There's been, and will be, a lot of analysis of yesterday's election, most of it I'm sure is much closer to the mark than my inexpert view. Nevertheless, for what it's worth I think that yesterday was not so much an affirmation by the nation's electorate of Donald Trump but rather an explosive repudiation of a political and media coalition that has frustrated and angered voters across this country for decades.
The elites in Washington and at the major media outlets have lorded it over the rest of what they disdainfully call "flyover country" for a generation and have grown increasingly arrogant, self-righteous and corrupt, and a lot of people have quite simply had enough of it.
More than Hillary Clinton, perhaps, this election was a repudiation of eight years of the Obama administration, its scandals, corruption, circumventions of the people via executive orders, and policies which many see as destructive of the economic and social health of the country.
Under the Obama presidency, to take a few examples, the IRS and DOJ have been perverted by a leadership seeking to use the power of these institutions to advance President Obama's political agenda and to protect Mrs. Clinton from legal scrutiny.
Over the past eight years the president's judicial appointments have been disappointingly mediocre and alarmingly unmoored from the Constitution and the law. The judiciary has taken upon itself the prerogatives of the legislature. Judges now make law instead of interpreting it.
During Mr. Obama's tenure the national debt has climbed to historically unprecedented levels, soaring to about 20 trillion dollars, an incomprehensible sum that'll take generations of Americans to pay off. Meanwhile, the labor force participation rate is at record lows.
The president's nuclear deal with Iran awarded the mullahs 100 billion dollars, half of which they're using to subsidize terrorism and build up their military. In return we got promises that Iran will slow down their production of nuclear weapons, delaying for only a few years the day when they'll be able to annihilate the nation of Israel and terrorize the rest of the Middle East with the threat of nuclear holocaust.
Throw into this mix the failures of Obamacare with its attendant deceptions, our de facto open borders policy, the assaults on traditional marriage and gender distinctions, the marketing of baby body parts by Planned Parenthood, the repeated attacks on religious liberty, and the steady decay of popular culture, a vivid illustration of which being Hillary Clinton's recent rally featuring rapper Jay-Z promiscuously dropping F-bombs and N-bombs (Many people watching that spectacle doubtless said to themselves that they don't want anything to do with a candidate who'd have anything to do with such a performance).
Hillary Clinton was seen as perpetuating and exacerbating all of these grievances, and indeed she campaigned as one who would in fact carry the policies and practices of the last eight years forward for the next eight. Enough people cringed at that prospect to ensure her defeat. Enough people, too, were weary of being called bigots, racists, xenophobes, homophobes, and, in general, deplorables, simply because they question the wisdom of allowing men into women's restrooms or allowing unvetted refugees to pour willy-nilly into the country.
The election of Trump was also a rejection of a news media which has abandoned its role of informing us of the news and has assumed the role of partisan, biased advocates of the Democrat party and its agenda. When media employees like CNN's Donna Brazile are found to have passed questions on to Hillary Clinton that CNN's debate moderators were planning to ask Mrs. Clinton one can't help but feel that the media is simply the propaganda arm of the Democratic party.
Trump's voters were also eager to stick a thumb in the eye of Hollywood celebrities who presume to lecture us on our duties as citizens and threaten like spoiled children to move out of the country if we don't heed their admonitions. Many voters were eager to help them pack their bags.
And finally there was the strong desire to see the back of Bill and Hillary Clinton and the malodorous culture of mendacity, corruption, and floating above the law that has attached to them for as long as they've been in public life.
The desire to be done with all of this lit the fuse on the dynamite that exploded last night.
Donald Trump, despite his manifold faults, was seen at least to be a fighter, someone who would hit back when the Democrats attacked him. Most voters can't even remember a Republican presidential candidate who fought back against the attacks and slanders of the Democrats' media minions.
So Trump was chosen to be the champion to carry all the simmering frustrations and irritations of the last eight years or more into the election, but he was just the vehicle. The goal, in the mind of many voters, was to strip the Democrat/media complex of its power and influence, to clean out the sewer that is Washington, and to reaffirm the principle that government exists to serve the people, the people don't exist to serve the government.
Judging by the dismay on the faces of many media commenters last night they were shocked that the people would have the temerity to ignore them and actually refuse to swallow the castor oil the media wanted us to believe was really good for us.