How, then, were voters to make an informed dispassionate choice when what they were given by the media was best reported by the kids in South Park, who characterised the contest as between a "giant douche bag" and a "turd sandwich".
Hillary and the powerful machine she and Bill Clinton created with the help of the Democratic Committee owe the voters in the US and the people of the world who will pay the price a groveling apology. Offered the means by Michelle Obama of "going high when they go low", Clinton did no such thing, running instead a tabloid campaign that was only slightly higher in tone than Trump's. She fought on his turf and lost.
She committed the unforgiveable sin in a politician of candour in respect to the electorate. In 2012 Romney famously dismissed 47 per cent as takers. This time Hillary spoke of a basket of deplorables. If anything riles people up and drives them to vote, it's being called "takers" or "deplorables".
The people Clinton called deplorable and the media ignored, to their polling sorrow, were once called working class Democrats. Hollowed out by policies of the last four administrations, Democrat and Republican, they were further battered by the recession.
While recovery under Obama brought happiness to the investor class, their assets doubled since 2008, the working and middle classes, going broke and ignored, exercised their freedom in voting Trump.
As Kris Kristofferson wrote in Bobby McGee, "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose."
When we look at the breakdown of the Trump vote, we see the counter to Clinton's claim of the effect of racism and misogyny on the voters: 23 per cent of Trump's voters had voted for Obama in previous elections, 53 per cent of white women voted Trump. What does that say?
As I read these results, it's not without anger at opportunities missed for genuine solutions to the nation's problems.
Meantime, Clinton's bad judgment and entitlement has set back the cause of women by decades, especially as Trump's Supreme Court choice may vote to outlaw abortion.
I take small consolation from the hope he'll kill TPP, that corporate protectionist anti-free trade deal that might have brought New Zealand a 1 per cent increase in GDP ($2b) but surely would cost us a tripling of pharmaceutical costs ($4b) as it prevents generics from coming on line for eight years.
I hope he does kill TPP, but I'm not holding my breath with Trump's brand of "pragmatism". Meantime, too, I wonder how voters will react when he fails to bring those promised jobs back.
I've also been cheered by the thought, that given the attentive critical media, the first woman president could easily be Kim Kardashian.
�Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.
