Trump victorious

When Donald Trump rode the Trump Tower escalator down to announce his campaign for President in June 2015, absolutely no one took him seriously. Most thought his candidacy a joke, a publicity stunt, even a stalking horse for his friend Hillary Clinton. No one thought he would win a single primary.

At the Washoe County Republican election night party at the Atlantis Casino, people began to really believe when it was announced that Trump had won Florida. It was a Republican victory that was even more astounding than Ronald Reagan’s in 1980.

Trump is the first person in American history to win an election for the highest office in a superpower nation without having served even a day in government or the military. Somehow he won by running the most unconventional low budget barnstorming campaign of mass rallies, tweets, phone calls to cable news, and flagrantly controversial, vulgar and insulting televised rants cheered on by his enthusiastic followers. Hillary Clinton spent $1.3 billion on her campaign. Trump spent $795 million but earned $2 billion worth of free media with his personality and brash antics. And he even bashed the media that gave him the free airtime.

Great Britain thought they had the biggest political story of the year when they voted to leave the European Union. Once again the United States comes along and does it twice as big and twice as historic. The alt-right is now the right. Expect Europe to follow suit. Sighs of relief could be heard in Moscow and Damascus that now the neocon bullseye would be lifted from their backs.

Unfortunately, Iran is still in the war party’s sights. No one knows how China will fare under Trump. Will the left anti-war movement arise from its eight-year hibernation now that a Republican is the commander in chief again?

The most Jacksonian presidential candidate since Old Hickory himself brought the Democracy to Washington and overthrew the rule of the silk stocking landed gentry, won what no one thought was possible. Only now, the elite is international and wears pantsuits and pinstripes. The Boomers are going out with a bang!

Sadly, Nevada continues to be center-left with the Democrats taking back the Legislature. Nevada showed liberal bias as we narrowly approved Question 1 for more useless gun control while affirming individual rights to ingest cannabis for any reason. But the worst result was that the diamond buried in the turd pile that was the 2015 Legislature—school choice—may, as I predicted, have been lost because the Republican special session approved crony capitalism and mindless law and order but did not fix the technical problem of how to fund it. The new Democratic legislature will probably table any fixes, and thousands of Nevada children in under-performing public schools will lose the option for a better education.

To rub salt in the womb of the demise of school choice is the passage of Washoe County ballot question 1. Northern Nevadans still have to learn that giving money to bureaucrats is like giving whiskey and car keys to a teenager—bad things are likely to happen.

Trump’s “big beautiful wall” will waste billions of dollars to solve a non-existent problem, as Asians are rapidly becoming the dominant immigrant group. Protectionist economic policies will be mainstreamed and will also be counterproductive. The Donald’s embrace of law and order could stall prison and police union reform. These are the expected downsides to a Trump presidency.

But now we rejoice!