Giving Trump The Benefit Of Doubt

Or rather accepting the plain fact that not only is Donald Trump the president for the next four years his party seems to now be leading a one party state. The Democrats, for some reason, have been reduced to the municipal levels. It is a big city party. That is interesting because Trump is the ultimate big city person. He grew up in Queens which is the most diverse borough of the most diverse city on the planet. Trump and Giuliani are both liberal on social issues by upbringing. Although their current positions might be politically aligned to the voter base they sit on.

America's bipolar disorder is that one camp reduces the other to cartoons. Hillary is a cartoon. Trump is a cartoon.

The Trump version is that he is Hitler.

The truth might be more banal. America is more or less the same country it was a few weeks ago. It might be a country adjusting to the fact that it can not afford to be the sole superpower.

Trump totally intends to question NATO. To him it is about money. And that is a fundamental challenge to the post World War II, post Cold War order.

This election has been about readjusting.

There is an election result. And there is a mandate to read. Trump could end up mediocre to scandalous. In which case the pendulum will swing again in two years and he could lose control of both houses of Congress.

But with much of the federal money going to entitlement programs, defense and interest payments on the 20 trillion dollar debt, that leaves little room for anything else. It is underemployment in DC, not gridlock. There is not much wiggle room.

Trump could even prove transformative. He could spring forth a one time 15% tax on the wealth of the rich to pay off a big chunk of the national debt of 20 trillion dollars. He could do a fundamental rethink on NATO and turn Russia into a Germany, a total ally with which to massively downsize the nuclear arsenal and vastly reduce each other's defense budgets. He could impose term limits on Congress, max 10 years in the House and 12 in the Senate.

And suddenly gridlock season is over.

He might increase the democracy momentum in China and Arabia.

Liberals think conservatives are dumb people. That is why they are so unenlightened on the social issues. Conservatives think liberals are bookish, impractical clowns who could not make the trains run on time even if they wanted to. That is a bipolar disorder. It might have roots in the scant wiggle room mentioned above.