The late Jamaican ska singer known as Prince Buster, certainly did not have Donald Trump in mind when he wrote Hard Man Fi Dead some 60 years ago. But this ska classic fits Trump perfectly!
Many people throughout the world are really mystified how someone like Trump, a man with the reputation for: cheating small contactors and other persons including applicants to his university, misappropriation of foundation funds for his own use, sexually harassing women, and who was convicted of 34 felonies by his peers, and on and on, could get such an overwhelming mandate from the richest and most powerful country in the world.
And this mandate is such that those who warned that he could be a Hitler could be prophetic, for with him sweeping the presidency both in terms of popular and Electoral College votes, sweeping the Senate and the Congress and controlling the Supreme Court and lower courts ad infinitum, there is nothing to stop him doing anything he wants during the next four years.
What is sad, is that the Democrats could also be out of power for decades, unless of course, they wake from their stupor and stop blaming everyone but themselves.
Short-sighted Democrats who claim that they lost because Americans will never elect a woman are overlooking the fact that Hilary beat Trump by three million votes in 2016 and only lost because of the weird Electoral College system. And when they hold up the race card, how do they explain how Obama, a black man, won in the USA, not once but twice?
There is even more stark information that they are misreading the facts when you look at voter turnout in the critical states; For example, Trump won Wisconsin by 23,000 votes but in Milwaukee, 93,000 black people did not vote!
He won Florida by 113,000 votes where 379,000 black people did not bother to vote. And that pattern is repeated all over.
So, are they really saying that those blacks who did not vote for Harris are racists?
The Democratic leadership needs to wake up and take full responsibility for their shortcomings. For they are the root of all the evil.
Kamala ran a good campaign, considering the short time she had and the fact that as Vice-President she had to accept responsibility for all that went wrong under Biden.
But it was the powerful leadership of the Democratic Party that kept others out of a primary to replace Biden when he broke his promise to serve only one term.
Even I, a mere neophyte, could see that Biden was fading fast, and I said just that in April 2023, in Joan, my views: He is just too old!.
But the leadership kept lying to the people until it was too late, and they had to choose Kamala who had not even been a front-runner when Biden was nominated in August 2020.
The Democrats have it all wrong, for the exit polls show that the immortal words uttered by James Carville; “It’s the economy, stupid,” is as true today as when he first uttered it.
The powerful and wealthy Democratic leadership can continue to drag down the party by disregarding reality, although over 70% said they voted for change because they were finding it difficult to cope economically. And do not forget, Trump the master marketer, never failed to ask the question at his well publicised rallies: ‘Are you worse off today than you were four years ago?’
In other areas, the democratic leadership is totally out of step with the majority, for most immigrants who became citizens after going through the long, tedious legal process to be able to vote, were turned off by the immigration policy which allowed people to simply climb a wall and get accepted into the USA!
In places such as New York and Chicago, black Americans were also expressing disgust at how wall climbers were being given free housing, and debit cards, when their homelessness and dire economic situation was being disregarded by the Democratic elites.
Also, because the Democrats neglected their base made up of workers, unions such as the Teamsters refused to endorse them for the first time in decades.
Then there was their strange stance on transgenderism which endorsed underperforming male athletes getting sex changes and destroying the hopes of hard-working female athletes in just about every genre.
Sure, there is racism and misogyny in the USA, and small groups will always vote in line with their petty biases, but by ignoring the real issues, the Democrats will fade into oblivion and may even cause the fascism they shouted so loudly about to become a reality.
In light of these realities, we can only hope that Trump’s promise during his acceptance speech on election night “to help our country heal and to be the president every citizen” is not just words.
It’s difficult to see how it can be otherwise though, as these words are so much out of step with his character. Also, the possibility of a 78-year-old man really being able to change seems so impossible!
But as it stands today, we can only live in hope
