By now everyone realizes that 2016 was not a normal election year. Since most of the posts you will find her at Try Decaf are focused on my political opinions or those of guest authors, I thought I would start off by talking about how I saw the 2016 election.

Here’s the thing, voters were looking for change, as they usually do, after 2 terms under 1 Party. But the establishment did not seem to get that. For all their experience, most Americans got the impression the 2016 Presidential election was going to come down to a contest between dynasties. The Clinton’s vs the Bush’s.

To the American Public, the 2016 Presidential race seems to have been already mapped out. We had just had 2 terms of a rather mediocre Democrat President. It is always difficult for a party to win a 3rd term. Even after a robust couple of terms from Democrat Bill Clinton, the country was ready for a change. A third term after Barack Obama did not seem very likely to me.

The economy was kind of lackluster. We were still fighting over seas. But it was not disastrous either. I did not think Obama would win re-election. I thought he really had not delivered on his promise of “Hope and Change”. The problem was, Mitt Romney was not all that impressive either and anyone who called Obama out on anything was labeled a racist.

Now we come to the Presidential election of 2012. Mitt Romney is the Republican candidate running against President Obama. Obama’s first 4 years had not been very impressive in my opinion.

We had the ACA forced down our throats. Health insurance became mandatory. I had sold health insurance for years and I understood that the ACA was not a good idea. Sure, auto insurance was made mandatory and that worked out okay. The difference was auto insurance was made mandatory in order to protect others from the irresponsible driver. Health insurance was made mandatory in order to force those with more money to pay for those with less money.

From my point of view, things did not go bad but they were not going great either. There was always this nagging feeling that somehow I should be ashamed of something.

I did see a President who helped save the auto industry. I saw a President who looked good on tv, who went on late night tv, and who the media and Hollywood fawned all over. He had a nice looking family and he always spoke well.

So, what did we get during Obama’s first 4 years. Keep in mind, this is my opinion of how I thought things went. We had a President who seemed to go out of his way to convince anyone that would listen, that America was not exceptional, that Americans did not succeed without the help of government. I saw a President go abroad with a sense of shame in the past behavior of the United States. I saw a President who never took responsibility for anything, but rather tried to pass blame for everything back towards the previous President.

Well Obama won the 2008 election, and I was okay with that. I had never been totally against him. I just did not have enough confidence to vote against my Republican instincts. I was still hopeful.

I understand, Wrights words may have been taken out of context, but combined with some of the content of “Dreams from my Father”, I had begun to have doubts about Barack Obama’s love for this country. That was all it took. I was never going to vote for anyone to be President who I was not convinced loved this country. It may not have been fair. I may have been played by those on the Right and in the Media, but I voted for John McCain that election.

Well then the nature of politics in this country started to become more visible and there were 2 things that kept me from following through, and voting for a Liberal Democrat, for the first time in my life.

Even though I had concerns about Barack Obama’s lack of experience I was impressed enough by him to consider voting for my first Democrat ever. I considered myself a conservative Republican, but there was something about John McCain I just did not like. I wanted to like him, he was a POW, a war hero, but he just did not win me over. Also, I wanted to be part of history, and Obama was an impressive figure. I bought into the “Hope and Change” concept.

My opinion of Barack Obama when he ran for his first term. I thought he was an elegant speaker, he seemed intelligent, and I liked the fact he was young. I was also a bit caught up in the idea of the United States electing our first Black President. I always thought it would better for us as a country if our first Black President was a Republican, but even if if was a Liberal Democrat, it was still a huge step forward for our country.

I really liked George W Bush. To me he seemed like a good man, and I thought he was treated very unfairly, by the media. But at the end of his Presidency, things were not going well, and 8 years is usually the limit for one Party to hold the White House. So in 2008, I was expecting the Democrats to most likely win the Presidential election.’

In 2016, we were coming to the end of the second term of Barrack Obama. I guess, for the sake of transparency, I will give my opinion of the Obama 8 years.

That’s right, in an election year when Americans seem to be calling out for change, the media seems to be leading us towards a showdown between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush. The idea that the 2 Party’s were just 2 sides of the same coin seemed to be spot on.

Sure there were many other candidates,

but most pundits felt in the end it was going to come down to Hillary Clinton vs Jeb Bush.

This is when I first started to feel the pull to go with an Outsider. I felt that a choice between Jeb and Hillary was no choice at all. I liked Jeb Bush. I liked his brother and his father. But I wanted real change, not just a promise of change. Jeb Bush was most definitely not going to be an agent of change.

Hillary Clinton, I did not like at all. She seemed to be an opportunist, and dishonest. She was even less likely to be an agent of change than Jeb Bush. In a Bush Clinton match up, I was getting tired enough of all the lies being told by politicians, I might have just stayed home.

It was not very likely that I would support a Democrat, and there was no Democrat running who was an outsider. That left me with a choice of Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, or Donald Trump.

I knew almost nothing about Fiorina. I liked Ben Carson. He was smart and seemed like a good man who really cared. I have never liked reality tv and Donald Trump seemed like an arrogant jerk to me. It was looking like my support was going to Ben Carson.

This is when my views on the election started to change. I was seriously looking at Dr. Ben Carson. He had no experience, but it was my hope that the way our political system was designed an intelligent, good man, could learn to do the job without doing to much damage.

Then I saw how Ben Carson was treated, not only by Donald Trump, but by Democrats. Sure, Donald Trump called him”Low Energy” but Democrats, they called him a “Coon” and an “Uncle Tom”. He was considered a sell out. This world class brain surgeon was treated like he was the most ignorant, dishonest man on the planet. The Left was absolutely viscous.

I knew at that point that even if Carson somehow survived primary’s and became the nominee. Hillary Clinton was going to destroy him. A nice, quiet man did not stand a chance in the general election against Hillary Clinton. That left me with Fiorina, who I knew little about, and Donald Trump who I did not like.

I watched the Republican debates. Fiorina did okay. She seemed to be a strong woman, and I liked the fact that she had run a large company. Donald Trump was crude, and obnoxious. Pretty much what I had expected.

As I watched more of the Republican debate and how hostile the media and the Political elite became towards Donald Trump, it began to dawn on me, Trump was exactly the type of person it would take to break into politics as an outsider. Career politicians had a good thing going. They were the fat cats in the drivers seat. They passed laws that they exempted themselves from. They were never held accountable for anything they did. They got rich in “public service”. It was not going to be easy to get an outsider elected as President. It would take someone who could take all kinds of abuse and still keep going. Someone wealthy enough so as to not get bought off. Someone with name recognition. Donald Trump was perfect!

I did not have to like him, he was a means to an end. It was my belief that if we could elect an outsider like Donald Trump as President, many more outsiders would run for other offices in the coming years. The first one was going to be the most difficult. Donald Trump might seem like he is thin skinned, but he reminds me of the obnoxious salesman that nobody like but always leads the office in sales every month.

I knew Trump would need to take a lot of abuse if he wanted to win. I still did not think the “Establishment” would allow him to win the nomination. I thought it was just a matter of time before Jeb Bush started to rise. So I watched, and I waited…

Trump dominated the media coverage. He was outrageous. He let no insult go by. He was constantly on the attack. The more I watched, the more I sensed this man would stand up to Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. He was not going to be pushed around. I cringed each time I watched him but I wanted to see him in a debate with Hillary and with each passing week he was getting stronger in the polls against 15 other qualified Republicans.

I still did not like Donald Trump, but when the day came for the Michigan Primary, I went out and voted in a Primary for the first time. I voted for Donald Trump. I still did not really believe he would be allowed to become the Republican nominee but I started to believe in his potential to win the general election if he could become the nominee.

I also watched the Democrats. Bernie Sanders was beginning to gain momentum. He was the change candidate for the Democrats. He was a self proclaimed Democratic Socialist. He represented change but he was not an outsider. Just like I thought with the Republicans, the “Establishment” was not going to allow Bernie to be the nominee. They still wanted a Clinton vs Bush election. They did not want change. The elite liked things just the way they were.

During the Democratic Primary is when the Democrats first started to experience the draw back of years of portraying Republicans as evil. Democrat voters were so focused on how corrupt and evil Republicans were, they were blind to the corruption in their own party and as a result they did not get the popular Bernie Sanders as a candidate but rather the extremely vulnerable and corrupt Hillary Clinton.

Not only did they get Hillary instead of Bernie, they got proof that the DNC was trying to get Hillary nominated all along. The DNC will point to the fact that Hillary received more votes than Bernie but once it was discovered the DNC had been against Bernie that would hurt Democrat voter turnout in the general.

So once Trump won the nomination on the Republican side, Democrats were all out proclaiming the death of the GOP and the election of our first woman President.

So now we have it down to Trump vs Hillary. A complete outsider vs the consummate insider. The media and the Democrats seem to be clueless about the fact that this is a change election. The 2 candidates that created the most enthusiasm among their supporters were Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Trump and Sanders were getting tens of thousands of voters to their rallies, Hillary seemed to be having trouble filling a high school gym.

The more we found out about Hillary, the less of an option she became. Her email server, the Clinton Foundation, her record as Secretary of State, rumors about her temper and her health. Her straight out lies and corruption. I still did not like Trump but Hillary was a real threat to our future.

So at that point I decided to support Donald Trump. A means to an end. Get Trump elected and hope for the best. Then start electing other outsiders. Try to vote the corruption out of Washington. I was not 100% confident Trump could win but I was going to do what I could to support him.

The first thing I realized was that with the media pounding Trump non stop, people who supported Donald Trump were being driven underground. For all the claims that Trump supporters were intolerant and violent. It was Hillary supporters who were out attacking anyone they thought supported Donald Trump. Social media was flooded with angry Hillary supporters, all of them following Hillary’s lead of attacking Trump supporters. Trump supporters were racists, and homophobic. They were ignorant misogynists. They were….”Deplorable”

After watching how viciously the media and Democrats attacked Donald Trump, I knew that they at least felt that he was a threat. They knew he was an outsider, but once he became the nominee I felt the “establishment” panic. They were not prepared for this. They had never had to worry about the outcome of an election because they always controlled both sides. They did not know how to react to Trump so they unleashed the media and exposed their control over them.

The media did not even pretend to be impartial. They gave Hillary soft ball questions when they were able to question her at all, and they went all out to destroy Donald Trump. They seriously miscalculated.

Hillary supporters were easily manipulated. They believed anything negative about Trump because they wanted to believe it. The Democrats, the pundits, the journalists, Hollywood, Late Night tv, everyone pushed the narrative that Donald Trump was a lying Fascist, Racist, Homophobe, and everyone bought into it. Pushing that false narrative spelled the end of Hillary Clinton.

Everything Donald Trump did or said was viewed through the lens of that false narrative. That false narrative drove Trump supporters underground. Polls started to show Hillary with big leads and as a result Democrats became lethargic. Hillary was not popular to begin with, treating the election like it was already decided just dampened enthusiasm of democrat voters. The media could not see past the false narrative, which only added to the problem. All the signs of a Trump victory were there, if you looked.

Since I had decided to support Donald Trump I had an advantage over most of the media. I viewed all the things Trump said or did with the preconception, that maybe he was just a man who became very wealthy and wanted to give back to the country that had given so much to him. That is what everyone thought of Trump before he ran for office. Everyone who knew him thought very highly of him. It was only after the “Clinton Machine” got after him, that the false narrative was created.

Looking at data from that point of view, I discovered there were literally millions of Trump supporters on social media and they were very enthusiastic. There were thousands of supporters at his rallies. Hillary was not keeping up with those numbers. Even on her own Facebook page, people did not like her while Trumps page was full of support. The numbers were over whelming. There were a few others who saw it, Trump was going to win the election and he was going to win rather easily.

He did not win easily. Hillary received a lot more votes than I ever thought possible. I believe the Billy Bush recording did serious damage to Trump, that and the giant populations in L.A. and NY City gave the popular vote to Hillary, but the false narrative that led the media and the polls to feel Hillary was a sure thing, kept her from campaigning for the electoral college. She was tired and why travel to all those different states to campaign when everyone knew she was going to win.

So that is how I saw the 2016 election unfold. Donald Trump became the 45th President of the United States, and I 100% believe that that was a great outcome for our country.