President Trump.
OK. Let’s look on the bright side. It proves that a political outsider can win. Although he is a billionaire, Trump certainly did not have the support of most of the business community, nor the real machinery of the Republican Party. There is something hopeful about that, even if, in this particular case, it is probably disastrous.
Also, consider the fact that for the past year, throughout his campaign, Donald Trump has essentially been playing a character. He out-performed every other candidate because he understands the frivolous and sensational nature of the media, and he applied the most basic rules of marketing to raise his profile. He kept his message simple, repetitive, and often controversially stated. Of course he knows more words than “great”, “tremendous”, “incredible”, “win”, “disaster”, “disgrace”, and “big league”; but he also knows that he doesn’t have to use other words. He just has to drum these words into the heads of the audience. He is the pen-pineapple-apple-pen candidate.
So the point is, we don’t really know what he actually thinks or wants, or what he is going to try to do. Thus, a lot of the rhetoric of his campaign probably does not accurately represent the policy course he will take. And, anyway, much of what he promised to do is simply not within his authority as president to do, and even with a Republican congress, he will still not be able to pass whatever he wants because the members of congress are still beholden to their financiers, even if Trump is not.
Things like reducing corporate tax, of course, he will have no trouble enacting. Deregulation too. And whatever semblance of government-supported healthcare created by Obama’s Affordable Healthcare Act will probably be rapidly dismantled. Oh, wait, I am supposed to be talking about the “bright side”; sorry.
Well, again, I think the most positive thing we can take from this, is that establishment politics has been ruptured. That is inherently a good thing, and it opens the possibility for progressive candidates to emerge and be taken seriously in the future.