Donald Trump Has Stolen the Election — From Us

The mainstream media chose its narrative about Election 2016 from the very beginning. Everyone has been agreeing for some time that this election is THE WORST. Why? Well, of course, because the candidates are unlikable — historically unlikable! So, in other words, they blame the ugliness of the campaign on both Trump and Clinton. But this election has been disheartening, even disgusting at times, for one reason: Donald Trump. He alone has turned this election into a horrifying mob-and-pitchfork parade. He alone has made it this way, and he alone is never going to fix it. He began his campaign of racism and xenophobia with what has become his supporters’ rallying cry (“We’re gonna build a wall!”); he took a few permanent detours into total cartoon buffoonery (touting his penis size during a debate), and has incited violence, told lies, and stoked fear all along the way.

He is a demagogue who has peddled nativism and played on the racism and misogyny of the crowd. He has treated the election, the office of the president, and democracy itself like a giant receptacle for his bullshit.

“He alone” is, of course, part of the myth of Trump. He certainly had help — from the Republican party, from the press, and, of course, from white supremacists. Nonetheless, one of the saddest things about this, for me, is that he has taken up all the oxygen. He has completely succeeded in his one and only goal — making everything all about him. He has hijacked an election that should be about something else — the historic possibility of electing a woman President of the United States. But who wants to talk about that when we can read Trump’s offensive tweets? Or sit at the edge of our seats for five minutes waiting for his next press conference? Or when we can debate whether or not he really is working for the Russians or “just kidding”? Or when we can wait for the next list of immigrants he’ll be banning? Or when we can wait to see if he’ll apologize for that terrible thing he just said/did, and then buy us flowers to show he really means it?

No, on some level, he has already won. Because I realized recently that we have actually been forced to think about Donald Trump like every single day for the past six months! Think about that. Did you ever think you’d be spending this much time on Donald Trump? He is in heaven. Everybody is constantly talking about him! And even if they are saying he’s insane, they’re still talking about him, and that is truly all he cares about. He has actually taken this election — this moment of historic achievement for women, something I have personally been looking forward to my entire life — and defecated all over it. He has created a toxic atmosphere that has blotted out the hopefulness this moment might have represented. He’s made sure that Election 2016 will go down as “the worst” rather than as a watershed moment. He alone has done that. Maybe that was his true goal — keeping women down. Creating a safe zone for virulent, witch-burning level misogyny — a place where parents beam as their 10-year old boys scream obscenities about Hillary Clinton. Keeping the world safe from “political correctness.”

So let’s stop blaming anyone but Trump for the disgust many of us are feeling with the election. And more importantly, let’s not give into it. Let’s not let him ruin everything that Hillary Clinton’s nomination represents: to women, to people of color, to the LGBTQ community — and yes, to men. Because Clinton is right — as she said in her acceptance speech, “When one barrier falls in America, it clears the way for everyone.” We are all lifted up.

I’ve spent months listening to “Fight Song” blare at Clinton rallies, and there it was again after her acceptance speech. I thought, “Couldn’t they have done better than this insipid pop anthem? This earworm that sticks in my head and won’t let go?” But now, as we make our way through the mud to rise above the hateful rhetoric and the anti-Hillary chants, I’m beginning to think the Clinton campaign actually got it right.

In 1920, with the ratification of the 19th amendment, women officially won the right to vote in the United States. Perhaps not coincidentally, just a year later, the first Miss America pageant was held. It’s as if, facing the prospect of women voting, we had to make sure we also had a high-profile event where we voted on women, judging them on their physical beauty. So now, almost 100 years later, we face a fear-mongering demagogue who also happens to be a beauty pageant mogul, purveyor of “Miss Universe.” Running against him is a woman who stands on the shoulders of the suffragettes and all those feminists and powerful women that came before her. And women voters will likely tip the balance.

So cue it up, Clinton campaign — give me some of that “Fight Song.” I’m ready to sing along, so that we can remember “Election 2016” not as “the worst,” but as one of the best and most significant — the one where we elected the first Madam President.