Friday, Jan. 20 will be the day that Donald J. Trump is inaugurated and assumes office. All Talon Marks has to say to the Democratic party is “WHAT THE HELL?”

Here’s the problem that contains all other smaller problems: The Democratic party stopped being a party for the workers and the middle class in the 90s when Clinton handed his balls on a plate to Wall Street and big business; and the party today is hurting because its corporate backers are not in touch with the average person.

In the year leading up to the election, Democrats in the middle were told that Trump is so deplorable that Clintonistas had nothing to worry about except for what color and designer brand pantsuit their new oligarch should wear, unaware of the fact that Hillary Clinton is most possibly the least liked politician in recent history. After all, she lost to a black man!

Meanwhile, establishment media on either side ridiculed the policies of Bernie Sanders for being too starry-eyed and naive to the point of bleeding-heart to have any viability at all; proving definitively that there is no such thing as liberal media, if you couldn’t already tell by the establishment media’s illiberal contributions:

• CBS is owned by the Redstone family, which donated regularly to John Kerry’s campaigns and endorsed George W. Bush in 2004.
• CNN is owned by Time Warner which allocated 62% of PAC resources to Republican candidates for the senate and house in 2016.
• ABC is owned by Walt Disney Co. which donated $2 million to a super PAC known as Conservative Solutions, which raised $15.8 million for the Presidential Campaign of Republican Marco Rubio.
• Conservative pundit Megyn Kelly is jumping to NBC, where she will have her own weekday daytime news show, an in-depth Sunday night news show and host special political programming.

Today some pundits and voters still insist Bernie Sanders is irrelevant, though it is certain he would have won against the Republican candidate in the general election for his popularity amongst millennials (a new key demographic), liberal Christians and Hispanic and black voters.

As David Jenkins says in a Talon Marks op-ed, Thank the Democratic party for Trump, the remnants of Clinton’s camp and her surrogates have “blamed third party candidates […] in swaying votes. There’s even been blame put on the imaginary position that America is a country run by a system of white supremacy or […] a sexist society.”

Black, Hispanic and millennial voters are accused for not showing at the polls, when in real life on the planet Earth the Democratic nominee won the popular vote by more than 2 million votes; no losing candidate has ever won the popular vote by such a wide margin. She even got 389,000 more votes than Obama did in 2012.

Besides that, it is the candidate’s job to be considered electable by the people. If it is any one person’s fault, it’s Hillary Clinton’s or perhaps the institution of the electoral college.

As Jenkins suggests in his headline, it is right to thank the Democratic party for this tremendous loss.

With this being said, Democrats need to stop whining like dogs in heat about Donald J. Trump being president and at the same time not surrender to the authoritarian power Trump might demand.

Stop being weak and fearful of the Republican party. Stop being spineless. Stop being naive about the inexcusable transgressions of the Democratic party.

Obama is leaving behind a legacy of compromise in areas where one should have been inconsolable, taking one whole term as president to find the chutzpah he needed to come out in favor of gay marriage.

His bipartisanship has lead to a bureaucratic health care plan that doesn’t work and a capitol run by the lobbyists of the military complex, banks and oil companies.

He extended the Bush tax cuts, got the U.S. involved in wars that will never be over and deported a key demographic the party will now need to win in future elections.

His only likable quality is that he is likable. He does talk shows and podcasts. He writes his own jokes for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. He kisses babies, and they kiss him back.

For the reasons listed above and many more, the American people do not need to think that they have a reason to be loyal to the establishment in any way.

This is the course of action we ought to take:

• Find ways of receiving news, other than from the establishment media which is owned by corporate America and is used as a means of spreading propaganda and stupefying the masses.
• Switch to a political party that is run by people who are in tune with the needs of the former middle class.
• Prepare to resist encroachments by Donald Trump of Habeas Corpus and the first amendment.

Barack Obama has done to our rights what Donald Trump did to Jane Doe. He repealed Habeas Corpus, jailed whistle blower and watch dogs and created a surveillance state — and now is giving this precedent to Trump, who we can assume will do much worse.

But we must not be afraid of a reign of terror to the point where we are unable to continue the fight towards freedom. We the people, in alliance with media entities, have the job to hold politicians accountable for the promises they make and actions they take.

Hold fast to the fact that the profit big business reaps in this society is the stolen wages of the worker and what is considered minimum wage in the U.S. is not livable; the alarming situation of climate change is man-made and requires immediate intervention; and all people deserve the right to practice their preferred religion or no religion at all.

Demand better treatment for veterans, children and the elderly. Demand a switch to renewable energy. Demand that the electoral college be dismantled.

This is the only way the United States and democracy in the United States will survive.