6 reasons why Clinton lost, or Why I voted for Trump

I was pretty certain, for months before the election, that Trump would win. The day after the election, when I went in to work, I couldn't figure out why a couple of my colleagues were so visibly upset. I thought maybe they were feeling sick or something. Turns out they were in mourning - quite literally - about the election. I walked in to work that morning not only with the person I voted for having won the election, but I had prepared myself for his victory for months, so it came as little surprise to me. I guess that was why there was such dissonance, and complete shock, at my co-workers reaction. They truly felt it was impossible, literally impossible, for Trump to have won.

Why was I so sure he would win? Why did I vote for him?

1. Leftist news agencies like CNN and just about every other outlet were wagging the dog. They kept writing articles that Trump was going to be blown out of the water, that there was no way in the world Clinton could lose. It was obvious that they were trying to sway the election, and were not simply reporting facts. They wanted American voters to think that Clinton was a winner, that Trump was a loser, and it was a waste of time to even think of voting for Trump.

It wasn't easy, but you had to go to non-leftist, non-liberal websites to see alternative points of view. You had to just open your eyes that Trump was filling stadiums of supporters wherever he went, whenever he spoke, and Clinton struggled to get her supporters out. It was fairly obvious that the left was spinning the news, instead of reporting the news. This may also be one reason that voter turnout for Clinton was so low - they were lulled into not voting because of the "Clinton landslide" that kept being reported.

2. Pollsters weren't polling everyone. When I looked at their polling methodology, they kept reporting that they were polling "likely voters." But what about the unlikely voters? Those that never voted before, or rarely voted in the past? The lower class, the poor, the overworked middle class, who may not be there in the evening when the phone call from the pollster came in, because they were working a double shift? Trump pulled those people out of the woodwork. It was fairly obvious that the pollsters were skewing towards people who would vote for Clinton, not Trump.

Also, Trump was almost always within the margin of error so much of the time in these polls. Clinton may have been on top by 2, 3, or 4 percentage points in the polls, but that was within the margin of error. I don't recall ever hearing or reading about that little problem.

3. Trump supporters, like me, were underground, and remain underground. As I explained in my very first blog post on here, there was no way in hell I was admitting to anyone, even anonymously, that I was going to vote for Trump. Go back to that first post to see the reasons why. There were probably millions of underground Trump voters, and they were not counted, because we were (and are) afraid of liberal prejudicial reaction to us.

4. He turned on the working class, and whites, in ways Clinton did not. Here's something I would never say out loud, or risk being fired, or stoned to death (I'm being very literal with those consequences): I didn't appreciate being made to feel guilty for being an upper middle class white male. I can be a proud white male and not be a racist or a skinhead or a Neo Nazi or an Aryan. Millions of people like me were tired of being made to feel guilty because we have a penis, or white skin - that's a liberal, leftist specialty.

Another way of saying it is that the left came across, and continues to come across, as snobby, looking down upon conservatives as less than them, as stupid and ignorant, as racist, and so on. Somehow at the same time Clinton and the left was alienating tens of millions of people, Trump was speaking to them, and was also saying that there's nothing wrong with making money.

5. Clinton was a bad candidate, forget about Trump. Beyond being snobby, and robotic, and part of the establishment during a major change election, her emails were a really big deal. I don't think she or her people understood that. At the very least, she was dumb to have done that and was in some way corrupt, at worst she committed a felony and a federal crime, and deserved to go to jail. Probably somewhere in between. The only reason she seemed like a viable candidate was because she was up against Trump. She was simply a bad candidate, and I probably wasn't going to vote for anyway, just because of who she was, her policies, and what she represented.

6. Trump wasn't as bad as people made him out to be. Yes, he said some really stupid things. But most of the time, he wasn't way off. I'll take just one example, and return to other examples in future posts. The way that he initially spoke about fixing immigration from Mexico was really unsettling. He was offensive - no doubt. But the gist of what he was saying is true - we have an immigration problem where lots of people are illegally crossing the border who are smuggling in drugs, creating crime, and in general are bad for America. We need to tighten our border, stop the bad people from coming in, get the bad people who came in illegally out of America, and not be apologetic for that.

Could he have said it in a nicer way? Yes. Was he offensive to Mexicans? Yes. From a policy and philosophical point of view, is his a legitimate opinion? Yes, it is. And I agree with it, as do tens of millions more Americans. I'll write more in a future post about his negotiation tactic of talking in extremes, with an eye towards getting what he wants which is probably much less than what he initially says.