Day 24 - 8th November

Election day, Americans would today go to the polls and elect a new president.  After a long and bitter campaign, there is much interest in how this will go.  The Democrats seem quietly confident, we’re not so sure, we think it’s not a foregone conclusion.

Today we went out to see the Grand Ole Opry on the outskirts of Nashville, this is where the careers of many musicians has been launched. 

The car park was huge and we got a bit lost, and ended up at the Opryland Resort and convention centre, which was not a problem as we had been advised by the very friendly server at Saws Soul Grill in Birmingham to visit the Opryland hotel & conference centre.  To say it was impressive is a complete understatement.  It was enormous, and stunning.  No wonder rooms start at US $469 a night – no Sleep Inn prices here !!  There are  5 separate sections to the resort, four of which are enormous self contained wings of hotel accommodation surrounding indoor gardens, complete with tropical plants, water falls, pools, fish, restaurants, shops……all covered under glass domes/ceilings, much like Kew gardens and the like.  The inside temperature is like being indoors, not humid and neither hot nor cold, all lit with natural sunlight.  Impossible to describe or convey the scale, refer to photos to get the idea, and even then, they do not do it justice.  The 5^th wing is a conference area, with many huge conference rooms and ball rooms.  Wiki tells me it has 2882 rooms, 220 suites and 15 restaurants.  I would love to know how many staff are required to keep it ticking over.  Christmas decorating is in full swing, also impressive.  Oh I also forgot to mention there is a boat that floats around the indoor river that you can go for a guided tour on.

We had a bite to eat at one of the many cafes (almond bear claw, which is kinda like an almond croissant – very nice) and then walked over to the Grand Ole Opry.  Sadly this was closed for filming their annual Christmas show, and all performances have been moved to the Ryman theatre in town.  There is no-on on except for tonight, and we had planned to watch the election. 

We had a quick look at the shopping mall also in the same area, many acres of shops all under one roof, so big the security guards use a segue to cover it all.  After that it was time to for model shopping, so off we went to Hobbytown USA and then Hudsons Classic Hobbys, both on the outskirts of Nashville, of course in opposite directions.  Kits duly purchased it was time to head back to the hotel.

We started watching the election coverage on CNN, this is mostly what we’ve been watching in the lead-up to it.  It seems to have a slightly Democratic bias, while Fox is slightly Republican biased.  By about 9pm our time, all the talking heads and analysts were starting to get a bit twitchy, with the results indicating that Trump was polling much better than expected.  He had said at the start of the campaign that he would take the rust belt, all the states up around he great lakes that have in the past been centres of industry, particularly steel and automotive (hence rust belt).  As more and more results came in, it became more and more obvious that he was going to win.  We started out in disbelief, how could this happen ?  But as more time went on, it seemed more and more obvious that despite his confrontational style and polarising statements, people were prepared to ignore that, because they are so sick of “Washington” and not being listened to.  Our view is that people are done with the back handers and corruption that has gone on/is going on in Washington, with all the politicians getting fat and rich whilst ignoring the needs of the ordinary average working person.  We also think that the polling was so off because people have been afraid to admit that they are supporting trump.  Those that have pledged support have been pilloried by the media, and called racist, misogynistic red necks.  Or stupid.

This trip, we have mostly been in safe Republican states, and while there were Trump signs everywhere, and very few promoting Clinton, there wasn’t much talk at all that we picked up on.  We specifically asked two people that we met along the way, our 9^th ward bike tour leader in New Orleans, (the city is Democrat but the rural areas in the rest of Louisiana make the state as a whole, a Republican strong-hold) and he was a) very embarrassed about how having Trump running for president made the country look and b) was also not that impressed with Clinton – the email scandal did seriously damage her credibility -but felt she was a better option than Trump so would be voting for her.

The other person we spoke to was based in Key West, a white middle class, intelligent man, not misogynistic or racist as far as we could tell, and he reluctantly admitted to us that he would be voting for Trump.  One of the reasons was that under Obama Care, his health insurance has gone from $300 a month to $1400 a month (may not have got those numbers exactly correct, but it was in that ball-park).  So his feeling was that he was a guy, working hard to make a living, and felt that he was now worse off than he had been.

I had assumed that Obama care was government funded and therefore great for everyone but that is apparently not the case.

So we watched and watched, until about 1 in the morning.  At this point, no-one had called it.  Not CNN, nor Fox, both seemed desperate not to give the confirmation that everyone was still disbelieving.  Then Hilary’s campaign manager appeared to say that she would not be fronting tonight and that everyone should “go home” and she would address them tomorrow.  His reason was that it was still undecided and they would not have a result until tomorrow.  At this point we were stunned …… why would she not even show up and thank her people, regardless ?  Then I noticed Stuff in NZ had called it, based on the Associated Press finally saying Pennsylvania had gone to Trump and he therefore had an unbeatable majority, even though there were still states that were very close, still with votes to count.  Then we heard that she had called The Don to conceded that she had lost and he was now President Elect.  This only confounded our disbelief because a) she had lied, she did have an outcome and b) that she had called Trump but not talked to her own people.  I don’t understand her reasoning, but whatever it was, very poor leadership in my view.  And to me illustrates why she is not liked, and lost. 

By this time it was about 1.30am, so we watched the first few moments of Trumps acceptance speech and called it a night.
As a post script, I have since remembered something else that illustrates why Clinton lost.  Early on in the campaign, Trump had said he would take the rust belt.  Despite this, Clinton did not visit any of these states during her campaign.  No wonder they felt ignored.  It also shows that she a) did not listen (to Trump) or b) was so confident she would win despite his stated intentions, that she put her energy into less marginal states.