Now that Trump Has Won

There are some things that I need to say, and I think I'll write them here, in this little watched space. Some people enjoy bathing in the tears of their enemies, but I'm not one of them.

• Now that Trump has won, I want someone to ask every elected Democrat if they want Trump to succeed. Dems had so much unearned outrage over comments made after Obama had won. Let's see if they are mature enough to understand where they went wrong.
• In fact, 'mature enough to understand where they went wrong' is going to be an enormous test for Dems and I'm not optimistic. The most obvious one has to do with executive power. For years I've been saying something like 'would you give this much power to your opponents' and I haven't been listened to or acknowledged. Well, guess what?
• The early news that I'm hearing is that Trump out-performed Romney with Hispanics and African-Americans. If you want to hang this all on 'angry white men', then you have to factor that piece into your analysis.
• We've spent the past eight years having almost every criticism of Obama dismissed as racism. We were starting to have every criticism of Clinton dismissed as sexism. Well, there's a price to pay for not actively acknowledging criticism. Huge portions of the country are absolutely fed up with being called racist or sexist for weak reasons. It looks like they've spoken up.
• Hillary Clinton was a disastrous choice for a nominee. And she won in part because her own cronies in the DNC made it possible. People didn't find her trustworthy. (And no, they didn't find Trump trustworthy either.) The Bernie Sanders style criticism of her Wall St speeches was dead on. Her obviously unethical behavior turned off tons of people. If YOU bought into her, it was in spite of all this.
• And the emails, of course the emails! The fact that she used a private server to keep her own communications away from routine FOIA is bad. The fact that she was sloppy with classified info is terrible. The fact that she then LIED about her use was basically a big ol' middle finger aimed at anyone that cared for good and open government. Forget the damn emails? It looks like America wanted to remember them long enough to forget the damn Hillary.
• I would also like to tell everyone that is yelling at third party voters (like myself) that they can kindly go fornicate themselves. Hillary Clinton didn't earn those votes in any way shape or form. Either did Donald Trump. I can't speak for other third party voters, but I kind of think that the ones who should be ashamed are the ones who brought us these awful, awful choices.
• If you think that your life is over now, because your preferred candidate lost, then you might need some perspective. Yes, elections have consequences and those can be dire for some people. I'm kind of a squish on immigration so I feel for families that now fear being deported. However, if Hillary had won then it would have been terrible for pro-lifers. (It may still be.) It would have been terrible for people whose health coverage expenses are insanely expensive. Their concerns matter too.
• I hope that Trump surprises us, but I'm not confident. I hope that congressional Republicans can keep him in check, though I don't know if that's true either. But...we need to have some faith and optimism.

The Emails

Last week the story broke that the Clinton foundation accepted rather large donations from foreign governments while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.  At least one of those donations appears to have violated the ethics agreement that was put forth by the Obama administration.  All of the donations present ethical questions, though.  Is it really possible for a Secretary of State (or other cabinet level official) to receive a large amount of money from a foreign government and somehow keep strict neutrality when dealing with that nation?  It seems unlikely, if not impossible.  That's why the ethics guidelines are in place.  Even if Hillary Clinton somehow kept her actions pure, why did she not think that these rules applied to her?
This week's story is of a similar, though more disturbing vein.  While she was Secretary of State, Clinton exclusively used a personal email address.  From appearances (and the story is still developing), the Clintons set up their own domain and servers.  There are reports that her personal aides also used the private email set up.  This was a set of deliberate actions.  When Clinton accepted the post, she decided that she would bypass the government email set up.
The most obvious reason to do so would be to avoid Freedom of Information requests.  Emails from State officials are subject to request (with limitations based on things like sensitivity).  Private email servers would be beyond the reach of government IT officials.  The Clintons have released some of those emails but only ones that they have decided are germane.  Again, she decided that the regular rules didn't apply to her.
Even more disturbing is the security risk that this presents.  Government emails are given top level encryption to protect against hackers.  A personal domain and server obviously isn't.  There is reason to fear that governments all over the world were able to read all of our Secretary of State's emails.  General Patreaus was just given a (rather light) legal sentence for being too loose with confidential materials with his girlfriend.  Clinton took a larger risk.


Goodness knows that the last six years have put a strain on the 'Hope and Change' theme that Democrats embraced so heartily in 2008.  How they deal with these twin scandals from the Clintons will tell us a lot about their general approach to clean government.  If ethical actions count more than raw power, they'll demand some answers.  Otherwise, they'll try to slip past this with faint condemnation and some attempt to pin this on Republicans.
If they're serious, they won't allow Hillary Clinton to make one more step towards running until she gives some lengthy and serious answers to what happened.  This will mean revealing some technical details of what happened.  It will mean taking questions from potentially hostile questioners.  It will mean an honest accounting of what happened, regardless of what that means to her election chances.
Will Democrats actually do such a thing?