Liberals, you went too far.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5cafd5/need_a_postmortem_liberals_you_went_too_far/
A lot will be written about this election in the coming days, months, and years. I have refrained from putting out any long-winded explanations because, well, quite frankly, I’ve been too busy celebrating. I haven’t stopped smiling in two days.
But as I see many of my more-liberal friends posting their own diagnoses – usually blaming racism, sexism, xenophobia, etc – I think it is prudent to throw my two cents in. You don’t have to believe me. Then again, you didn’t believe me when I said Trump would win by way of the Rust Belt a year and a half ago or when I said all of the polls were wrong. But these are minor details…
I want to say this as clearly as possible: Liberals, you went too far.
All of the polling data showed that the majority of Americans supported compassionate immigration reform. You turned around and called for a pathway to citizenship that would have shifted American electoral politics dramatically to the left for decades to come. President Barack Obama, after saying no less than 30 times that he didn’t have the legal authority to do so, decided to bypass Congress and give amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants by executive order. When a Federal judge ordered the administration to stop, they kept sending out amnesty paperwork anyway. When Kate Steinle was murdered by a five-time deported illegal immigrant in a Sanctuary City, you spoke out in favor of letting potential-killers roam the streets to further your commitment to political correctness. Instead of looking at the real pain caused by illegal immigration in this country, you went to bat for people whose first act in this country was to break our laws. You went too far on immigration and you lost.
Most polling data shows that a plurality of Americans support sensible “common sense” gun control. This election season, you defined the term “common sense” for the first time… and it was terrifying. You chose a Presidential candidate who promised to eliminate the individual right to keep and bear arms by reversing the very Supreme Court case (Heller v DC) that affirmed that Americans have the right to own a gun. You nominated a candidate who promised to ban entire categories of weapons based not on their lethality, but on what attachments they have and what they look like. You went too far on gun control and you lost.
The vast majority of Americans supported the idea of revamping healthcare to make it affordable. Instead of working alongside Republicans, you jammed a healthcare bill down our throats using a parliamentary maneuver that allowed it to pass without a single Republican vote. One of your chief architects of the ACA said, on camera, that the law passed because of the stupidity of the American voter. When faced with the reality of premiums skyrocketing and health insurance companies leaving the system all together, you refused to admit that people were upset because you went too far. Instead, you nominated a candidate who argued the system was falling apart because we didn’t go far enough. You went too far on healthcare and you lost.
The majority of Americans support the idea of “free trade.” But you nominated a candidate who called the Trans-Pacific Partnership the “gold standard of trade agreements,” a candidate who celebrated, alongside her husband, when NAFTA passed and when China entered the WTO. When Democrats had the chance to kill the Trans-Pacific Partnership last year, 14 Senate Democrats voted alongside Republicans to give the President power to negotiate on it further. Those same Democrats voted for a companion bill (Trade Adjustment Assistance Act of 2015) to set-aside billions of dollars to retrain the hundreds of thousands of Americans who would lose their jobs as a result of TPP. You went too far on trade and you lost the entire Rust Belt as a result.
The country was roughly split 50/50 on the issue of abortion. Donald Trump stood on a Presidential debate stage and say that yes, if elected his Supreme Court judges would overturn Roe v Wade. Four years ago, many said Romney lost the election because of his “binders full of women.” By any measure, Donald Trump’s statement should have lost him the election. But he only received 1% less support among women than Mitt Romney did. Why? Because right after he said he wanted to overturn Roe v Wade, his opponent declared she believes abortion should be legal up until the date of delivery, which not only terrifies me as someone who was born significantly pre-mature, but it also goes directly against the viability test set forth in Roe v Wade. You went too far on abortion and you lost.
Contrary to the liberal talking points coming out over the past few days, the vast majority of the country believes in equal rights for people of color. Instead of building off of this common ground, Black Lives Matter popped up and the nightly news was filled with images of African Americans rioting and burning black neighborhoods to the ground. Police Officers began getting gunned down in the streets and yet Democratic Congressmen and Senators promoted this organization from the floor of the House and Senate. Even today, after Donald Trump won the Presidency in a landslide, disgruntled African Americans are being caught on camera savagely beating White citizens, simply because they voted for Donald Trump. You went too far on the issue of race and you lost.
Many on the Left, throughout this election, said that Donald Trump’s message was devoid of specifics. If you were one of them, then you weren’t paying attention. Donald Trump’s campaign was completely issue-based. He won by a landslide because he isolated every single thing that the Left went too far on and promised to right the ship.
While you were salivating over the prospect of 11 million illegal aliens being given citizenship and added to the voter rolls, Donald Trump was meeting with families who had loved ones killed by illegal aliens that Barack Obama refused to deport. While you used the San Bernardino attack and the Orlando Massacre to push for more gun control, Donald Trump stood on stage and promised to keep the violent Muslim extremism that caused these attacks “the hell out of our country.” While you called Donald Trump the most anti-gay candidate ever, he was going off script at the Republican Convention, thanking delegates for applauding his plan to keep the LGBT community safe. He was standing on stage at a rally in Colorado holding up a gay pride flag.
You believed that Trump’s comments about illegal aliens and certain women would spell certain defeat for the maverick billionaire. Now that the dust has settled, exit polls show Donald Trump winning 1% more of the Latino vote and only getting 1% less of the women vote than Mitt Romney did. You were wrong.
By all means, continue to post about how you think Donald Trump’s victory was caused by prevalent racism or sexism or some other -ism. That is your right and I will defend it to the death. But Hillary Clinton didn’t lose this election because of an –ism. She lost this election because the American people rejected every single part of your platform and until you realize this, you are going to keep losing.
One line that was repeated throughout the campaign when the pundits thought Trump was melting down was a Napoleonic quote: Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. It would be easy to say this now as Clinton supporters blame everyone but themselves for this historic electoral result.
But at the end of the day, this proverb doesn’t fit because you’re not my enemy. You are my friend, my neighbor, my countryman. We voted to Make America Great Again for all Americans and I sincerely believe that you will be pleasantly surprised.