THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN...WHAT DID THEY SAY?
THE PEOPLE’S BRIEF
By Mark McLaughlin
Editor, Citizen-Observer
This offering will appear weekly ONLY on the web version of the Citizen-Observer and in parts on the Cameron Newspapers Facebook page.
THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN
Ah, but what did they say? 139,000,000 people voted in yesterday’s General Election. With Donald Trump’s 72,000,000 and Kamala Harris’s 67,000,000, that’s a significant turnout, and still roughly 14,000,000 less for the Democratic nominee this time out, and 2,000,000 fewer for Donald Trump.
There are a lot of folks asking where that 14,000,000 went. Could that many people have been purged from voter rolls, didn’t show up with I.D.s, or…could the pre-election efforts by Republican National Committee chairs Lana Trump and Michael Watley have succeeded in making fake ballots go “poof”.
Would it be snarky to say that the dead people who voted Democratic in the last election may have just stayed dead this time?
Magnanimity…magnanimity…
Back to the question…what did the people say when they spoke?
1—They attached responsibility to the current administration for the price of gas, eggs, frozen pizzas, car loans and well…just about everything that you have to pay for. They accepted the elementary but common sense argument that the way for inflation to reverse course, becoming “deflation” was to frack, frack, frack and drill, baby, drill.
Remember my pre-election piece on the Economy? Trump will go to the very first rung of the supply chain ladder…Reduce the costs of transportation and distribution, and the savings get passed down all the way up and down the cycle.
2—If you were a Republican, you resented being told what kind of appliance you could use, how you cooked your food, the wattage of your light bulbs, whether you drove a gas powered car, or were forced to buy an EV you didn’t want. Plus,andthe absolute malpractice of FEMA and other federal agencies in serving the people. The picture of Pete Buttigieg on the ground in East Palestine, Ohio in his Gucci italian loafers wasn’t a good look. Tone deaf, socially awkward and left wanting. If you were a Democrat, particularly a black man, a Hispanic man, or a white woman, you resented being called out for not obediently and dronishly marching to the ballot box for a weak candidate.
This administration told you what to do for four years. Wearing masks, staying home from church(while the bars stayed open til 2 am) during COVID and shutting down cities, businesses and schools for nearly two years.
People don’t like being strong-armed. They said, definitively, Cut it out.
3—If you lived in Aurora, Colorado, Ohio, Springfield, Ohio or Logansport, Indiana, you were deluged with illegal immigrants, bussed to your city limits and dumped out to fend for themselves. Whether it was your apartment building, your school, your soccer fields or your gymnasiums, the people who live here were shoved aside for people here illegally. When the mountains washed away in Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee during Helene, your Secretary of Homeland Security announced that your hurricane fund was out of money.
$1-billion in FEMA funds, set aside for disaster relief, was funneled to illegal immigrants.
You didn’t like being told you didn’t matter as a legacy American citizen.
And they didn’t accept the notion that “only a few apartment buildings” were taken over by Tren De Aragua thugs.
They said,”Do you hear what you’re saying, Martha?” phrased so perfectly by Vice-President-Elect JD Vance.
4—If you were Catholic, as 25-million Americans are, traditionally a Democratic voting bloc, Jews attending colleges across the country, or our friends in Israel fighting for their survival from an Iranian-supported onslaught through Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, you were told as a Catholic that you were on a terrorist watch list if you protested at an abortion clinic. As a Jew, it was okay if you were spat upon, beaten, or intimidated as you tried to pursue your education on a Pro-Hamas infested college campus. Your home, patron “nation” was handcuffed, and threatened with a boycott of needed arms if they didn’t pull up short on destroying their enemies. If you were a Muslim in Michigan or Minnesota, you didn’t like the position the Biden administration took.
I have to give them a little credit on this one…They managed to piss off BOTH the Jews and the Muslims by trying to have it both ways. Catholics were ticked because Harris had something “more important to do” during the Al Smith dinner.
The people said…Don’t take our votes for granted and assume we will be there for you. As a matter of fact, more than half of us won’t be.
5—If you were a conservative, you tired of being called stupid, uneducated, bigoted, Nazis, Fascists and “garbage”. When Donald Trump slung fries in McDonalds and then “took out the trash” in his garbage truck, quite a beautiful garbage truck, actually, you were sold. The garbage comment stuck, and I never saw people so incensed at a personal, visceral level in my life. It may not have moved a lot of Dems to vote for Trump, but it was “all hands on deck” for the MAGA team. What did they say? You crossed the line, Comrade…we matter.
When we say that “The People Have Spoken”, we’re saying something that was unpacked a little bit on TV today.
Both sides leaned on the Constitution—one side trying to distort it, what it says, and that our protections are not absolute. The other side, trying to preserve it, believes that the Framers intent to give every citizen a say once every four years is the whole thing…the whole magilla.
The main, damned thing.
It was Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, who proclaimed the Progressive movement practically dead and rightly recognized that “the people FIXED IT”.
The pendulum had swung too far left. What an American was was blurring. What our government was was becoming unrecognizeable.
The People Have Spoken.
They said, “Not so fast, my friends…” and they FIXED IT!
May God bless the United States of America.
