Well, That Didn't Work

The news everywhere is that Trump has won.  Despite Taylor Swift's endorsement and everything. 

I'm going to stay home and mope—like I do,  anyway.

[Added later today:]

It seems pretty clear that the big issues in this election were Racism, Sexism, and Xenophobia.  The last one is not a problem for Republicans alone: when would-be immigrants attempt to enter the US illegally in such great numbers, I would expect that it would alarm and discomfit Democrats and Republicans equally.  (It's just that Democrats have different objections to a huge stream of immigrants than Republicans have.)  When Republicans raise the immigration issue, Democrats reflexively have taken the other side; it's just the political climate that is around us. 

Those of us who live in rural areas have often needed immigrant labor at various times.  We city dwellers don't know about this first hand.  But those who do need immigrant labor seem to not want to have illegal immigrants underfoot at times when they're not needed.  That's an uncomfortable situation; what are we to do: put the migrant labor in a freezer when they're not needed?  It almost seems as though some people would like to establish labor camps, like was done when Chinese labor was helping build railroads. 

Sexism is a whole different thing.  A lot of Amerucans have grown up steeped in the testosterone-infused culture of the Old West, and the World Wars.  Women had little or no place in the myths that figured in the imaginations of young boys, and even now, the conservative core of the GOP cannot tolerate the thought of being led by a woman, and Trump has capitalized on this distaste in his campaigns. 

Another thing Trump grabbed with glee is the possibility of labeling Kamala Harris an outsider, a black, an Indian, in any case, someone who is not quite American.

So Trump depends on this "Us" / "Them" dichotomy for his campaigning strategy, and—not surprisingly, in hindsight—it seems to have worked.  These ideas are evidently still a part of the thinking of Anericans, buried in their minds for years, but ideas that can be invoked easily by populists such as Trump.

Kay