Fear and Snowing on the Campaign Trail: The 2016 Campaign and the Days of Our Lives

Somewhere out there in the vast expanses of the American electoral map, there are some hearty souls—maybe three, maybe a dozen—who are saying, “I told you so,” after Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders made victory speeches in New Hampshire for winning their respective Republican and Democratic primaries. 

Anybody predicting this scene a year ago would have been jeered at and mocked even in the darkest corners of the Internet.  Whoever predicted this outcome probably won the most recent Powerball lottery and should be investigated.

Yet, here we are: Donald—”Let’s Make America Great Again”—Trump and Bernie—“A Future to Believe in”—Sanders, not only winning but running away with their respective races in a state famous for its ambush-style, contrarian, heavily independent-in -spirit, -thought and -action voters. 

Sanders trashed the odds-on, all-but-anointed-favorite Hillary Clinton and the Clinton machine by more than 20 points. Trump, who was a loser to the evangelists’ favorite, Ted Cruz, in Iowa—ran away from the Republican field, which saw nice-guy, moderate Republican, Ohio Governor John Kasich, rise to temporary viability with a surprising second-place finish.

Watching this process play itself out has become an increasingly surreal experience. Lots of things happen in the background, history marches apace, but more and more the primary process and its endless series of debates has begun to overwhelm the news of our daily lives.  Economic figures, terrorist attacks, wars and refugees, black lives matter and immigrants have become and been often reduced to talking points for the various men and women who woke in the middle of some night—when they were seven or 70—from a vivid dream in which they had had one hand on the Bible and the other raised upward, saying, “I . . . fill-in-the-blank . . . do solemnly swear . . .”

There were 16 Republicans who had that dream, fewer remaining to still believe it, and there will probably be fewer still after this second round of actual voting.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, after carving up Florida Senator Marco Rubio like a pot roast during the last GOP debate, was rewarded with a negligible 7 percent of the vote, just ahead of businesswoman Carly Fiorina and befuddled brain surgeon Ben Carson,  who was last seen still waiting to be called to the podium. For Carson, it was a long fall from his high point. Was it just yesterday or the month before that he had shared the lead in the polls with Trump?

It’s fair to say that ever since Trump announced that he was a candidate for president by calling for a wall that he would but on Mexico’s credit card and talked about rapists streaming across the border, that we have lived in Trump World.  As a result, our electoral process has become a kind of three-ring circus of polls, debates, world events as talking points, debates and more debates, punctuated by Trump gaffes, outrageous remarks and proposals, after which Trump would again rise in the polls.  Trump has turned the whole process upside down, obliterated a G.O.P. establishment which had planned for a Jeb Bush nomination—more or less—or some other rising conservative star like Rubio.

The rise of  the gnomish Sanders has been less acrimonious but just as improbable.  He is after all a self-described Socialist-Independent-Democrat, a senator from Vermont with a not particularly spectacular legislative record, 74 years old and not getting younger.  To Hillary Clinton followers, he must have seemed an annoying little speed bump in her road to the presidency.  Instead, in New Hampshire, he won by 20 points and captured 80 percent of the under-30 vote as well as big support from gun owners and women. Go figure.

Both Trump and Sanders, it’s been noted, have tapped into what everyone sees as a hugely angry voter population—angry about jobs and the lack thereof, angry about values, angry about middle class erosion, angry about the one percent, angry about terrorists, immigrants, America’s standing in the world and, evidently, most angry about political correctness.

Somewhere in there, though, we have marched into the Land of Oz, the carnival, the circus.

If we were not in Kansas, we did get into Iowa, which is a similar place, a land of caucuses and corn, where Trump got all the attention for not appearing in a debate and a relished showdown with blonde-ambition moderator Megyn Kelly. Iowa became a place where up was down, where a third-place finish by rising Rubio had him sniffing the steps of the White House, where a near-tie between Bernie and Hillary had Clinton claiming victory — and, while Cruz won the G.O.P. caucuses, it was Trump who got the last word, at first gracious, and then claiming that Cruz had cheated.

There were more debates to come before the N.H. primary. Sanders and Clinton engaged in impolite battle on the Democratic side on a Friday, and as for the Republicans, it was the Chris Christy show, where Jeb Bush once again was the only person on the dais taking on Trump and the Donald trying to shush him, literally.  That debate took place on Saturday night, when good people should be out having dinner or imbibing something or other. Any notion that this was not the year for that was dispelled when you found Bernie in a “Saturday Night Live” skit on the Titanic.

In Washington, the city still spent time recovering from the blizzard of 2016—all those pockets of dirty snow piles slowly disappearing.   Out in the wide world,  there were attempts at Syrian peace talks, which were failing, and North Korea tested a long-range missile, which led to much saber-rattling among G.O.P. debaters.  In Hollywood, folks were talking about boycotting the Oscars over a lack of diversity in the acting nominations—no African Americans for the second year in a row—while the Super Bowl proved to be a washout for North Carolina’s super-star with the dance and the pants Cam Newton.   None of the news—including two particularly horrific murders in the area—could quite compete with Iowa and New Hampshire.

None of the news, in the end, could quite compete with Trump.  The media did its usual thing, gathering around tables and predicting or dissecting results like fussy first-year medical students around a still-warm corpse.  But inevitably while they pondered what suddenly vulnerable Rubio might do, or how the Clintons would recover their lost mojo, or how Bernie would do in South Carolina, or if Kasich could survive his new-found political prosperity, the mike, the notebook, the attention always turned to Trump.

Trump did not disappoint.   As a parting shot, he urged voters “even if you’re dying or your wife is leaving you” to vote.  He became involved in using a sexist P-word at a rally, and suddenly, Trump’s vulgarity became an issue in not one but two NBC interviews.  Trump,  said he was just repeating what a woman had said at a rally, and in any case, he was “just having fun” — and anybody that would object, well, it’s P.C.

Political correctness has always been Trump’s magic bullet and cover for just about any sort of behavior or comment, from mocking a reporter’s disability to making fun of Sen. John McCain, when he was a U.S. Navy aviator for becoming a prisoner of the North Vietnamese in 1967 to the Kelly contratemps.

On NBC News, veteran legend and reporter Tom Brokaw bemoaned the lack of civility in politics. He’s right, but it’s not coming back.

We’re not just not in Kansas anymore.   You can’t ignore that man behind the curtain any more. Goodbye, New Hampshire.

Hello, South Carolina.

And wait, there’s more: Super Tuesday is March 1.