Okay, some things really are bad for Democrats after Trump’s rise to the presidency, such as Supreme Court nominations and fear of the unknown. But Democrats looking for a tiny shred of positive news – and I’m one of them – can take a small amount of comfort from this: Trump may not be as bad as we think if he sidesteps the nuclear codes.

A decade ago, Trump was a lot more Democrat-like, and he seems to change his mind willy-nilly, with the uncanny ability to deny the past even as an archive video proving him wrong plays in the background. A few of his decisions might surprise us, and a few might surprise his ardent supporters.

And an important note: Trump’s success has little to do with Trump. No politician from Hitler to Lincoln rose to power unless his/her message struck a cord with the people. The focus now shouldn’t be on Trump’s win – it should be on the conditions that led a majority of people to consider him the best choice. If Democrats are the open-minded party of free thinkers, how did we miss this?

Lessons learned

1.  America has become a great place if you live in a city and second-class if you live in rural areas. Much of the change can be blamed on technology and the rise of new careers in things like IT – careers that demand advanced degrees and IQs above 110. Some of the blame also goes to open trade agreements that make it cheaper to make T-shirts in Viet Nam than Iowa.

When you live in a city, it’s easy to forget the other America. I spent three months in a somewhat small town in Pennsylvania this summer, and two large manufacturing plants – carpet and tires – are now razed lots. Workers who made $30 an hour now ring up coffee at Starbucks or stack cardboard boxes at Amazon’s big box warehouse for a paycheck barely above minimum wage.

Henry Ford believed he had to pay his factory workers a wage high enough that they could afford to buy his cars, that demand is first created by paychecks. We seem to have forgotten that lesson.

Maybe government should help these people as times change. Maybe not. But that discussion never happened and it should have. They were simply forgotten. Shame on those of us who can’t see beyond the 38th floor of the skyscraper next door. At a minimum, we should acknowledge their pain.

2. Social media has changed politics forever, and the up-and-coming lawmakers who figure out how to use it will win out. Money, red ties and pantsuits have lost their power to persuade.

3.  Honesty counts, and Trump was very honest – but not the kind of honesty that includes actually telling the truth. Maybe it’s the plethora of TV shows like Netflix’s “The Crown” that present our high-and-mighty people as actual human beings, but of all politicians, he was who he was.

Yes, Trump was and is a bullshitter – the kind of person who isn’t expected to stick to the truth because that’s who he is. But his honesty is just that: He showed us who he is, and more than half of Americans prefer that to focused lighting, carefully worded responses and rebuttals that sounded as if they were rehearsed 50 times.

4. Obamacare is, indeed, a disaster. It’s ethically noble in a country as rich as America to provide minimum health services, and it’s economically necessary to keep middle class families from losing a home. But the current version is operationally flawed and held together with the funding version of Tinker Toys.

We Democrats need to admit that. We’re so afraid universal healthcare will go away that we turn a blind eye. When Obamacare passed, lawmakers knew it was crap, but just to get ‘er done, they needed compromises from insurers and opposing lawmakers who wanted a new road in their district. “We can fix it later,” they said.

The biggest Obamacare black mark – and the one thing that may have lost this year’s election for Hillary Clinton – was the comes-out-of-your-taxes system. Families had huge tax bills in April; or they had a new higher price quote added mid-year; or they paid a penalty because it was cheaper than coverage.

Forget right and wrong. This is an economic quagmire for middle-class working families – and mid-to-upper middle class families got no tax break at all.

5. Even if you believe fully in Clinton’s position on everything, she is a died-in-the-wool, career politician. Voting her into office would be better overall, but it also rubber stamps Washington’s status quo of behind-door deals, lobbying gets results, and wink-wink/nod-nods across parties and across the aisle. This isn’t a Democratic or Republican or Washington problem. It’s a systemic problem.

A vote for Clinton, simply put, is a confirmation that the current political system won’t change at least over the next four years. A vote for Trump is a mini-revolution even if you don’t like the general leading the charge.

Will the general leading the charge actually do the things he says? No, mainly because he overshot on some promises. But these are the cards we were dealt, and I, for one, admit that it’s partially my fault.

© 2016 Smithtakes.com