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PAGE 4A BARROW NEWS-JOURNAL WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2016 Opinions “Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent. ” ~ Henry Ward Beecher ~ The road traveled and the path ahead If we really want to be honest with ourselves, the outcome of last week’s presidential election was inevitable. The chief slogans of the Ronald Reagan’s victo rious campaign in 1980 (“Are you better off than you were four years ago?”) and Bill Clinton’s 1992 win (“It’s the economy, stupid.”) are memorable because of their brilliance and their relevance to today’s political landscape. People vote with their wallets and pocket books and the country’s leaders have been failing the American middle and working class for a long time. Health care costs are soaring, millions more Americans are out of work and those who are work ing, on average, are logging more hours for less pay. That’s not necessarily entirely the fault of the cur rent administration or even the one before it, but per ception is often reality in politics. People are fed up, and Donald Trump was master ful in his exposition of those feelings throughout the cam paign. And that led to the biggest political upset in our country’s history. The celebrity business mogul took down a well-oiled political machine while shattering the expecta tions and conventions of modern-day elections. Maybe that’s why it blindsided so many people. They either couldn’t see it or didn’t want to. Most polls suggested a fairly comfortable victo ry for Hillary Clinton. The conventional wisdom tossed around was her ground game organization was vastly superior to anything Trump could muster. How quickly people have forgotten that we live an age of mass, instantaneous information and that the best possible ground game out there in 2016 is social media, of which Trump has proven himself a wizard. As evidenced particularly by his surprise vic tories in the upper Midwest, Trump, using his uncanny ability to boil down complex issues into short slogans, tapped into the frustrations of everyday workers. And while his rhetoric at times pandered to xenophobia and racism, to say his campaign was about that or that half of his supporters advocate such beliefs shows the willingness to keep one’s head buried in the sand. As much a victory as it was for Trump and as much a middle finger as it was to the political establishment, this election was also a day of reckoning for the Democratic party. In addition to losing the presidency, it will also remain the minority in the House and Senate and is now sub ject to a record number of Republican governors and legislators at the state level. There has been commentary that this is a repu diation of President Barack Obama’s legacy, but that is premature as Obama still enjoys a respect able approval rating. What it did exploit is the notion that the party continues to lose touch with the middle class that it always claimed to champion. Without a President Hillary Clinton, the party suddenly will be without a leader and without a face when Obama leaves office in January, and that’s mostly a result of its own doing. Clinton was a terrible candidate in many ways — probably the worst possible one to run against Trump, who championed himself as the agent of change taking on the status quo. Many indepen dent voters, not just right-wing Republicans, could not bring themselves to trust her sincerity. Her failure to galvanize black voters, which helped lead to defeats in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin (three traditionally reliable Democratic strongholds) effectively cost her wins in those states and the election. Her inability to capture enough young voters also should not be overlooked. And so now the party must rebuild itself and craft a new vision. The loss will probably empow er the progressive wing of the party, which could argue Bernie Sanders might have had a better chance of defeating Trump because he does not carry the same baggage and also had been suc cessful at talking about the problems facing the middle class. But a move further to the left hardly seems consistent with the apparent wishes of Americans given the election results around the country. The path forward After a long, tumultuous and bruising campaign filled with personal attacks, America remains a divided country in the aftermath of Trump’s vic tory and would have been so after a theoretical Clinton win as well. Clinton supporters and staunch Trump oppo nents have taken to the streets and to the Internet to protest. The hyperbole that we are on the brink of a dictatorship doesn’t serve any good. There are legitimate concerns about Trump and his capabilities, but our republic is built to withstand a despot. And with Clinton poised to win the popular vote — only the fifth candidate in history to do so, but See Thompson on Page 5A f scott thompson What Trump’s election will mean for Georgia For both Georgia and the United States as a whole, the election of Donald Trump as president is going to mean some major changes in our lives. For a start, you can expect to see more air and water pollution, more closings of rural hospi tals, and more people without access to health insurance under the new administration. The most concise blueprint of what lies ahead comes from Sen. David Perdue. In a radio interview last week, Perdue predicted that Republican members of Congress will quickly repeal Obamacare, the Clean Power Plan, and the “Waters of the United States” water quali ty rule. They will also approve the Keystone oil pipeline that would extend through the massive Ogallala Aquifer — one of the world’s largest underground sources of fresh water. “All four of those things will get signed into law by President Trump,” Perdue said. “All four of those things will get done in the first 100 days.” The widely expected repeal of the Affordable Care Act effectively puts an end to any talk of Medicaid expansion in Georgia. Gov. Nathan Deal could have brought more than $9 billion in federal funds to the state if he had agreed to Medicaid expansion in 2013, but he declined the opportunity because of his political opposition to the Affordable Care Act. There had been talk in recent months of easing into Medicaid expan sion in 2017 and bringing some of that federal money to Georgia, which would have gone to hospitals and phy sicians that treat Medicaid patients. With the repeal of Obamacare, that is a dead issue. The big losers here will be financial ly stressed rural hospitals that treat a large number of indigent patients who can’t afford to pay their bills. Without the hoped-for influx of Medicaid expansion funds, you could see as many as 15 to 20 of Georgia’s rural hospitals forced to shut their doors because they can’t afford to stay in operation. In addition to that, the end of Obamacare will leave more than 20 million Americans without health insurance. In Georgia, more than 580,000 peo ple get health coverage through the insurance exchange that is part of the Affordable Care Act. Once the act has been repealed, they will be without insurance as well. The repeal of the Clean Power Plan will be a financial boost to Georgia Power, which will be able to keep operating coal-fired power plants that spew greenhouse gases into the atmo sphere. Georgia Power could even reopen some of the coal-fired facilities it has closed in recent years because of the clean air standards. House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin has proposed for years that Social Security be privatized and that Medicare be terminated and replaced with an insurance voucher system. Social Security, in fact, has been a target of the Republican party since the program was first implemented in 1935. One of the GOP’s most cherished goals has been to reverse the New Deal that President Franklin Roosevelt put in place. “If you’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare, you have to address those issues as well,” Ryan said last week. “Medicare has got some serious issues because of Obamacare. So those things are part of our plan to replace Obamacare.” Once you replace Medicare with an insurance voucher plan, senior citizens will have no choice but to pay whatever premiums are demand ed by private insurance companies. They very likely will pay more money for less coverage because vouchers will not be able to keep up with the increasing cost of health insurance. With a Republican president and GOP majorities in both houses of Congress, Ryan should be able to accomplish his long-held goals of dis mantling Social Security and ending Medicare - if not in the first 100 days of the new administration, then short ly after. Trump’s strongest support, of course, came from voters who are age 65 and older - they are the ones who would be directly affected by the elimination of Medicare and Social Security. It will be interesting to see how quickly, or whether, the new president signs legislation that would have such a negative impact on his staunchest supporters. Trump voters said they wanted changes, and they will get changes beyond anything they may have imag ined. Whether they like those changes is another matter entirely. Tom Crawford is editor of The Georgia Report, an internet news ser vice at gareport.com that reports on state government and politics. He can be reached at tcrawford@gareport. com. Write a Letter to the Editor: Let us know your thoughts: Send Letters to Editor, The Barrow News-Journal, 77 E. May Street, Winder, Ga. 30680. Letters can also be emailed to sthompson@main- streetnews.com Please put “Letter to the Editor” in the subject line. Please include the city of the writer. The Barrow News-Journal Winder, Barrow County, Ga. www.BarrowJoumal.com Mike Buffington Co-Publisher Scott Buffington Co-Publisher Scott Thompson Editor Jessica Brown Photographer Susan Treadwell Advertising Sharon Hogan Office & Reporter Also covering beats is Alex Pace. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: The Barrow News-Journal 77 East May Street Winder, Georgia 30680 Published 52 times per year by Mainstreet Newspapers, Inc. Periodicals postage paid at Winder, Georgia 30680 (USPS 025-132) Email: chris@mainstreetnews.com Phone: 770-867-NEWS (6397) SUBSCRIPTIONS: $25.00/yr. Some final thoughts on the election There is so much to talk about with the Trump/Republican victory last week. Where in the world did all of these whiners and cry-babies come from with Trump’s election to the Presidency? The response from the left has been unbelievable. Actually, some of it has been cruel and down-right mean. This has cer tainly been the year of political un-civility (on both sides). Remember when, after winning the Presidency, Obama reminded John McCain during what was supposed to be a joint dialogue on healthcare, “John, the election is over and we won.” He did the same with Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander in response to a ques tion, “Elections have consequences.” The shoe is now on the other foot and the Republicans and conservatives in Congress should remem ber the treatment they received over the past eight years. For nearly a decade, Washington has been a one party town and would have remained so for at least another four years or longer if Hillery had won. President-elect Donald Trump has won the office on a mandate of the people, not just any mandate, but a whopping mandate. The Democrats got a deserved public spanking! The American people demonstrated what they think of Congress, liberals, and the status quo. It’s time to move on and I believe Trump has the ability and the knowledge from a large select group of people that can put the train back on the track and build up a full head of steam. It will not be easy for the liberals based on their news stories and comments this past week. Jay Bookman is an opinion writer for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. I bet he hasn’t slept since last Tuesday. I hope not. The AJC can find better writers. In last Sunday’s AJC, Bookman had the audacity, or the ignorance, to say that Trump is following a scandal-free Obama administration. I read it twice to be sure my eyes and the print were in line with each other. He went on to say, “...Trump will bring such a wave of poorly vetted crooks and charlatans into power with him that it’s going to look like the Oklahoma Land Rush invading Washington.” Bookman continued his rant saying, “They won’t know the rules, and they won’t care about the rules. They are there to break the rules. The remarkably scan dal-free Obama administration...will be fol lowed by one of the most corrupt adminis trations in American history.” If we’re lucky Bookman will join the 23 celebrities who said they would leave the country if Trump was elected. And, shame on the AJC. In case you did not hear the story, 23 celebrities announced plans to leave the U.S.A. if Trump won. Among them, are Amy Schumer, race baiter A1 Sharpton, Spike Lee, model Amber Rose, Cher, Barbara Streisand, Whoopi Goldberg, Miley Cyrus, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I’m offering my time to help them pack and will make a contribution to their out ward bound travel plans. Good riddance. Half of them are fouled-mouthed, crude performers that we won’t miss anyway. Gail Collins, a columnist for The New York Times, wrote last Saturday calling Trump, “...a spawn of Satan...dimwitted, mean-spirited spawn embodying the nation’s worst flaws, failings and night mares.” I think she is confused with her adjec tives between the liberal left and conserva tive right. Maybe she will add her name to the list that is leaving. In her column, she suggested everyone start with a night of “heavy drinking” to get ready for the new Presidency. The media continues to feel the pain as it should. Brittany Hughes, writing for MRCtv on November 10, said, “...the poor melting snowflakes over at CNN and MSNBC spent the next two days sorting through their misery...(deciding) their only explanation for Trump’s win was that America is full of racist, sexist bigots who hate black people and women.” She added, “Never mind that 29 percent See Terrell on Page 5A jimmy terrell