Bill Straub: Despite Trump’s domination of the white vote, turnout doomed Clinton in the end

WASHINGTON – It might seem an odd time to cite Jesse Jackson at this moment, but I remember covering an address by the reverend back in the day, maybe during his 1988 presidential campaign, when he closed with this message, barely audible amid the applause and cascading amens:

“We have come so far,’’ Jackson said, “and have such a short way to go.’’

Well, it seems the long journey Jackson referenced has been extended yet again, having reached a detour necessitated by fear, distrust and steaming piles of xenophobia, bigotry and misogyny.

Instead of electing its first woman president, as anticipated, in the person of Democrat Hillary Clinton on Tuesday night, American voters opted for Republican businessman Donald J. Trump, the first truly dangerous demagogue to capture the nation’s highest office.

In so doing the electorate purposefully chose to ignore problems in Trump’s past that would have proved politically fatal to a candidate in a more advanced civilization. This bully of the first magnitude has bragged about physically grabbing women in areas of their body without their requisite consent. Almost a dozen women have accused him of sexual assault. He called undocumented Latinos rapists, threatened to register Muslims despite a little document known as the U.S. Constitution. He vowed to imprison his opponent. He…

…well wait a minute. Everyone already knows all about our next president’s unsavory proclivities. Those who pulled the lever in Trump’s favor were certainly aware of all the factors that rendered the man singularly unfit to hold the nation’s highest office. Yet they chose to support him.

Welcome to America, where black is white, up is down and a gaseous blowhard without the sense God gave to geese is selected over an obviously accomplished woman with the sort of experience Trump could never hope to achieve.

The obvious question is why. Exit polls showed that 60 percent of voters found Trump unqualified to be president. Yet 18 percent of those folks voted for him. Surveys showed that 60 percent viewed him unfavorably. But he got 15 percent of those voters to vote for him.

It’s unprecedented and clear proof that the American public has lost its cotton-pickin’ mind, handing over the keys to the military, not to mention the nuclear arsenal, to a man who came across during most of the campaign as unhinged, who intentionally and publicly insulted a sizable number of individuals whose interests he’s supposed to represent, whose very presence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. threatens the world economy.

The reason? White people. They have embraced Donald J. Trump as their savior, defending them from the hordes of brown people invading from across the southern border and black people who populate the nation’s cities. The numbers are, indeed, incredible. Trump drew the support of 72 percent of white male voters without a college degree and 54 percent of white males who are college educated.

That was pretty much expected. But the hair-raising results revolved around white women. Clinton actually won among women with a college degree by a 51 to 45 percent margin. But Trump won among white, non-college women, capturing an astounding 62 percent.

Overall, the first female major party candidate in the nation’s 241 year history lost the white female vote to a man who has referred to certain women as pigs, said New York Times columnist Gail Collins had the “face of a dog,’’ is accused of assaulting about a dozen women and is reputed to have carried on an affair while his current wife, his third, was pregnant.

Overall, among women, Trump beat Clinton, who has long championed women’s rights and openly worked in behalf of families, 53 percent to 43 percent. She wound up getting about the same percentage of white women voters as President Obama did in 2012.

Those who would rationalize this voting behavior point to a sluggish economy, trade agreements that marginalized the American manufacturing sector and under employment. They claim to be the forgotten folks and sided with Trump to register their despair with Washington.

Okay, make a bile-spitting no-nothing with a questionable business record who hasn’t paid taxes in lord knows how many years president of the United States. That’ll show ‘em.

Trump’s millions of supporters seem convinced that, with a snap of his magical little fingers, the deep mines in Eastern Kentucky will reopen, the steel mills in Youngstown, Ohio, will experience new life, the textile mills in North Carolina will hum once again in spite of the fact that the next president has no real plan for bringing that all about.

The economy isn’t even in horrible shape at this point – unemployment is down to 4.9 percent and the budget deficit has declined under Obama. If all is such a disaster, why aren’t African-Americans and Latinos equally miffed at the federal government and voting for Trump? They generally suffer to a much greater degree under a poor economy than most white folks, yet almost 90 percent of African-American voters went for Clinton, who also received more than 70 percent of the Latino vote.

It’s fair to say there exists a myriad of reasons behind voting patterns and some white voters certainly bit on the economy issue. But all this seems to be the culmination of the tea party movement, initiated almost as soon as the nation’s first black president took office in 2008 as part of an effort to “take our country back.’’

This is the natural extension. White folks make up 70 percent of the voting public and that percentage is declining every four years. By about 2050 folks are expected to total below 50 percent, placing their long-established place at the head of the line in jeopardy.

As noted, white folks don’t like to share and are responding to the threat by voting in a bloc, much like minority voters have done over the years. It might not be polite to say their votes are aimed at keeping African-Americans and Latinos in their place, but these are not polite times.

Clinton was placed at a disadvantage throughout, reviled for her clumsy handling of emails during her tenure as secretary of state, along with a bunch of other bogus infractions that her critics sought, successfully, as it turned out, to portray as mortal sins when contrasted with Trump’s mere peccadilloes.

Truth be known, Clinton staged a campaign that might accurately be described as “meh’’ and her vaunted get-out-the-vote effort, which was supposed to assure victory, never materialized. Turnout was more than 2 million below 2012 levels – meaning a decent campaign could have put her in the White House despite the many roadblocks.

So the nation is stuck. It is required, as difficult as it may be, to express a hope for the best from the president-elect. Herblock, the late, great political cartoonist for The Washington Post greeted the 1968 election of Richard Nixon, a man with whom he often tussled, by producing a panel depicting him giving the new president a clean shave.

And so it goes. I hope Trump proves to be a superior president. I hope it. And I doubt it.

At times like this it’s profitable to remember the words of a rather famous Republican, Gen. U.S. Grant, whose Union troops were overrun by the Confederates at Shiloh on April 6, 1862. That night, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman happened upon Grant smoking a cigar outside his tent.

“Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?” Sherman said.

“Yes. Lick ’em tomorrow, though,” Grant replied.

He did. And three years later he accepted the surrender of the rebel army at Appomattox Courthouse.

Washington correspondent Bill Straub served 11 years as the Frankfort Bureau chief for The Kentucky Post. He also is the former White House/political correspondent for Scripps Howard News Service. A member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, he currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, and writes frequently about the federal government and politics. Email him at williamgstraub@gmail.com.