Tonight is the night. The 2016 Presidential Election is coming to an end. One candidate will become the President of the United States of America and one will smile through the loss and and say congratulations to the winner (we hope). I predict the aftermath not going so smoothly however. If Trump comes out a loser I can picture his, “the government is a joke” and “our system is rigged by people just like crooked Hillary” tweets.
Trump has focused a lot of energy accusing the system of being rigged. I don’t see that changing if he loses tonight. I think that post election, his rhetoric towards the polls and the votes will focus a lot about how they don’t reflect what Americans truly want if he loses. But, if he does win there will absolutely no mention of a rigged system. But how does this argument hurt Trump is he does win? Would the argument of a rigged system bring into question the legitimacy of his victory?
And tonight I sit here getting distracted by the news and watch state by state turn red. Red for republican, red for Donald Trump. The only question I have for myself is how did we get here? How is Donald Trump the likely winner?
Maybe I should be eating my own words as I predicted in the past that due to Trump’s lack of strong rhetorical strategies he wouldn’t gain more voters. Tonight’s poll results are proving me wrong. Trump has won 168 electoral votes at the moment and key states such as Ohio, South Carolina and Florida. Maybe his use of women surrogate speakers did reach women. And maybe his aim to present himself as a regular, normal American designated with a lot of working class, rural Americans. Or maybe he just did a hell of a good job convincing America that Hilary is a liar and untrustworthy and that his own shortcoming don’t measure up.
Whatever the reason is, the election is shaping out to show the win leaning towards Trump.