• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, November 9, 2016

While the mainstream media gives itself a good thrashing for underestimating the "white male without a college education" voter and pollsters try to defend their invoices, it is frightening to me that nearly 60 million Americans would buy what Trump was selling.

I can understand the repudiation of the status quo. None of us have been happy with how Washington has failed to function in the recent past, and how uneven the recovery has been.

But putting an ignoramus in the White House will not bring back Rust Belt jobs that have disappeared because we now live in a technological rather than an industrial era. Trump buys his steel from China just like everyone else.

While 60 million Americans pat themselves on the back for "showing them,” the rest of the population quakes in fear that decades of progress on inclusion will evaporate as Trump's "party" controls Congress and puts regressive judges on the Supreme Court.

While you 60 million thought you were "sticking it" to China on trade and Mexico on illegal aliens, you were also opening the doors wider to further restrictions on a woman's right to choose, gay rights, immigration and gun control, and setting the table for racial and religious profiling.

You might also have forgotten how the government works. You cannot put a demagogue on a soapbox on the White House lawn and have him shout orders to the other branches of government, the military, regulatory agencies and Wall Street. The world doesn't work that way (even with a partisan House and Senate behind you).

So nearly everything Trump has said he will do, he will not be able to, because he doesn't understand the nuances of compromise and reconciliation.

What happens now to all those Republicans in positions of power who rightly repudiated his campaign? Think they will lie down and let Trump execute his moronic "policies" like "building the Wall”? I suspect not.

What sort of signal have you sent to the rest of the world?

Do you honestly think a man who has spent more time grabbing female crotches, suing his business partners and lusting after his daughter than he has thinking and learning about foreign policy will be able to outmaneuver Putin and Xi Jinping — or even al-Baghdadi — who have spent most of their adult lives honing their skills? No wonder the markets are tanking. We have put a rank amateur into the most powerful job in the world.

The census reports that there are 242,470,820 adults living in the U.S. now. Pick one, any one, and they would have been more qualified to be our president. I hope you 60 million are sitting down and apologizing to your children for what’s about to happen in Washington.