Daily Times

First, Donald Trump beat his opponents within the Republican Party (GOP) during the long convoluted process of primaries, through which each party elected its nominee for the 2016 US Presidential elections. Then, he turned around and extended the same harsh treatment previously reserved for his rivals to the GOP establishment, including the speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, leaving him with no choice other than endorsing Trump. The US media continued to bombard its viewers with reports of implosion and polarisation within the GOP as the tension between them escalated. No one knew whether the party would be able to rescue itself from the devastation caused by internal conflict. The leadership was oft-suggested to contain the damage while the pundits recommended how the party should remain more inclusive in order to win the future elections, how it had to reconnect with the minorities and how it could not stay relevant when it had confined itself in a shell comprised of white voters only. All this seemed logical and reasonable till the day elections were held when the television screens starting turning the US map red.

While jabbing the GOP establishment with one hand, Trump kept the other one free to throw some real hard punches at the media. His infamous late-night tweets scoffed at both the NewYork Times and the CNN; criticising them for their lopsided coverage and accusing them of becoming a party. Dumbfounded by such tactics, most people thought that Trump was on a suicide mission, determined to shoot himself in the foot–and not just one but both. How could one win if your target is not just the opposite team but also the referee? The media outlets were so enraged that they virtually ran a separate campaign against him.

He was still not done. After he clutched the nomination in July, he punched the pollsters on their faces, proving all — who showed Hillary Clinton ahead in their observations — wrong . The lead waxed and waned but the red line always stayed below the blue- irrespective of the reality. In one sweep on November 8th, 2016, all organisations claiming to gauge the pulse of the nation, however, were sent back to the classrooms to learn how to conduct a reliable study. Even though Trump was criticising the reliability of the polls for months, oft-asserting that their results did not reflect the sentiments of the people, no one believed him until the results on Tuesday night.

Finishing up, he gave a big blow to the Democratic Party knocking them out of the White House–their only stronghold. They had already lost the majority in Congress and the Senate during Obama presidency. Unable to stand up and fight for another two years, the Democrats found out that it was them, not the GOP, who needed to learn some lessons in politics. They should now ask themselves how they lost contact with the blue collar, white workers of the midwest, emerging as an exclusive party of urban elite sans any representation in the electoral college from the Midwest.

A year and a half ago when Trump had begun his journey to the White House, newspapers were calling him a “buffoon”, a man with empty (and sometimes frightening) rhetoric whose popularity could never be translated into votes. Media consistently ignored the increasing growth of his rallies and the enthusiasm of his supporters. They projected him as a person who was only good at making political enemies, indulging on the ever-increasing supply of fodder from Trump.

Women disliked him, more so after the Access Hollywood videotape was leaked in which the President-elect was seen making lewd comments about females. Muslims rallied against him after his proposal to ban all of them for some time from entering the US. The manner in which he had disregarded the family of Captain Humayun Khan, the fallen American soldier, did not help Tump gain support from the troubled community either. The ones living in America were also afraid. Would they be captured or incarcerated? Would they be made to register with a mark assigned to them for identification purposes? When it came to African Americans, he angered them as well by his incautious attitude. But to be honest, the Hispanics got the worse of it as Trump referred to them as rapists and criminals.

Even so, the truth being that despite making all these irresponsible, demeaning and derogatory comments, he has managed to paint almost every swing state red with his own hands: Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin and North Carolina. Is this blatant racism? I am not too sure about it. More than racism, I believe the Democratic party candidate is to be blamed for the results. As much as I would have liked her to win the elections as the first female president of the US and as much as Donald Trump made me nervous, she was the weakest candidate that the Democratic Party could have nominated — a candidate who might not even have defeated Burnie Sanders in the primaries without the support of the party’s establishment.

The writer is a US-based freelance columnist. He tweets at @KaamranHashmi and can be reached at skamranhashmi@gmail.com