All the Right People Lost

The election of Donald Trump, while not necessarily good in itself from a libertarian point of view, has certainly had effects that are very good. The best part of his victory is who lost when he won.

The election was supposed to be a boring contest between Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton, with Hillary Clinton eventually winning on the platform of being the first woman president. Even if Donald Trump changes nothing, he succeeded in forcing all the right people out of the office they sought. He ended the Bush dynasty and the Clinton dynasty.

Some suspect that his cabinet choices are deliberately crafted to place people into positions where they can destroy the agencies they are in charge of, or at least bring ridicule upon said agencies. Although a good theory that is currently supported by the initial evidence, it is perhaps too early to determine the validity of this theory and more data will be needed before a conclusion can be drawn.

The insulated establishment political class, although still in power, lost through the election of Donald Trump. Also the secondary media class that has been telling the people that Hillary Clinton was going to won, that daily campaigned against Donald Trump while claiming that it was simply reporting the news, saw that all their efforts failed to steer the election.

Those who engage in identity politics also lost. Donald Trump's win is often described as due to racism. Although David Duke didn't actually endorse Donald Trump, he gave an impression that he had a favorable opinion of him. The same can be said of William Quigg and his statements regarding Hillary Clinton. The Southern Poverty and Law Center estimates that there are at most about 7,000 members of the KKK in the United States. They have a vested interest in estimating as high a number as possible, and that is the number they came up with. Assuming all 7,000 broke for the same candidate instead of being split like the leadership was (an unreasonable assumption) that still constute less than 0.01% of the total vote for the candidate they supported. Instead it has been shown in exit polling that Donald Trump did better than Mitt Romney among minorities, and Hillary Clinton did worse than Barack Obama. Minorities who voted for Donald Trump are being accused of betraying the group they are told they belong to, showing that identity politics lost.

Another group that lost were the NeoConservatives. They are not as fixated on supporting a particular party, they can be flexible with partisanship as long as they get their desired outcomes. They did not have a particular problem with Barack Obama, and would have been hapy had any standard Republican won or had Hillary Clinton won, because they would have been able to further their agenda of military domination of the Middle East. The last time a candidate actually opposed that from the inside, and did so with any degree of effect, was Ron Paul and his staunch anti-war agenda. Donald Trump has already indicated that, perhaps not nearly as in favor of peace as a libertarian would be, he is by no means the hawk that is Hillary. He will actually have the nerve to talk to the Russians, a move being ridiculed as being a puppet of the Russians.

Although it may very well happen that Donald Trump will not bring any major changes, the fact that he was elected has had the benefit of all the right people losing. Even if he brings no real changes, the futures of both major parties are shaken by his victory.