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Local Voices: Whew! Thank God, The Campaigns Are Over

By Shedrick Byrd
When I went to bed on election night Donald Trump was leading in electoral votes over Hillary Clinton. When I got up the next morning it was no surprise to me that Trump had won the election.

This has been one of the ugliest campaigns ever run. It centered around nasty remarks spewed by the candidates at each other. For the past two years, during the primary and the campaign, most of what I heard were insults among the candidates. Between Clinton and Trump, I did not learn much about issues that were in my, or the interest, of the American people. Can you imagine two years of personal attacks between the candidates, and the fatigue and division it caused among the American voters?

A year of primaries and a year of campaigning is too long. In this high technical society and 24/7 media coverage we should be able to get all the information there is to know about a candidate in less than two months. I suggest that no primary or campaign should be longer than two months.

I was not much of a Clinton fan but I did vote for her because between her and Trump I felt she was more stable and qualified to run the country and was more concerned about issues that impact my life and well being. I still harbor some of the personal attacks and lies Clinton leveled on President Obama doing their campaign. I know that’s politics and I should get over it.

But in my view, there should not be personal attacks against candidates, just attacks on the candidates’ issues and policies. Let the news media do the work of digging up dirt on the candidates. They are good at that. Trump, in his rants, verbalized some of the most negative comments against Blacks and other minorities since George Wallace did when he ran for President. Trump’s language was so toxic I never dreamed he would be elected President.

The media and the FBI were most unfair to Clinton about her emails. The FBI had the voters believing that Clinton was under investigation about the e-mail scandal when she was not. Trump and the media made dishonest claims against Clinton without facts. They accused her of being under investigation when there were no such charges. Trump spread the word to his supporters telling them she should be “locked up.”

I am sure the dishonest claims by the media and remarks by Trump hurt Clinton’s chance of becoming President. What’s striking to me is, I have not yet heard one word that the emails scandal had any negative impact on the country, or on any individuals other than Clinton. But to listen to the news programs each day, the most important news of the day was about emails. The voters probably thought that was the only thing going on in the campaign.

In the meantime, Trump was consistently lying and making hurting remarks about people every time he spoke to his supporters, but the visual media dismissed the things he said in favor of persecuting Clinton. Trump even made an appeal to Russian President Putin to “hack” Clinton’s computers. Wow! To me that was an act of treason, but the media gave it a one day focus and continued to focus on the emails.

They did focus on the tape about Trump’s conversation on how he treated women. But when Trump got tired of them talking about the tapes he turned his attention on the media and bullied them out of that conversation.

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I can’t elaborate enough on how non-professional and unknowledgeable our visual news outlets have become. They seem to have become news makers rather than journalists who report the news. They seem not to be as knowledgeable about a situation as they should be.

Now what does President-elect Trump want? Does he want to be a dictator rather than a President? I wonder if he knows. If he runs the White House like he ran his campaign and tries to carry out some of those bodacious and racist statements he made during his campaign, well I guess Blacks and other minorities better buckle up their seatbelts and hang on.

One old white woman was heard saying she was going to vote for Trump because she wanted to go back to the “old days.” That is scary. I say if we could cope with the Ronald Reagan’s Presidency I guess we can make it through a Trump tenure.

Shedrick Byrd is a frequent contributor to the New Journal and Guide.

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