had the nomination, Clinton ran a campaign without an inspiring message?-?other than perhaps voting for a woman for president. She courted conservatives like the Bushes, the Kochs, and Henry Kissinger, she picked corporate centrists for vice president and other prominent roles, she never connected with a base that after all of Bernie's amazing campaigning was ripe for engagement, and she turned her back on progressive issues time and again. She stopped talking about climate change and racial justice and corruption in government, and she never addressed the pressing progressive issues of the day, such as Standing Rock and TPP. Seemingly she hoped to coast to victory with little more than platitudes and scare-tactics about Russians reminiscent of the 1950s. All of this while barely escaping two FBI indictments. She became a weak and unpopular candidate holding on to a narrow lead merely because Trump was so ridiculously bad. Trump's inadequacy as a candidate masked the weaknesses in Clinton's sinking campaign. For its part, as a slogan, "Stronger Together" never resonated with people who haven't recovered yet from the Great Recession and who continue to get by with less everyday; indeed for poor and working class people who feel on the outside of the country's latest wealth generation, this slogan seemed at best ironic and at worst to deliberately exclude them".

There are so many other reasons why Hillary Clinton lost, and I will continue to decipher them in subsequent parts of this article, but for now, Business insider tells us that "There are many things to blame for Clinton's loss, some obviously true (she is an awkward campaigner), some convenient but less true (Americans not being ready for a female president, which is nonsense, or an aversion to political dynasties, which have happened before).

But the very inconvenient truth that must be absorbed, by the technocratic Democrats of the Obama years and by the apparent plurality of voters who supported Secretary Clinton, is that the Obama administration did not deliver on its promises of hope and change, and broke the trust of many of those (enough, at least, to elect Donald Trump) who were counting on a sharp departure from business as usual following the Great Recession.

Trump correctly identified the broad swath of Americans feeling economically left behind and insecure, and his constituents are working class and middle class (and even some upper middle class) more than they are the poor.

Trump's voters have been economically disenfranchised, betrayed by Wall Street and other moneyed interests, and ignored (or worse yet, pandered to) by their government for decades.

No, the legacy of this election - perhaps, sadly, to become a part of the legacy of President Barack Obama's administration as history is written - is that so many of our families, our homeowners, our middle-aged and aging workers and parents, have been harmed, perhaps irrevocably, by declining real disposable incomes, deteriorating or vanished wealth, no prospects for a reasonably comfortable retirement, and healthcare and education costs that have eroded the little they were able to preserve.

And after eight years of the Obama presidency, despite all the faith they placed in change in 2008 and, somewhat less convincingly in 2012, they wondered:

" Why was the administration crowing about job creation, when the majority of the jobs created were low wage/low hour full-time positions and gig jobs that were supremely inadequate replacements for the steady, better-paying jobs that preceded them?

" Why did the administration do so little to relieve homeowners who lost so much during the crisis and then pat themselves on the back for the cheap-debt-fueled growth in home prices that was concentrated on the coasts and did little for the balance sheets of households in places like Michigan and Wisconsin, Iowa, and Ohio?

" And why, in God's name, was that administration touting the benefits of global trade agreements that were negotiated in secret and so patently devoid of benefits to US workers, while these same voters observed that everything they were buying at the store was putting people to work in China, Vietnam, Korea, and Mexico?

Finally, notwithstanding the insanity of the Republican obstruction of a truly responsible national healthcare program for all (which is supported by 58% of the electorate), instead of the thoroughbred health-insurance policy campaigned for by President Obama, the nation got a two-humped camel, in the form of the Affordable Care Act, that is now limping at best. The chief benefit of ACA, insuring the poor and the young, were not felt by Trump's electorate; all they see are rising insurance premiums (for employer-provided as well as Obamacare-provided healthcare insurance)".

To be continued!

TIT BITS

This is the video that didn't open in Part 1:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOi5HvJkzZI&feature=share

Listen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxuuFQLBPeU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yavaJNXoMe8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCav916o1Bk

THE THANX IS ALL YOURS!!!

Continued from Part 1

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IMAGES IN THE NEWS