10 Childish Behaviors from the Left in the Wake of Trump's Election

High school students carry signs as they march in opposition of Donald Trump's presidential election victory in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

If the wild and wooly roller coaster that was the 2016 presidential election taught us anything, it’s that the left doesn’t lose gracefully. We’ve seen the worst side of Clinton supporters in the wake of her loss, and I don’t believe that history will look kindly on the behavior of leftists after Donald Trump’s victory. Here are ten examples of the childishness of the left after the election.

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10. Bravely Chanting “Not My President”

I’ll admit that I didn’t vote for Trump—in fact, I made my #NeverTrump proclivities known in the months leading up to the election. However, now that he’s won, I’ve breathed a sigh of relief that Hillary Clinton didn’t win, and I’m cautiously optimistic that Trump won’t be so bad after all.

The left—bless them—can’t seem to give Trump a chance. Those special snowflake millennials have made a point of chanting “Not my president,” and doing so in the most brave fashion imaginable: in cities where it’s safe to do so. (I did joke to a buddy of mine that Trump wasn’t my president, but it’s only because he hasn’t been inaugurated yet.)

Instead, leftists have doubled down on the policies that turned so many voters off on Election Day. They re-elected Nancy Pelosi as House minority leader, and their rhetoric shows that they’ve learned nothing. Maybe in the days after Trump’s inauguration, they’ll continue down their path and stay in the minority.

9. Coddling College Students

I get the fact that colleges and universities are the bastions of left-leaning thought these days. I also understand that college kids tend to lean to the left in their school days. But instead of teaching students to suck it up in the wake of the surprise Donald Trump victory, colleges and universities have taken the complete opposite tack.

Robby Soave at Reason details some of the ways in which college students experienced post-election coddling:

A University of Michigan psychology professor delayed an exam until next week and wished students good fortune during this “tumultuous time.” Some Columbia University professors postponed midterms as well. A University of Connecticut professor excused students from attending class. And at Yale University, one professor decided to make an upcoming exam optional.

Administrators were quick to reassure students that universities offer myriad counseling options.

“This election has been unusual in that specific statements were made about various groups of people who often feel marginalized and unsafe,” wrote Northwestern University Vice President Patricia Telles-Irvin in a campuswide email. “Partisan, inflammatory statements unfortunately seem to be part of modern campaign rhetoric, but they cause real wounds. As we move beyond a divisive election, we therefore recognize the need for healing of those wounds. With this in mind, we want to extend support to those students who are experiencing difficulty at this time.”

Students, predictably, were apoplectic. Cornell University students held a “cry-in.”

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Good Lord! How will these kids ever learn to deal with disappointment? (Then again, in my college days, I would’ve jumped at any excuse to have the option to skip an exam, and I was as right-wing as they come even then.)

8. Dragging High School Kids into the Fray

It wasn’t just college students who experienced the shock of the Trump victory. High school students in San Francisco found themselves subjected to anti-Trump propaganda disguised as a lesson plan.

From Fox News:

San Francisco’s public schools have been offered a classroom lesson plan that calls President-elect Donald Trump a racist, sexist man who became president “by pandering to a huge racist and sexist base.”

The union that represents city teachers posted the plan on its website and distributed it via an email newsletter to its more than 6,000 members. The school district has more than 57,000 students.

It is unclear how many teachers have used the plan outlined by a Mission High School teacher, but it appears to have the tacit support of city education officials.

My colleague Debra Heine weighed in as well when she said at PJM:

Instead of helping students deal with an election that maybe didn’t go the way they wanted, they are encouraging them to wallow in anger and self-pity and branding over 60 million Americans as racist and sexist bigots.

It’s one thing to coddle the college students who can’t get over Trump’s victory, but it’s a whole different thing to subject kids who aren’t even old enough to vote to this kind of propaganda. It’s totally shameful!

7. Asking Psychologists to Explain “Election Heartbreak”

The first presidential election in which I was eligible to vote was 1992. I was all set to cast my vote for a second term for George H. W. Bush. When Bill Clinton won, I was pretty sad. But guess what: I moved on. My track record as a voter hasn’t been so hot; the candidate I voted for has lost in five of the seven presidential elections I’ve been eligible to vote in, but I haven’t moped as a result.

The left can’t say the same thing. In fact, the folks over at Vox called in some psychologists to explain what they call “election heartbreak.” In their typically condescending fashion (and with plenty of silly, children’s-book-style illustrations), the Vox kids tell us:

In political elections, Harvard Kennedy School behavioral scientist Todd Rogers told me, he’s consistently observed both sides think their side is about to win. That means that in every election cycle, regardless of media rhetoric or polling data, half of the population is always going to be sucker-punched. And because we tend to be friends with people like us, work with people like us, and read news sources that confirm our worldview, getting hit by a reality beyond that can cut deeply.

Those partisan defeats can be more crushing to individuals than violent, national catastrophes.

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Oh, but not to worry. Vox also explains that crazy phenomenon most people know as “getting over it”:

There is some good news in all this. In a few days, for people who see themselves on the losing team, the pure sorrow of losing is likely to fade. The social psychologist Dan Gilbert has found that we overestimate the intensity and duration of emotional events, so that when something good or bad happens to us, those feelings of elation or despair don’t last as long as we think they will. You can see this in the research on people who suddenly become paraplegics or who win the lottery: After that disruptive event, they very quickly return to their baseline happiness.

You heard it from Vox—everything’s going to be all right. But then again, you probably already knew that.

6. Talking About Secession

From time to time, you’ll hear people suggest that Texas secede from the union, usually in response to the continuing liberalization of our culture. But it never amounts to anything—and the left pooh-poohs it.

Recently, a friend of mine posted a graphic from a Facebook page called The Angry Liberal. This graphic suggested that Washington, Oregon, California, and Nevada secede and form a nation called Pacifica. This nation would be:

Free to pursue Green Technology, Carbon Legislation, and PROGRESSIVE 21st Century Law Making without the hinderance of being beholden to a backwards Idiocracy. [random weird capitalization from the original]

Apparently, this has been an idea since the election of George W. Bush. The Nation of Pacifica website states:

It would be in the self-interest of the Republican-controlled Congress to grant permission for several states to secede from the United States, as the removal of secular liberal and urban areas would increase Republican power in the United States government, and enhance the ability for the Republicans to impose a right wing Christian agenda. The secession of California, in particular, would remove the single largest secular liberal block of power from Congress and make it nearly impossible for a Democratic candidate to be elected President of the United States.

Because the citizens of the “red states” believe that their religious beliefs must be imposed by force of law and strongly object to the beliefs and lifestyles of the citizens of the “blue states”, it is likely that they will be happy to be rid of those that they view as “Satanically evil.” Once the Nation of Pacifica has been founded, the remaining United States can ban the import of the Hollywood movies, television shows, rock, hip hop, and R&B music, science and technology, and other secular influences they so strongly object to.

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This website could be a satire, but it’s just like the left to want to take their ball and go home.

5. Cutting Off Their Hair in Mourning

Women all across the country expected Hillary Clinton to smash the glass ceiling—whatever that is—on November 8. When she and all her followers bumped their heads on the ceiling instead, some women took drastic measures like cutting off and/or dying their hair as a sign of mourning…or taking control…or something.

New York Magazine tells the story of Julianna Evans, the marketing director for a theater company who made a drastic change to her appearance in the wake of the election. Supposedly, women along the Acela corridor are doing the same thing:

That sense of malaise is spreading across D.C. As women stare up at that glass ceiling still hanging over them and contend with a p***y-grabbing kleptocrat moving into the nearby White House, they are collectively — however subconsciously — making their own statements of rebellion by challenging traditional notions of beauty. Just ask any hairstylist in the Beltway.

“When you see that much blonde hair on the floor, you know something is going on,” says Nicole Butler, creative director and master colorist at Daniel’s Salon in Dupont Circle. During the notoriously slow month of November, her salon received a startling number of bookings, with at least three women a day sitting in her chair and asking for a drastic change, like cutting off six inches, going black, or going platinum. “Usually stuff like this is planned for weeks and put on the books after several consultations, but this was very spontaneous,” Butler says. “It was like a mass declaration of independence.” Clients, especially those over 40, expressed a feeling of loss and uncertainty, says Butler. “Maybe this is some kind of compensation for not getting what we wanted in the election. By changing our hair, we can control the outcome.”

Now, these women have the right to do whatever they want with their appearance, but I can’t help but wonder if drastic measures as the result of an election loss ought to make them all feel a little bit silly.

4. Cancelling Dates Because of Trump

The left has lived by a certain mantra since the ’60s: the political is personal. And good grief, they mean it! One egregious example is Stephanie Land, who wrote in the Washington Post that the election has taken away her desire to date. That’s right: she’s in such grief over Trump’s win that she doesn’t even want to date anymore.

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Land’s column is fraught with ridiculous statements, like tying her daughter’s visit from the Tooth Fairy to Hillary’s certain victory. But the richest portion of the piece is the end, where she writes:

My focus had to be on my community of friends that are my family. I need to fiercely love the people close to me instead of learning to love someone new. To reach out to others could weaken the bonds that hold my family together.

“I can’t,” I told him. “I just can’t.”

I’ve lost the desire to attempt the courtship phase. The future is uncertain. I am not the optimistic person I was on the morning of Nov. 8, wearing a T-shirt with “Nasty Woman” written inside a red heart. It makes me want to cry thinking of that. Of seeing my oldest in the shirt I bought her in Washington, D.C., that says “Future President.”

There is no room for dating in this place of grief. Dating means hope. I’ve lost that hope in seeing the words “President-elect Trump.”

Stephanie Land isn’t just making the political personal; she’s taking the silly sadness over an election loss to a whole new level of ridiculousness. If that’s not childish, I don’t know what is.

3. Putting Faith in Faithless Electors

Within hours of the election, I noticed some of my liberal friends breathlessly pointing out that the election isn’t over. They immediately began placing their faith in “faithless electors,” all of whom would supposedly switch their Electoral College votes from Trump to Clinton.

Here’s the thing: the whole faithless elector bit is a silly pipe dream at best. Jeff Greenfield at The Daily Beast points out that Trump’s margin of victory in the Electoral College is too wide and that the faithless electors would face an uphill battle. He notes that:

It’s all a shadow play—entertaining, provocative, but bearing no relation to current political reality.

Fairvote.org tells the stories of history’s previous faithless electors but notes that “[a]s of the 2004 election, no elector has changed the outcome of an election by voting against his or her party’s designated candidate.” In fact, nearly half of the faithless electors in history changed their vote because their candidate died before the Electoral College met.

Inquisitr.com makes the case that most of the electors who claim to be faithless are actually from states that Hillary Clinton won. It’s not exactly the kind of promise you want to hang your hat on, is it?

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2. Fretting Over What to Tell the Children

One of the most ridiculous notions I’ve seen in the aftermath of the election is the hand-wringing over how to explain the election results to kids. Leftist parents apparently ignore the fact that children are resilient, and most of them don’t care about politics anyway.

But that doesn’t stop the left from worrying anyway. Columnist Michelle Maltais wrote in the Los Angeles Times:

In my own social feed, some have said they’ll tell their kids that “in real life the bad guy wins way more often than the good guy.” Many said they cried with their kids, who had stayed up to watch the returns.

Who lets their kids stay up to watch election returns? What kind of torture is this? I was all in for Reagan just weeks away from my 8th birthday, but my parents wouldn’t have dreamed of making me stay up to watch election coverage! Oh, but there’s more:

“Your mom and your grandparents are immigrants,” one friend said he would tell his kids, flipping the immigrant story as encouragement to consider leaving the country. “Sometimes you have to leave your home for a better life.”

And over at the Huffington Post, Ali Michael tells educators that they should:

Tell them, first, that we will protect them. Tell them that we have democratic processes in the U.S. that make it impossible for one mean person to do too much damage. Tell them that we will protect those democratic processes ― and we will use them ― so that Trump is unable to act on many of the false promises he made during his campaign.

Sheesh! Why not tell them that an election isn’t worth crying or losing sleep over? Why not tell them that you can’t win them all?

Better yet, why not tell them that the Democrats put up a candidate who was not only corrupt but also wildly unlikeable, and that’s why Hillary lost?

1. Lashing Out Violently

Remember how many times we’ve heard the lecture on how “violence is not the answer” from the left? Well, apparently that axiom doesn’t apply when they don’t get their way. In the days following the election, leftists across the country erupted into what we can only call the world’s most expensive temper tantrum.

Riots in cities like Chicago, New York, and Oakland dominated the news cycle in the first week or so following the election. One protester in Los Angeles even remarked that “people have to die” for their message to get across.

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(And to think that CNN was worried about racist graffiti and “hate crimes” in the wake of the election.)

Events like these come across as foreign to a nation that prides itself on the peaceful transfer of power every four to eight years. But, even as we make fun of the childish behavior of leftists, there’s an element of sadness to the fact that it has come to this simply because their candidate didn’t win.

Here’s hoping the left can grow up some.

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