So, What Now?

It has now been almost one week since Donald Trump stunned nearly everyone by defeating Hillary Clinton, long enough for the reality of a Trump Presidency to begin to sink in. Appointments are being made. Plans for the first hundred days of the Trump administration are being touted. This is actually happening.

And, overall, I’m feeling downright gleeful. I proudly voted for Evan McMullin on Election Day, as I had planned. If I had to do it over again, I would. I remain fully committed to the idea that both choices offered for president by the major political parties were unfit for the office, and that neither truly deserved to win.

But I, like many others, was also convinced that Clinton, not Trump, would be the 45^th President (although I had begun having doubts the week before). And, until it actually happened, I had underestimated just how good it would feel to crush the Clinton dynasty for good.

And, to be honest, it feels good. As I said several times before the election, the bad news would be that either Trump or Clinton is going to win. The good news is that we get to see the other lose. And, while Clinton supporters can yell all they like about how she won the popular vote and Trump’s Electoral College victory is illegitimate, she still lost thirty states, including some that have been reliably Democratic for decades. To Donald Trump. How bad of a candidate do you have to be to lose to Donald Trump? Make no mistake, Hillary Clinton is finished in politics, unless some future Democratic president wants to nominate her to some ceremonial position when she’s eighty years old.

Everything I said about Trump, that I believed him to be unfit for office and a liberal at heart, I believe still. But I hope I’m wrong. If he keeps to his campaign promises and appoints Supreme Court justices from his vaunted list, secures the border, and repeals Obamacare, I will have been sorely mistaken about him, and in that case I will forget my prior arguments against him and enthusiastically campaign for him in 2020.

But we have four years before then for him to prove himself. Early signs are somewhat encouraging, but with no constitutional power until January 20^th and a potential Cabinet yet to be named, it is still far too soon to say. One way or another, Trump is now the President-elect, will soon be the constitutional head of state, and deserves both new respect and a chance to prove all of us naysayers wrong.

We will be watching closely.