By Taiwo Adeyemi
(@taiyaaay)
“Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it’s got about 18 million cracks in it.” This was a line off Mrs Clinton’s concession speech after she lost her presidential probability to Barrack Obama in 2008. Eight years later, she lost, again; this time to a much less qualified candidate, or so they say.
I have never followed any American election so closely like I did this year. Beyond the information ecosystem generation that we have found ourselves in, an intentional effort to see beneath the beautiful of the presidential hopefuls became a thing for me. Some of the candidates, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Jill Stein, Evan McMullin, Gary Johnson, Bernie Sanders and John Kasich seemed to be ridiculously attempting an entrance into an office Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was also interested in.
Talking about interest, I also found it unnecessarily excruciating for a multi-billionaire and business mogul to be contesting for the biggest and most demanding job in the world, but a man like Donald Trump decided to give it a tough shot without an iota of governmental and public service experience. He battled with all his might. He spent a fortune. He fought dirty. He went hard.
Mrs Clinton on the other hand has been in the system all her adult life. From being first lady of Arkansas, to the first lady of the United States, to a New York Senator, to the United States Secretary, and many more tough roles in between, her attempt to occupy the oval office was far from surprising. It seemed to be a walkover for her to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, it wasn’t.
Donald Trump, the ‘clueless’, ‘racist’, ‘sexist’, ‘hooligan’, ‘liar’, ‘inexperienced’, ‘disrespectful’, ‘insensitive’ candidate has shocked the world by defeating Hillary Clinton, the silvery experienced, ‘madam due-process’, advocate of the low-class, friend to the mainstream media, ally to Obama, Jay Z, Pharell, Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Lebron James and the ‘highly qualified’ candidate. The world is speechless, the media is in shock, my US friends are in tears, I am dazed.
I have seen reactions across the world and I have read opinions from different camps. I am also aware of the various fallacy reasons that people have said concluded to cause her loss. Some spoke about the shortage of voters, some spoke about racism, some spoke about gender, some about Obamacare, some about her emails, but luckily, nobody spoke about election malpractice and rigging, which is why I am glad that we all agree the election was free and fair, which technically means the ‘few’ voters who came out to exercise their rights obviously preferred Donald Trump. The same guy the media spoke ill about.
There was an awkwardly pertinent denial of CNN and other pollsters who found it difficult to hide their bias for Clinton while the result announcements were underway. After Aljazeera and other news networks had announced that Trump already hit the magic number of 270 he needed to emerge winner (he even exceeded it), CNN and their morose-faced panelists were still stuck with “too close to call” states and results. Today is not the day I express my opinion about mainstream media partisanship and politicking.
Among the actual millions of early voters and large number of Election Day voters, how has Secretary Clinton managed to be the less preferred candidate and Donald the more preferred? These are my reasons;
First, shattering the email glass ceiling was a tough call for Mrs Clinton. There is no worse mistake that the Clinton campaign deciding to ignore the email scandal when it was opened by James Comey and the FBI clan. Take it or leave it, she goofed. 33,000 deleted emails as Secretary of States is enough reason to be disqualified as from a presidential race, but she was lucky enough to be allowed to continue and unfortunate enough to have assumed that Americans would understand. Love or hate them, Kellyane Conway and Donald Trump found a way to address all the tantrums thrown at him and as dirty as they were, he spoke about them and voters kept on cheering. Hillary avoided hers and distracted us with performances and appearances by celebrities who are not loved by all. In my humble opinion, facing it, addressing the issues and hammering on why Americans should vote for her despite the mistake she made with her emails would have gone a really long way in securing votes. Americans want you to talk about it. Someone said to me, Donald Trump is America without the mask; Hillary Clinton is America with the mask. Voters want bluntness, openness, this Hillary lacked.
Second and more importantly, a rash assumption that seeming media love equates voter conversions is a low level of understanding. The media hated Trump and admired Hillary. Her affection for the middle-class and blacks cannot be overemphasized. Popular polls deceived her campaign, they thought having mainstream media means having votes. The entirety and saturation of the Clinton fever made anyone who spoke positively about Trump an automatic lowlife and a fellow irrational being. Apparently, it was not so. There are people who don’t tweet, there are people who don’t watch CNN, there are people who aren’t social media savvy and they are in millions. These are the people who came out en-mass to vote for your media Antichrist, Donald Trump
Going forward, Hillary has lost the election for the second time. She has gone low and ‘they’ have gone high. She worked tirelessly. She fought a good fight. She has redefined gender roles and reaffirmed oneness among families, blacks, Hispanics, LGBTs and Immigrants in America. She has given our daughters hope of a bright future. She has broken some more glass ceilings but here goes the question; how many more ceilings need to be broken before Hillary will rule the United States? Donald Trump would be done in four or eight years and Hillary Clinton would be edging preparations for her 80th birthday. Would she be too old to run then? Is she tired of breaking ceilings and wants to take care of her granddaughter? I will be alive to observe.
Reluctantly, I say congratulations to the 45th President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump and his Vice, Mike Pence. I will also sarcastically congratulate his darling wife, who will be the First Woman of the most powerful country on earth, Melania Trump.?—?I choose to eat up my words on this until another time. I look forward to a ‘safe world’ under the watch of Mr Trump.
Thank you for reading.