Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, but Donald Trump won the electoral votes. The whole electoral college issue will get dredged up again but I'll save that analysis for another day. (I wrote something on the electoral college in 2008: The Electoral College: Is It Necessary? )
The people have spoken, but the outcome was not what the majority of the people wanted.
Everyone put a lot of energy, heart, and soul into this election. But it seemed to lack BRAINS. It’s hard to fathom how a candidate whose messages were tinged with bigotry, exclusion, and misogyny could have been elected to the highest office in the United States.
But here we are, and the cold hard fact is that we now have to live with it.
After spending the last 8+ years reading the repeated hateful rants of strangers, friends, and family about their dislike of Barack Obama as a candidate and as a president, I refuse to let the outcome of this election get me down. I don't want to be like those people who could never get over that election loss and who went out of their way to put down people who voted for Obama.
This doesn’t mean that I will be silent on things that I don’t like about our new president. My expectation will be as high as always. But I am not going to go into this new presidency with a chip on my shoulder from day one. I don’t have the energy for that and I don’t think it serves any good purpose.
I don’t know what this new leadership will bring but only hope that millions of Trump voters don’t find that they’ve been sold a 4 year supply of “snake oil.” This country simply can't afford it.
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