Well, the people have spoken and the contentious election of 2016 is over - Donald J. Trump will be the next President of the United States.
Since this blog details not only my search for my ancestors, but the nuggets of my daily life for my descendants, I thought I'd better drop a line or two about one of the sea change elections of my lifetime.
We voted early this year - Indiana has had early voting since 2012 and our county had Saturday voting the two Saturdays prior to election day. The wait was about 30 minutes at the courthouse. It seemed like the turnout was high.
In a non-Presidential election year, I usually in the first two or three people at the polls when they open at 6 a.m. I'm an early riser, so that doesn't present any problems. But this year, I knew I would be doing research at the Genealogy Center on election day, so we cast our votes early.
I voted for Donald J. Trump for President.
Trump represents a change from the status quo, an unconventional candidate who is not beholden to special interest groups. He defeated 16 other experienced Republican candidates in the primary, and in the general faced one of the most unpopular Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton.
Trump also promises an agenda of "America First" which I feel this country needs after the last 8 years of a President who has weakened our position in the world. He has promised to re-negotiate the disasterous trade treaties and look at America's commitment around the world. This has really rubbed the establishment elites the wrong way - they fear their power slipping away. When you are attacked by not only the left but the right as well, you are probably doing something right.
While there's no need to go into all of the negatives for Clinton and the scandals and lack of justice by our own government's Department of Justice and F.B.I., as last night's results show - justice was delivered at the ballot box and we no longer have to deal with the Clintons.
Indiana polls close at 6 p.m. and per usual, was declared a Republican win rather quickly. We're a very "red" state, and one of the first ones called each election. It's the rest of the country that I worry about.
I stayed up watching the results come in until about 2 a.m. last night. At that time, Mr. Trump was leading and it appeared that he would be declared the President. The looks of shock on the faces of the media was precious. They just couldn't understand how their favorite candidate wasn't winning.
Throughout the campaign Trump highlighted the strong media biases which were confirmed by the Wikileaks emails. Since so many people only get their news from the networks or Fox/CNN, they are only receiving what those media outlets want you to know - and they only deal in soundbites and don't deal with the issues in any substantial way.
My Facebook feed today is full of people wringing their hands in fear of a Trump Presidency. I'm not sure what exactly they are afraid of - though I see things bandied about that Trump is a racist, homophobe, etc. He hasn't even been sworn into office and they are acting as if he will be rounding people up, comparing him to a Nazi, etc. The moment you start to do that against your political adversary, you loose the argument.
Time will tell what a President Trump will mean for our country, but I'm hopeful that America will be moving in the right direction.
I just hope that my other genealogy friends in the blogosphere and on FB will calm down and give the man a chance.
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