What A Difference Eight Years Makes

November, 2008:  Many conservatives, yours truly included, were disappointed at the election of Barack Obama, an unqualified junior senator and “community organizer”, to the presidency.  Not surprised, at least in my case, but disappointed.  (Our disappointment was amply justified, but that’s a separate, upcoming post).

In the interest of civility, Obama supporters responded with their primary form of non-televised communication (in the days before industrialized photomemes, anyway), the bumper sticker:

screen-shot-2016-11-24-at-11-29-41-am

(Which, if you think about it, is the first industralized photomeme).

And we did, indeed, get over it – and, for many of us, that involved spending a few years in the Tea Party which, before a coordinated assault by Democrat Media/Industrial Complex and the GOP Establishment neutralized it, kicked Democrat ass in a way that, to a smart person, should have been seen as a foreshadowing of Trump; if you stand for something, you win.

(The sum total of “violence” after the Obama election involved a “riot” at Ol Miss that lasted an hour, involved no property damage or arrests and a little naughty language; one church burned in Massachusetts for which the perps were arrested, convicted and sentenced to long prison terms, a couple of minor assaults, maybe, and a few grandiloquent gestures that damanged nobody else or their property)

Anyway.

It’s been two and a half weeks since Trump’s near-landslide electoral victory (and, if you leave California and its millions of useless voting mouths out of the equation, popular victory as well).  Democrats have responded with petulant name-calling, bitter declarations, social barbarism, and rioting.   The Democrat movement in America has made itself look like the petulant, entitled children so many of them in fact seem to be.

So it’s only fair:

screen-shot-2016-11-24-at-11-29-54-am

Deal with it.

15 thoughts on “What A Difference Eight Years Makes

  1. Trump won because (a) Hillary was a horrible candidate and (b) the people who actually work for a living voted for Trump. Neither of these has anything to do with “fake news” or “Russian hackers”.

  2. Trump’s campaign resembled a Rorschach test which his followers could project upon. I would not be shocked if Trump were to govern as a centrist populist.

  3. You have to give Trump credit. He spent a fraction of what the Clinton campaign spent. And he did so without the support of the Republican machine.

  4. I didn’t vote for Trump.
    I knew that Trump had it in the bag when Ohio was called for Trump at 10:30 EST.
    The Ohio GOP establishment was actively campaigning against Trump, and I knew from other sources that he had very little ground game in Ohio. He never staffed up in Ohio.
    Love Trump, or hate him, his 2016 win was an amazing accomplishment. It is difficult to win a majority in the EC while still losing the popular vote by more than 1%. You have to run a campaign with surgical precision. Trump did it. For at least a decade, there has been concern that the federal government had fallen into dynasticism. Trump ended the national political dynasties of the Clintons and the Bushes in one grueling campaign season.
    There is a meme in the popular media that the victory actually belongs to Trump’s son in law, Jared Kushner. I think that this is sour grapes. The Democrats — and MSM journalists, producers, and editors overwhelmingly identify as Democrats — don’t want to admit that they were defeated by a guy like Trump. They would rather have lost to a Jewish financier (Harvard and NYU), than to a gauche real estate developer with gold-plated tastes.

  5. Jethrene, I think GOP wins will almost always be an EC win with more than a 1% popular vote loss.

    The urban areas are becoming more rat packed as is California; Trumps mass deportations withstanding.

    The reprobate Democrats know it too, which is why they are starting an assault on the EC.

  6. I see your point, Swiftee Plisken. This still adds up to a very good strategy by Trump in leveraging the advantage the EC system gives to winning more less populous states. Regardless of today’s obsession with the idea that Russian hackers stole the election for Trump, Hillary blew it big time. Team Hillary never confirmed or denied the risible content of the DNC and Podesta emails, and Hillary’s server was only an issue because she made it an issue by setting up the server and then lying about what she used it for.
    A month ago the MSM was questioning whether Trump supporters would accept the outcome of the election if Trump lost.
    Today, one third of Hillary’s supporters believe that Trump’s win is not legitimate: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/13/one-third-of-clinton-supporters-say-trump-election-is-not-legitimate-poll-finds/.

  7. Eight years of Obama:

    Barack Obama entered the White House with his party in control of 62 of the nation’s 99 legislative chambers. By January 2015, Republicans were in control of 68. He then made it a personal mission to help reverse the damage that had caused the ejection of nearly a thousand Democratic state legislators from their seats by voters. He made 150 down-ballot endorsements in 2016 and even hit the trail for a few of them at a time when his personal approval rating was above 50 percent.

    The result of the president’s direct intercession? The Democrats did worse. On Election Night in 2016, Republicans took full control of the legislatures in Minnesota and Iowa. The Democratic Party’s sole remaining legislative majority in the South, in Kentucky, fell to the GOP for the first time in nearly 100 years. In North Carolina, the GOP held onto veto-proof majorities in state legislatures despite the statewide loss of an unpopular Republican governor. The GOP prevented Democrats from retaking the state Senate in New York. There were some gains in Nevada and New Mexico…and that was it.

    The massacre of Democratic officials goes far beyond state legislatures. Democrats held 31 governorships in 2009. Now they hold 17, having been kicked out of the mansions in Missouri, Vermont, and New Hampshire. Following this year’s election, Republicans have control of all levers of government in 25 states.

    In Washington, after months of speculation that Democrats might eat away at the Republican majority in the House of Representatives or topple it, the GOP lost only nine seats and retained a 40-member advantage. And though the general expectation was that the Democrats were likely to take back control of the U.S. Senate, Republicans ended up losing only two incumbents and retained their majority at 52. Even more worrisome for Democrats, they head into the 2018 election with aging senators having to defend their seats in 10 states Donald Trump won.

    The collapse of the Democratic Party under Barack Obama occurred in three stages, each corresponding to a national response to Obama’s policy and political overreach.

    In Stage One, the Democrats were decimated in the House of Representatives (and the carnage at the state level began). From Inauguration Day in 2009 until July 2010, the Obama White House oversaw the passage of 1) the stimulus package, the most expensive piece of legislation in American history; 2) the second half of the TARP-TALF financial-bailout bill; 3) the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reforms; and 4) the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. Not since 1933 had there been a more aggressive legislative and regulatory agenda, and Obama’s determined march not only featured $2.7 trillion in new spending but the wholesale revision of the nation’s health-care system.

    It was too much, too fast, too soon, and there was a national uprising against it that came to be known as the “Tea Party.” What resulted was a midterm in 2010 that cost the Democrats 63 House seats, the largest such defeat in 72 years. Democrats had built a massive majority over two successive elections in 2006 and 2008 and saw it wiped out in one go. Consider this fact: In the 2006 midterms, when an anti-GOP wave began, Democratic candidates for the House received a national total of 42.3 million votes. In the next midterm election, 2010, they received 38.9 million votes, a decline of 9 percent. In 2014, they were down to 35.6 million votes, a 10 percent decline from the 2010 midterms. In all, Democrats have gained a total of two seats back from their 2010 low. That means they have suffered a net loss of 61 Democratic elected officials from the House of Representatives in the Obama era.

    Stage Two was the decimation of the Democratic Senate majority. In 2014, Democrats watched incumbent after incumbent swept away in a Republican wave eerily similar to the House wave four years earlier. In 2010, Democrats had held on to control of the Senate with candidates who received 29 million votes in aggregate even as the House was going Republican. In 2014, Democrats received 8.2 million fewer votes—a decline of 23 percent from 2010.

    In all, nine Democratic senators were axed in 2014, the largest swing since the Ronald Reagan election in 1980. What had happened to cause it? A year earlier, in October 2013, Obamacare had been rolled out—and computer systems and software costing $1 billion crashed and crashed hard. ISIS flowered malignantly in Syria and Iraq and began beheading Americans. There was a border crisis as thousands of children from Mexico and Central America made their way into the United States and were put up in makeshift housing. Republicans won by nationalizing their Senate races, as Philip Rucker and Robert Costa of the Washington Post noted at the time: “Make it all about Obama, Obama, Obama. Every new White House crisis would bring a new Republican ad. And every Democratic incumbent would be attacked relentlessly for voting with the president 97 or 98 or 99 percent of the time.”

    Stage Three only began on Election Night, and its contours are yet to be determined: the decimation of the Obama legacy itself.

    https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/bare-ruined-choirs/

  8. Eight years of Obama:

    Barack Obama entered the White House with his party in control of 62 of the nation’s 99 legislative chambers. By January 2015, Republicans were in control of 68. He then made it a personal mission to help reverse the damage that had caused the ejection of nearly a thousand Democratic state legislators from their seats by voters. He made 150 down-ballot endorsements in 2016 and even hit the trail for a few of them at a time when his personal approval rating was above 50 percent.

    The result of the president’s direct intercession? The Democrats did worse. On Election Night in 2016, Republicans took full control of the legislatures in Minnesota and Iowa. The Democratic Party’s sole remaining legislative majority in the South, in Kentucky, fell to the GOP for the first time in nearly 100 years. In North Carolina, the GOP held onto veto-proof majorities in state legislatures despite the statewide loss of an unpopular Republican governor. The GOP prevented Democrats from retaking the state Senate in New York. There were some gains in Nevada and New Mexico…and that was it.

    The massacre of Democratic officials goes far beyond state legislatures. Democrats held 31 governorships in 2009. Now they hold 17, having been kicked out of the mansions in Missouri, Vermont, and New Hampshire. Following this year’s election, Republicans have control of all levers of government in 25 states.

    In Washington, after months of speculation that Democrats might eat away at the Republican majority in the House of Representatives or topple it, the GOP lost only nine seats and retained a 40-member advantage. And though the general expectation was that the Democrats were likely to take back control of the U.S. Senate, Republicans ended up losing only two incumbents and retained their majority at 52. Even more worrisome for Democrats, they head into the 2018 election with aging senators having to defend their seats in 10 states Donald Trump won.

    The collapse of the Democratic Party under Barack Obama occurred in three stages, each corresponding to a national response to Obama’s policy and political overreach.

    In Stage One, the Democrats were decimated in the House of Representatives (and the carnage at the state level began). From Inauguration Day in 2009 until July 2010, the Obama White House oversaw the passage of 1) the stimulus package, the most expensive piece of legislation in American history; 2) the second half of the TARP-TALF financial-bailout bill; 3) the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reforms; and 4) the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. Not since 1933 had there been a more aggressive legislative and regulatory agenda, and Obama’s determined march not only featured $2.7 trillion in new spending but the wholesale revision of the nation’s health-care system.

    It was too much, too fast, too soon, and there was a national uprising against it that came to be known as the “Tea Party.” What resulted was a midterm in 2010 that cost the Democrats 63 House seats, the largest such defeat in 72 years. Democrats had built a massive majority over two successive elections in 2006 and 2008 and saw it wiped out in one go. Consider this fact: In the 2006 midterms, when an anti-GOP wave began, Democratic candidates for the House received a national total of 42.3 million votes. In the next midterm election, 2010, they received 38.9 million votes, a decline of 9 percent. In 2014, they were down to 35.6 million votes, a 10 percent decline from the 2010 midterms. In all, Democrats have gained a total of two seats back from their 2010 low. That means they have suffered a net loss of 61 Democratic elected officials from the House of Representatives in the Obama era.

    Stage Two was the decimation of the Democratic Senate majority. In 2014, Democrats watched incumbent after incumbent swept away in a Republican wave eerily similar to the House wave four years earlier. In 2010, Democrats had held on to control of the Senate with candidates who received 29 million votes in aggregate even as the House was going Republican. In 2014, Democrats received 8.2 million fewer votes—a decline of 23 percent from 2010.

    In all, nine Democratic senators were axed in 2014, the largest swing since the Ronald Reagan election in 1980. What had happened to cause it? A year earlier, in October 2013, Obamacare had been rolled out—and computer systems and software costing $1 billion crashed and crashed hard. ISIS flowered malignantly in Syria and Iraq and began beheading Americans. There was a border crisis as thousands of children from Mexico and Central America made their way into the United States and were put up in makeshift housing. Republicans won by nationalizing their Senate races, as Philip Rucker and Robert Costa of the Washington Post noted at the time: “Make it all about Obama, Obama, Obama. Every new White House crisis would bring a new Republican ad. And every Democratic incumbent would be attacked relentlessly for voting with the president 97 or 98 or 99 percent of the time.”

    Stage Three only began on Election Night, and its contours are yet to be determined: the decimation of the Obama legacy itself.

    https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/bare-ruined-choirs/

  9. The Dems have no one to blame but themselves for choosing as their standard bearers the likes of Hillary, Pelosi, and Reid. Now they know the meaning of the “chickens have come home to roost”! Give them their crying rooms and padlock the door.

    I find it interesting that it’s reported that Obama called Hillary and told her that she needed to call Trump and concede the election. Claims are that she was too upset and pissed to make the concession in person before her supporters at the Javits Center. I’m thinking Hill was channeling Tammy Faye Bakker at the time.

    http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/307536-obama-urged-clinton-to-concede-on-election-night

  10. Hope that Jethrene is correct that Obama has done for liberalism nationwide what Clinton did for the Democratic Party in Arkansas.

  11. Love Trump, or hate him, his 2016 win was an amazing accomplishment. It is difficult to win a majority in the EC while still losing the popular vote by more than 1%. You have to run a campaign with surgical precision. Trump did it. For at least a decade, there has been concern that the federal government had fallen into dynasticism. Trump ended the national political dynasties of the Clintons and the Bushes in one grueling campaign season.

    This whole thing can be summed up with one simple comment: Self-made billionaires don’t become billionaires because they’re stupid.

    To tie in with the Scott Adams blog post about why he’s supporting Trump, specifically his 5th and 6th points about influence techniques (leading with an outrageous statement to move the argument in his direction, then backing off later to show he’s not that outrageous, but still maintaining the pull in his direction), Trump new exactly what he was doing, and he flimflammed about 80% of the country while doing it. He even wrote a book on this stuff.

  12. Self-made billionaires don’t become billionaires because they’re stupid.

    BC, that is a wrong statement as it does not apply to sTrumpet. He is anything but self-made. To paraphrase another billionaire, a truly self-made one – it is next to impossible to turn $1 into a $1000, but when you have a million, second one comes naturally. I am not belittling what sTrumpet did with the millions he got from his daddy, but stop buying into the bullshit he is a “self-made” billionaire. Self-made implies he started with nothing, which could not be further from the truth. Ditto with that asswipe Mark Cuban.

  13. Another perspective, BillC; if Trump hasn’t been extraordinarily foolish, please explain all those business bankruptcies brought on by high risk loans. I think he was still the safer bet than Hilliary, but let’s keep things in perspective here.

    No argument that Trump is not exceedingly clever. I just don’t think that his genius is consistent, and that’s scary to me.

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