The Trump Phenomenon------And the Winner Is.....

The winner of the election, of course, was Donald Trump and those who supported him. Whether that will result in the electorate being winners will await history. After breaking all of the "rules' of retail politics, Trump scored a rousing victory in the Electoral College, which is what has always counted.

The loser(s)? That almost has to be a tie between Hillary Clinton and her Democrat supporters, and the corporate "mainstream" media, which lost all of their power and influence in one fell swoop. Of course they did so because the public discovered that with few exceptions, the media were Hillary's Democrat supporters as well.

The Democratic Party is now in disarray, with no leadership going forward. They have even sunk so low that the leading contender for their National Democratic Committee chairman is a known associate of and sympathizer with the Nation of Islam and militant Islam.

Also losers were the Republican establishment and the "conservative" pundits who were #NeverTrumpers. The establishment, of course, still holds power with the speakership of Paul Ryan, but that power is waning. If Ryan tries to hold up the programs that got Trump elected, he will be very vulnerable when the next election cycle comes around.

"Conservative" publications like National Review have lost much of their influence. They have clearly lost contact with the people and went off on a rigidly dogmatic series of rants about Trump.

Will Trump make winners of us all? That, of course, remains to be seen, but he is off to a pretty impressive start.

He has most of his cabinet much earlier than most, and has conducted it all quite openly, which is a big change. C-Span has had cameras on the elevators at Trump Tower, and recorded all of the traffic coming in to see Trump. Other administrations have conducted the cabinet search in secret. This is a welcome change.

Trump continues to tweet, which disturbs some. He is the first to ever use this kind of social media. The one thing it does is keep him ahead of the media, which has proved itself to be totally untrustworthy. He says he would not need to do it if the media would cover him honestly. That is pretty true. It is his way of addressing the public over the heads of the media, which will often slant what he says.

Even though the Electoral College has not met to ratify his win, and he has not been sworn in, Trump is already acting to set the tone of his new administration.

He and Pence "persuaded" Carrier to remain in Indiana instead of moving to Mexico. Obama mocked him for saying he would do it, but he got it done.

Trump has also begun to set an important line in foreign policy. During Obama's term, China has been very aggressively extending their power throughout the South China Sea, which is  a very important sea lane for the US and its allies in the region. Obama has not vigorously opposed this and China has become more aggressive as time has gone by. The message from Obama has been that they need not worry about the US, that we would just back off.

Trump put a stop to that and sent a strong message to China (and to the rest of the world) that China could no longer have their way in the South China Sea without serious consequences.

That is the meaning of the telephone call with the President of Taiwan, and of Trump referring to her as the President of Taiwan. This was a break with 40 years of diplomacy with China (started by, you guessed it, Jimmy Carter).

Perhaps the most important message he is sending is with his proposed appointments.

Mattis at Defense signals a tough approach to rebuilding our military, as trump has proposed.

Tillerson at State has spent his adult life negotiating tough international trade deals, including with Putin.

Price at Health and Human Services has long been an advocate of repealing Obamacare.

Puzder at Labor has long fought labor policies of the left.

De Vos at Education is a foe of Common Core and supporter of school choice and charter schools.

Perry at Energy has proposed abolishing the department.

Pruit at EPA has a long record of fighting senseless environmental regulations.

Gen. John Kelly, appointed to Homeland Security is an expert on defending the southern border as the former head of the US Southern Command.

There are more, and the sum total of them signal the direction Trump wishes to move when he takes office.

They also are very successful people, almost all from the private sector, who have long records of accomplishment. They will need that experience in dealing with the entrenched bureaucracies, which will fight very hard to impede change.

Can Trump and his folks succeed? Let us all hope so, for if he does, we all become the winners of this election.

The losers will remain the same.