This Presidential election will go into the history books.
Trump has inflicted a huge loss on the American Establishment. He has inflicted a setback to the New World Order. The New York Times ran an article on this, written early in the morning. Headline: Donald Trump's Victory Promises to Upend the International Order. JERUSALEM -- Donald J. Trump's stunning election victory on Tuesday night rippled way beyond the nation's boundaries, upending an international order that prevailed for decades and raising profound questions about America's place in the world.For the first time since before World War II, Americans chose a president who promised to reverse the internationalism practiced by predecessors of both parties and to build walls both physical and metaphorical. Mr. Trump's win foreshadowed an America more focused on its own affairs while leaving the world to take care of itself.Let's hope.
The outsider revolution that propelled him to power over the Washington establishment of both political parties also reflected a fundamental shift in international politics evidenced already this year by events like Britain's referendum vote to leave the European Union. Mr. Trump's success could fuel the populist, nativist, nationalist, closed-border movements already so evident in Europe and spreading to other parts of the world.
The British Establishment did not see Brexit coming. It came anyway, and for the same reasons. The long-dismissed little people said: "Oh, yeah? You and who else?"
The European Union has yet to sort out the ramifications of Brexit. Now there is Brexit II.
The editors at Google News could not bring themselves to admit this. At 3:25 a.m., EST, Google's gatekeepers ran as its lead story a series of articles on the Senate race. Look down two headlines.
MY REVISED LESSON PLAN
Last week, I added a lesson for my American history course for the Ron Paul Curriculum. There are 180 lessons. This revised lesson is in between "Internet/Web" and "Election of 2000." I had to revise my lesson plans to make this change. Guess what the new lesson is.
"Matt Drudge."
In that lesson plan, I offer this assessment:
"One of the interesting things we've seen in this campaign [2016] is FOX has driven Trump's candidacy less than Matt Drudge," the legendary journalist said Wednesday on CNN. "Drudge is really great new factor in this election in terms of media. He is -- Drudge, that site has been unapologetically in Trump's pocket from the beginning. And I would say a large measure of why Donald Trump is the nominee goes to Matt Drudge in much the way that FOX has -- when you use the word kingmaker, I'm not sure it goes quite far that way, but it is an influence unequalled." -- Carl Bernstein
Drudge is the most important journalist in American history -- maybe world history.
He got a President impeached. That had happened only once before: President Andrew Johnson. Hillary then spoke of "a vast right wing conspiracy." Little did she know.
It looks as though Hillary will win the popular vote. It's 2000 all over again . . . but with no need to bring in the Supreme Court to settle it.
I had hoped it would be the other way around: Trump with the popular vote, Hillary with a narrow victory. I wanted her to come into the office with little legitimacy and half the electorate vowing to get even in 2020.
Here is my concern. I think the next recession will take place before the next Presidential election. I think it will be worldwide. It will be the product of Keynesian central bankers. It will be a manifestation of the Austrian theory of the business cycle. Central banks inflate. Then they stop. Then the recession hits.
This is going to be a deep and long recession. I wanted Hillary Clinton and the Democrats to take the hit. Now it will be Trump and the Republican Party.
I fear a political sweep in 2020 comparable to Franklin Roosevelt's in 1932.
Lest we forget: ever since the mid-term elections of 1930, the Republican Party has occupied the White House and both branches on Congress only twice: 1953-55 and 2001: January to June. The Great Depression made the Republican Party a permanent minority party.
There will be no place for the Republicans to hide in 2020.
I have two words with which to scare you. They scare me: Elizabeth Warren. She is the most likely candidate to pick up the pieces. She will become the first female American President.
The recession is in the pipeline. It has been over seven years since the recovery officially began. The likelihood of another four years of boom is low. If it happens, then it will hit in Trump's second term, if he gets a second term.
The media will be on his case for four years, starting today. Their rage will be total. They did their best to destroy him, but he won. He allowed the voters to poke a stick in their collective eye. They know they were the target. They will not forgive and forget.
DRUDGE IS THE ONE
Drudge did it to Newsweek in 1998. Newsweek had spiked Michael Isikoff's story on a then-unnamed intern who was having sex with Clinton. That got the Washington Post onto the story. It got the credit for the scoop a few days later.
Today, Drudge is worth $90 million. Scratch that: yesterday he was worth $90 million. Soon, it will be worth more.
I reproduced this chart in my lesson on Drudge.
Back in 1998, Drudge was invited to speak to the National Press Club. He spoke on June 2. The speech is online here. Before he spoke, he asked his readers for suggestions on what he should talk about. I emailed him. I told him that he was the man who had visibly broken down the walls of the media, leaving the gatekeepers with nothing to guard. He wrote back and thanked me for the suggestion.
I stand by that assessment. In 1995, the world got the first graphical interface browser. That was the fatal blow to the newspapers' oligopoly. On that day, family owners should have sold their interest in their newspapers.
Drudge spoke for the people in 1998. He let the cat out of the bag. He imposed a high price on the editors of Newsweek for having spiked a story embarrassing to Bill Clinton. The editors did not want to be blamed for exposing another bimbo eruption.
Today, Newsweek is no more. It went bankrupt. The market spiked Newsweek. It was not alone. It is in the graveyard of buried print media outlets.
Meanwhile, Drudge has just elected a President.
A New York Times columnist is in shock. She just got a taste of democracy. She doesn't like it. I like her title: "The Audacity of Hopelessness."
Another Times columnist, Ross Douthat, writes in The Trump Era Dawns:
I fear the risks of a Trump presidency as I have feared nothing in our politics before. But he will be the president, thanks to a crude genius that identified all the weak spots in our parties and our political system and that spoke to a host of voters for whom that system promised at best a sustainable stagnation under the tutelage of a distant and self-satisfied elite. So we must hope that he has the wit to be more than a wrecker, more than a demagogue, and that his crude genius can actually be turned, somehow, to the common good.And if that hope is dashed, we must find ways to resist him -- all of us, right and left, in the new chapter of American history that has opened very unexpectedly tonight.At long last, these people are finally scared. I have waited all my life to savor this moment.
If it weren't for Janet Yellen and her peers, I would be ecstatic.
"WE ARE NOT ALONE!"
There will be lots of copy on how this happened. But I think this is the bottom line: social media showed disgruntled voters that they were not alone. This gave them confidence to go to the polls and spoil the coronation of That Woman.
They went to the polls armed with a collective stick, which they stuck in the Establishment's eye.
Now we shall see if he fills his cabinet's positions without going to the Council on Foreign Relations or the Trilateral Commission for candidates. That will be the first test. I hope he passes it.
Brexit II