The Patriot Post® · 2016 Saw Both Major Political Parties Collapse

The election of 2016 will be remembered — and reviled — for years to come.

One party’s establishment had a coronation in mind; the other had a primary process it thought would produce a prototypical candidate along the lines of the Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. Both parties were wrong, and what transpired during the primary process and general election shocked millions.

The Republican Party’s collapse began years ago when it forgot that it was the keeper of the nation’s conservative foundations, and squandered many opportunities to make positive and needed changes and to stop an imperialist president. That collapse peaked during the primary season. Among the 17 candidates was Donald Trump, a non-politician who attracted the attention of voters with his declared intention to “Make America Great Again” and his promise to “drain the swamp.” His political inexperience was ridiculed and his appeal underestimated by nearly everyone, but, thanks to a divided field, he won the nomination comfortably.

Along the way to winning the GOP nomination, Trump churned up enormous amounts of bad will among both Republicans and Democrats. All of that chaos rendered the GOP so badly splintered that it was barely recognizable as a political party. But Trump won the all-but-destroyed GOP’s nomination, defied the conventional wisdom and the millions of Hillary faithful and won a significant Electoral College victory.

The Democrat Party’s collapse began as a strong, blinding emotion for Hillary Clinton to again declare her desire to be crowned the first female president of the United States — a dream that had been on hold for eight years. After all, it’s time to shatter that highest of glass ceilings, right, and who is more deserving than she? With the exception of Bernie Sanders’ strong challenge to her anticipated coronation, the signs of collapse were obscured to Democrats by their blinding desire for a female president.

But on the campaign trail Clinton grossly insulted Trump supporters, saying, “You could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables,” and she generally ran a poor campaign. Her strategy was largely to slam Trump for nearly everything he did and said. She is not particularly likable, and her list of scandals and bad judgment didn’t help her lagging popularity. That the jig was up became obvious as election night turned to Wednesday morning, and Clinton was reportedly so disconsolate that she did not even concede the election until hours later. The pain lingers for Clinton and her supporters.

What has happened to the two parties since their respective collapse is that the Republicans actually began a gradual restoration before Election Day, with most anti-Trumpers, however grudgingly, coming around to give some degree of support to their party’s candidate. And as President-Elect Trump has been steadily assembling his administration, other prominent Republicans have been coming on board.

The GOP still has a long way to go, however, but it’s well ahead of Democrat Party. Many sore leftists simply cannot accept the fact that Clinton didn’t win the election. They were so, so, so sure of their vision of a first-ever female president; but they were so, so, so wrong. Their disillusionment and desperation is palpable.

They didn’t notice the level of dissatisfaction of the people, and still haven’t realized what happened. Instead, they blame FBI Director James Comey’s behavior in the email scandal investigation and Clinton’s inferior campaigning as causes for the loss, never aware that after eight years of Barack Obama’s disastrous policies, the country wants actual hope and change.

Having missed the reasons for their defeat, they aren’t working to revitalize the party, but instead are indulging in playground-style name-calling and criticizing everything Trump says and does, labeling him and his appointees racists, sexists, misogynists, bigots, homophobes, and white nationalists — the very thing that lost them the election. And last week, rather than try someone new with different ideas, House Democrats re-elected California’s Nancy Pelosi as minority leader, who had the temerity to declare that Democrats don’t “want a new direction.”

Good. Let Democrats continue in their delusions while the GOP builds a constitutional path forward.

While Trump focuses on carefully selecting people for administration positions — capable people leftists would never have thought of — those selections are automatically considered by leftists as bad and setting the country up for major failure.

Democrats and the Leftmedia are stunned that the new president has different ideas about what the country needs than they have, and have lost all semblance of common sense over Trump accepting a congratulatory phone call from the democratically elected president of Taiwan, on the grounds that it would upset China. The idea that an American president ought to check with any nation before talking to a national leader is preposterous.

Trump is not a politician — he does not think like a politician, act like a politician, nor speak like a politician. Those who support him and voted for him understand that he will have failures and shortcomings, and will make mistakes, as all previous presidents have, and all future presidents will. Nevertheless, all of this will become fuel for fires the Left will kindle, and will throw misunderstood context, misconstrued comments and exaggeration on a flickering flame trying to start a blaze. So far, however, they’re burning their own house down.