Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/751476
GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIALBOARD How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@ redbluffdailynews.com Fax: 530-527-9251 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 728Main St., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS Ididn'tthinkitwouldhappen.Iwaswrong. And if it's true what they say, that misery loves company, well, I have plenty of it. "Neverbeenaswrongon anything in my life," said David Plouffe, the guy who guided Barack Obama to two decisive victories. "But sobri- ety about what happened to- night is essential." Sobriety, huh? OK, I'll give it a try. Clinton had the money, the ads, the turnout game, the Hispanic surge, and the long arc of history. But one half of this profoundly divided nation summoned a primal scream for the ages, giving the middle finger to the established polit- ical order. On behalf of a con man with no qualifications. We've truly gone through the looking glass. This is a re- pugnant milestone in the his- tory of this nation, but that middle finger is real and war- rants our full attention. If the whitelash had been confined to the rural towns, Donald Trump would've lost. But according to the latest na- tional exit polls, he won the suburbs by five percentage points. (He won Pennsylva- nia, the first GOP victor since 1988, in part because he over- performed in suburban coun- ties like Bucks.) And if the whitelash had been confined to the under-educated voters, Trump would've lost. But he won white college graduates by four points. Did Clinton lose because she was a woman? To what ex- tent was she doomed by mi- sogyny? I'm being lobbied to buy that argument. But it's not that simple. Yes Trump won male voters — but his share (53 percent) was just one point higher than Mitt Romney's in 2012. President Obama beat Romney among women voters by a margin of 11 points; Tues- day night, Clinton widened that margin by a grand total of one point. Wrap your head around this: Forty-two percent of women nationwide voted for a man who boasts about sex- ually assaulting women, who was hit with groping or mo- lesting accusations by at least a dozen women and who said at one point that women who get abortions should be pun- ished. Did "the media" create Trump and give him oxygen? Again, it's not that simple. Ca- ble TV in particular beamed his every utterance during the primary season, but if his message hadn't steadily resonated, cable would've pulled the plug. More impor- tantly, the mainsteam me- dia for much of this year per- formed admirably — digging into Trump's various cons and frauds — with The Washing- ton Post leading the way. But we live now in a fractured me- dia universe, and Trump's vot- ers simply don't read or heed the mainstream outlets. What's clearest — if we can believe the exit stats — is that this election was basically a backlash against Clinton (and, more generally, against the Clintons and the poli- tics-as-usual that they appar- ently represent). Fifty three percent of Clinton voters said they "strongly favored" their candidate; only 42 percent of Trump voters felt that way about their guy. But 51 per- cent of Trump voters said their strongest motivation was "dislike" of his opponent. Fairly or not, Clinton had too much baggage. Which makes me wonder what Joe Biden is thinking right now. One other thing. When a Democrat loses a state like Wisconsin — for the first time since 1984 — it's proof anew that the party has lost its ancestral ties to the Rust- belt worker. Several genera- tions ago, the Democrats were known as "the party of the working man." But Trump was able to exploit the blue- collar anger about stagnant incomes and the exodus of jobs. Clinton failed to speak to and for those people. Demo- crats haven't spoken for those people in many years, and last night paid the highest price. And a cruel irony: Clin- ton may well wind up win- ning the popular vote, but if you deem that a nice consola- tion prize, consult President Gore. All it means at this mo- ment is that nearly 60 million Americans feel less connected to their country, less proud of their country, and more fear- ful than ever before that the democratic values they hold dear are imperiled. Elections have conse- quences. None are more pro- found than those we'll soon experience. DickPolmanisthenational political columnist at NewsWorks/WHYY in Philadelphia (newsworks. org/polman) and a "Writer in Residence" at the University of Pennsylvania. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com. Dick Polman The primal scream for Trump and what it means Cartoonist's take The cheers, high-fives and elation in Red Bluff's Repub- lican Headquarters on elec- tion night kept us buoyed through- out the call of state after state for Donald Trump. By mid- night, we saw Pennsylvania go for Trump, giv- ing him 269 EC votes, and went to our homes for Trump's acceptance speech. There's been little coverage of Republican celebration but cel- ebrate we did. Note: Trump got 65% in Tehama County. The Republican HQ could not have been the open-door source for signs, hats, stickers, buttons and hope without vol- unteers giving their time—in- cluding the Central Committee and Republican Women Feder- ated. Our phone bank helped the Trump campaign shift re- sources from Colorado (appar- ently not going Trump's way) to "Get Out the Vote" calls to Flor- ida. It was fun and uplifting to participate in a winning cam- paign after the heartbreaks in 2008 and 2012. I'm entitled to an "I told ya so" given my prediction in last week's column: "Based on such statistical analysis, I could see Trump winning the popular vote and at least 270 Electoral College votes." That analysis, you may recall, cited the heavy over-sampling of Democrats in pollsters' surveys. Only IBD, LA Times/USC and Trafalgar had predicted a Trump win. Trafal- gar's pollster found the "hidden Trump" supporters by sidestep- ping the reluctance of shy vot- ers to choose Trump in a sur- vey—they were asked who they thought their neighbors sup- ported. Clinton's voters held no similar hidden support. Trump fell short of the pop- ular vote win by about 700,000 votes (as of Monday, based on "uselectionatlas.org"), with 60.6 million votes to Clinton's 61.3 million. Hence, Trump's 47 per- cent was about a half percent below her 47.5 percent. I believe millions of votes came from fel- ons, illegal immigrants, dead and fraudulent voters. Election facets little noted, let alone analyzed: The votes for non-Trump substitute, Evan McMullin (who thankfully failed to spoil Trump's win in Utah), were almost half a mil- lion or 0.4 percent of the vote. While an anti-Trump choice, they nonetheless remain votes on the conservative Republican side and almost cancel Clinton's lead. Over 4 million votes went to the Libertarian, Gary Johnson, and about 1.25 million for the Green Party's Jill Stein. In the Left/Right spectrum, the Liber- tarian preference for less gov- ernment in our lives must be placed on the Right, while the Green Party is clearly a govern- ment-centric Left side choice. That gives the candidates on the Right about 65.3 million to the Left's total of about 62.6 million, or almost 51 percent of the popular vote on the Right, to about 48.5 percent on the Left. "Write-ins" account for over 700,000 votes, or 0.5 per- cent. While Trump's sub-majority is bandied about as a non-man- date, the clear majority of votes for the Right side of the spec- trum tell a story of popular en- dorsement for conservative gov- ernance. Outside of California, Trump got 2 million more votes than Clinton. It's similar to Richard Nixon's win over Hubert Humphrey in 1968. Nixon's 31.7 million votes, or 43.4 percent, barely edged out Humphrey's 31.3 million, or 42.7 percent. However, George Wallace's American Indepen- dent Party got almost 10 million votes. William Rusher explained in "The Rise of the Right" that many millions of voters flocked to Wallace's side, not due to rac- ism but rather to make a state- ment in support of conservative governance and in opposition to encroaching federal intrusion. Note how the news media ef- fortlessly shifted from "Elect Hillary" mode to "Trump's-win- gives-joy-to-no-one" mode and overblown coverage of predict- able demonstration/protest/riot crowds inspired and organized by paid operatives. A USA To- day article, attempting to define "protesters" as "all walks of life" folks, failed to discover that 2 of their featured "protesters" were on-the-record professional activists for Democrat groups: Yong Jung Cho and Phil Roeder. Shameless advocacy journal- ism with thinly veiled agendas is the biggest loser—the main- stream, Coastal, urban Beltway- centric news media have forever lost Americans' trust. The constant triumphal-ism from Democrats was fed by their certainty over perpetual electoral victories via the in- creasing demographic groups voting their way: minorities, women, young, and college-ed- ucated. In "What's the Matter with Kansas," William White made a case for the ironic vot- ing preferences of rural "fly- over" voters—ironic if you be- lieve that centralized, redis- tributive federal government provides obvious benefits to middle and lower classes that ought to return the favors with their votes. Hence, the shock and emotional turmoil over finding out that the voters are not participating in the Left's inexorable march to top-down regimentation. Here are some sobering (to the Left) factual realities: The Democrat state-by-state break- down heavily disfavors their party and candidates. Almost half of the 50 states have total Republican control (of both leg- islative chambers and the gov- ernors' mansions) while only 4 states—Hawaii, California, Or- egon and Rhode Island—have similar total Democrat control. The Democrat "blue wall" of solid voting states is smaller than they would have you be- lieve. The states where Hillary Clinton won either a majority or a plurality beyond the total of the Trump+Johnson vote to- tal 194 Electoral votes: HI, WA, OR, CA, IL, VA, MD, DE, NJ, NY, CT, RI, MA, VT and D.C. The states Clinton won but by less than the combined Trump and Johnson vote total 38 EC votes: NV, CO, NM, MN, NH and ME. The final EC tally (af- ter MI and NH are called for Trump and Clinton) will be Trump-306 to Clinton-232. The bottom line doesn't look good for the arrogant, lib- eral political, cultural and me- dia elite as they only dominate the West Coast, Illinois, and the East Coast from Virginia north, (except for Maine and New Hampshire)—totaling less than 200 EC votes. How's that going to work for out for the future of the progressive/socialist left? I wouldn't want to trade places. Don Polson has called Red Bluff home since 1988. He can be reached by e-mail at donplsn@ yahoo.com. The way I see it Presidential election 'debriefing' Fifty three percent of Clinton voters said they "strongly favored" their candidate; only 42 percent of Trump voters felt that way about their guy. But 51 percent of Trump voters said their strongest motivation was "dislike" of his opponent. Sounding off A look at what readers are saying in comments on our website and on social media. Way to go ladies and coaches. Love the Spartans. Vicki Davis Stroud: On the Red Bluff girls' tennis team completing an 18-0season I did notice. The flags looked so nice. Paula Anderson: On a project to decorate the graves of veterans at Oak Hill Cemetery Don Polson StateandNational Assemblyman James Galla- gher,2060TalbertDrive,Ste.110, Chico95928,530895-4217,http:// ad03.asmrc.org/ SenatorJimNielsen,2634For- est Ave., Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530 879-7424, senator.nielsen@ senate.ca.gov Governor Jerry Brown, State Capital Building, Sacramento 95814, 916 445-2841, fax 916 558- 3160, governor@governor.ca.gov U.S. Representative Doug La- Malfa, 507 Cannon House Office Building,WashingtonD.C.20515, 202 225-3076 U.S.SenatorDianneFeinstein, OnePostSt.,Ste.2450,SanFran- cisco94104,415393-0707,fax415 393-0710 U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, 1700 Montgomery St., San Fran- cisco 94111,510286-8537,fax202 224-0454 Local Tehama County Supervisors, 527-4655 District1,SteveChamblin,Ext. 3015 District 2, Candy Carlson, Ext. 3014 District3,DennisGarton,Ext. 3017 District 4, Bob Williams, Ext. 3018 District 5, Burt Bundy, Ext. 3016 Red Bluff City Manager, Rich- ardCrabtree,527-2605,Ext.3061 Corning City Manager, Kris- tina Miller, 824-7033 Your officials OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Tuesday, November 15, 2016 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6