Now we know the face of the United States of America: Donald Trump.
Trump has been elected to serve as the 45th president of the United States. The president is not only chief executive and commander-in-chief of the military, the president is both the head of government and the head of state. To be the head of state means that this person represents the United States in his or her person.
As of this writing, Secretary Hillary Clinton received more votes than Trump, meaning more Americans wanted her to represent the nation to history and to the world, but Trump won the Electoral College math. So, here we are.
Not only did voters make Donald Trump our next president, but they gave the Republican Party majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Grand Obstructionist Party will interpret these results to mean that obstructionism works. However, I would like to take a moment to warn the leaders of the GOP.
Now you have to deliver.
In the first two years of his first term, President Obama, working with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, made significant progress for this country. His policies brought the country out of the great recession, saved the auto industry, put consumer protections in place and passed the Affordable Care Act which gave health insurance coverage to millions of Americans.
Donald Trump was elected because his voters want jobs. They believe his promise so much so that they are willing to overlook his erratic behavior. Never mind his “locker room talk” and the women who say that he made unwanted sexual advances.Never mind his failure to release his tax returns saying not paying taxes is smart. Never mind his treatment of the Khan family, the moment in this election that I thought would sink his candidacy. I was wrong. Never mind his characterization of African-American communities as horrible, dangerous places; never mind his characterization of undocumented workers as murders and rapists. The list goes on.
Republicans will have to deliver on jobs. They sing the same old song about cutting taxes on the rich and on businesses, cutting regulations and presto chango there will be more good-paying jobs. History shows this is a chimera. They will have to deliver on health care. The Grand Obstructionist Party did not cooperate with President Obama at all in the development of the ACA. They have voted over and over to repeal it. Now that they control both the legislative and the executive branches, they can repeal the law. Some 20 million people will lose coverage, and they will have to come up with a new plan. So far all we know about Trump’s plan is that he will allow people to buy insurance across state lines.
The Republican platform says that people who have had continual insurance coverage ought not to be denied insurance because of pre-existing conditions. This raises the question: what about people who have not had continual coverage? Will we return to the bad old days of caps on coverage and insurance plans that are cheap but basically useless?
Then there are the trade deals. The GOP will have to find common ground on what to do. Free trade has been a net plus for the country. Trump and the GOP will have to find a way to keep the good and allow for more jobs. The truth is that many of the manufacturing jobs lost to free trade are not coming back. Robots are doing those jobs.
The GOP under Trump leadership will have to deliver on destroying Daesh quickly and taking Iraqi oil, something that is against international law. They will have to send millions of undocumented workers home, build a wall and send the bill to Mexico. If the bill does not go to Mexico, the wall will be one more thing to send the budget deficit into orbit. It is not possible to cut taxes, increase spending on infrastructure, the military, veterans affairs, and keep the social safety net in place without running large deficits.
Every two years we get to overthrow the government. Trump supporters did not overthrow the government so much as give complete control to one party. GOP leaders have been saying “no” for eight years. That is easy. Now let us see how they will keep their promises. In two years, we get another opportunity to throw them out of power.
Valerie Elverton Dixon is founder of JustPeaceTheory.com and author of Just Peace Theory Book One: Spiritual Morality, Radical Love, and the Public Conversation.
The people have spoken. They’ve seen through the doubt, fear, and ignorance of all those (presumably well intentioned but sadly misguided) “progressives” and have elected someone to the Presidency of the United States of America who really does understand the realities of life; how politics works, how economics works, how nature works, how human beings work, and all that. He has (well, will have) programs that will deal effectively with all the serious problems we face, and he will have a stellar group of people in there helping him; people with experience and proven judgement like Pence (who will be “in charge of foreign and domestic policy”), Christie (in charge of the transition team), Giuliani (Attorney General), Gingrich (Secretary of State), and the likes of Rove, Ryan, and Cruz giving him advice, with Fox, Breitbart, Limbaugh, et al getting the truth out to the citizenry in plain English.
What’s not to like? Everything’s going to be FABULOUS). Watch and see.