Her
game of thrones over, Cersei — as Kevin Dowd nicknamed Hillary Clinton — stood
guard over the Dowd family Thanksgiving. Credit Kevin Dowd
WASHINGTON
— First I had to deal with the president-elect scolding.
During his interview with The New York Times on Tuesday,
Donald Trump chided me twice for being too tough on him.
Sitting next to our publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr.,
Trump invited everyone around the table to call him if they saw anything “where
you feel that I’m wrong.”
“You can call me, Arthur can call me, I would love to
hear,” he said. “The only one who can’t call me is Maureen. She treats me too
rough.”
Then I had to go home for Thanksgiving and deal with my
family scolding me about the media misreading the country. I went cold turkey
to eat hot turkey: no therapy dog, no weaving therapy, no yoga, no acupuncture,
no meditation, no cry-in.
The minute I saw my sister’s Trump champagne and a Cersei
figurine as the centerpiece — my brother, Kevin, nicknamed Hillary “Cersei”
during this year’s brutal game of thrones — I knew I wasn’t in a safe space.
My little basket
of deplorables, as I call my conservative family, gloated with Trump toasts
galore, and Kevin presented me with his annual holiday column with an extra
flourish.
My colleague Paul Krugman tweeted Friday that “affluent,
educated suburbanites” who voted for Trump are “fools.” What else is there to
say, he asked.
Well, here is what Kevin, an affluent, educated
suburbanite, has to say in his column, titled an “Election Therapy Guide for
Liberals”:
Donald Trump pulled off one of the greatest political
feats in modern history by defeating Hillary Clinton and the vaunted Clinton
machine.
The election was a complete repudiation of Barack Obama:
his fantasy world of political correctness, the politicization of the Justice
Department and the I.R.S., an out-of-control E.P.A., his neutering of the
military, his nonsupport of the police and his fixation on things like
transgender bathrooms. Since he became president, his party has lost 63 House
seats, 10 Senate seats and 14 governorships.
The country had signaled strongly in the last two
midterms that they were not happy. The Dems’ answer was to give them more of
the same from a person they did not like or trust.
Preaching — and pandering — with a message of inclusion,
the Democrats have instead become a party where incivility and bad manners are
taken for granted, rudeness is routine, religion is mocked and there is
absolutely no respect for a differing opinion. This did not go down well in the
Midwest, where Trump flipped three blue states and 44 electoral votes.
The rudeness reached its peak when Vice President-elect
Mike Pence was booed by attendees of “Hamilton” and then pompously lectured by
the cast. This may play well with the New York theater crowd but is considered
boorish and unacceptable by those of us taught to respect the office of the
president and vice president, if not the occupants.
Here is a short primer for the young protesters. If your
preferred candidate loses, there is no need for mass hysteria, canceled
midterms, safe spaces, crying rooms or group primal screams. You might
understand this better if you had not received participation trophies,
undeserved grades to protect your feelings or even if you had a proper
understanding of civics. The Democrats are now crying that Hillary had more
popular votes. That can be her participation trophy.
If any of my sons had told me they were too distraught
over a national election to take an exam, I would have brought them home the
next day, fearful of the instruction they were receiving. Not one of the top 50
colleges mandate one semester of Western Civilization. Maybe they should
rethink that.
Something
for some members of the Dowd family to celebrate their candidate’s victory, and
at least one to drown her sorrows. Credit Kevin Dowd
Mr. Trump received over 62 million votes, not all of them
cast by homophobes, Islamaphobes, racists, sexists, misogynists or any other
“ists.” I would caution Trump deniers that all of the crying and whining is not
good preparation for the coming storm. The liberal media, both print and
electronic, has lost all credibility. I am reasonably sure that none of the mainstream
print media had stories prepared for a Trump victory. I watched the networks
and cable stations in their midnight meltdown — embodied by Rachel Maddow
explaining to viewers that they were not having a “terrible, terrible dream”
and that they had not died and “gone to hell.”
The media’s criticism of Trump’s high-level picks as “not
diverse enough” or “too white and male” — a day before he named two women and
offered a cabinet position to an African-American — magnified this fact.
Here is a final word to my Democratic friends. The
election is over. There will not be a do-over. So let me bid farewell to Al
Sharpton, Ben Rhodes and the Clintons. Note to Cher, Barbra, Amy Schumer and
Lena Dunham: Your plane is waiting. And to Jon Stewart, who talked about moving
to another planet: Your spaceship is waiting. To Bruce Springsteen, Jay Z,
Beyoncé and Katy Perry, thanks for the free concerts. And finally, to all the
foreign countries that contributed to the Clinton Foundation, there will not be
a payoff or a rebate.
As Eddie Murphy so eloquently stated in the movie “48
Hrs.”: “There’s a new sheriff in town.” And he is going to be here for 1,461
days. Merry Christmas.
