Saturday Nov 23, 2024
Saturday Nov 23, 2024
Wednesday, 9 November 2016 00:09 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
If Clinton wins she will make history as America’s first woman President
America voted yesterday in what is described as the most decisive election in the history of the United States. Presidential candidate Democratic Party nominee, a former First Lady and former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was ahead in the polls, and had picked up an early lead in the results hotly-contested by her opposing candidate, Republican Party’s presidential nominee, real estate Moghul and business tycoon Donald Trump.
America will wake up this morning to know who their Commander in Chief is for the next four years when she or he takes office in 
January.
We were able to officially observe the polling taking place in Cleveland’s West and East, at Gunning Recreation Centre and Fairfax Recreation Centre, respectively. The polling ended last evening at 7:30 p.m. A good turnout was reported while approximately 40 million had already voted by mail.
The overall results are expected at midnight and America will wake up today to the announcement as to who will be the next President of the United States. Sri Lanka being ten and a half hours ahead will not have the news when this edition goes to print but will know the result this afternoon.
We observed the results coming in last evening at different times at both the Republican Election Night Watch Party and at the Democratic Party Night Watch Party at Cuyahoga County of Ohio. The atmosphere was electrifying and the experience was amazing. As is usually the case, the excitement is expected, but as expressed by many, this time’s election is something else and the tensions had risen to the maximum with so many vocal about the outcome and so many theories on the issues that lie ahead.
The election officials we spoke to had plenty to say. One official said: “Our long national nightmare should be about over. Instead it may just be beginning.”
If Trump wins he will the only leader never to have held Public office before
There is a fear that whichever the losing side will not take the news well. “There will be a large amount of people that are terribly upset and may take matters into their own hands,” said another official.
There is fear particularly that fringe groups that support Donald Trump may be inclined to violence should Trump lose and refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of the election results. This is feared in the backdrop of Trump’s allegations during the campaign that the election may be rigged.
The officials vehemently denied of any such being possible as all measures have been taken to make sure it doesn’t happen. The news media endorsements don’t mean a whole lot in presidential elections in America. But the number of conservative Republican newspapers that have endorsed Clinton’s candidacy is unprecedented.
By far the most powerful and eloquent endorsement of the entire campaign came from the New Yorker magazine, writing of Trump in its lengthy 31 October endorsement of Clinton. It said: “It is a convention of our quadrennial pieties to insist that this election is singularly important. But Trump really does represent something singular. The prospect of such a President – erratic, empty, cruel, intolerant and corrupt – represents a form of national emergency.”
Millions of Trump supporters have legitimate grievances. Analysts have questioned if he would aggravate or alleviate them.
However Trump has defied many adverse predictions on his way into politics. Should Trump be the winner today, he would make history as the only American leader who has not held Public office before.
Courtesy of Ted Crow, The Plain Dealer Illustration
The e-mail fiasco in the last weeks of campaigning affected the Hilary campaign which was steadily gathering momentum. The national thinking or change due to it reflected in the polls. Although the retracting and clearing Clinton of the allegation for the second time, with only two days to go for elections, lifted the cloud, some analysts said the damage was already done and it came a little too late. However if Clinton wins the magic 270 number, we would know if her being cleared at the eleventh hour helped.
Since most had voted early as September, if this episode affected the vote in the last two weeks will be seen only in the final result. But when the final result comes in, and if Clinton has won, it perhaps wouldn’t matter anyway, as it would be regarded as just one of the thousands of hurdles that she successfully jumped over on her way to making history as the first woman President of the United States of America.
If neither candidates gain the required 270 electoral votes then the House gets to vote. Such an eventuality has occurred only once in America and is not expected to happen, but is possible. Either way, America is beginning a challenging era in politics that will get pride of place in a special chapter in the history books, which generations to come will read with much reflection.
