Who really won?

Trump didn’t win this time around. Maybe he actually did, but it doesn’t matter anymore.

He knows that. Honestly, everybody knows that. That’s not to say there wasn’t some world-class cheating involved. Everybody knows there was.

Still, he lost mostly because he couldn’t escape who he’s been all along. An outsider. This played well the first time he ran because he spoke to a feeling among many Americans that the political establishment and the media couldn’t care less about working men and women.

He was right about that then. It’s still true today.

He accomplished amazing things in his term. Especially when you consider how he was opposed and sandbagged by the career bureaucrats, our own intelligence agencies, Democrats and their pals in the media, and by establishment Republicans in his own party. Despite all that, he gave us the greatest economy, the greatest increase in household income, and the lowest unemployment numbers among all Americans, regardless of race or ethnicity, in our history.

The China virus and his handling of the ensuing pandemic will be cited by many for his loss. He wasn’t done in by the virus, however, but how the media and Democrats portrayed him. Years from now it will be clear that he performed extraordinarily well in lighting a fire under government bureaucrats and engaging big pharma, other companies, and the military to to attack the virus.

What he accomplished is nothing short of astonishing.

But enough of the voting public just flat-out couldn’t deal with four more years of him. The bragging. The chaos. The nasty spats with his own appointees. And the unrelenting hammering back and forth between Trump and the media. It’s incredible after all the nonstop vilification of Trump by the media – including comparisons to Hitler – and his impeachment, that he still managed to get in the area of 74 million votes. Yet that wasn’t enough.

A lot of the public were simply exhausted by Trump.

So if Trump didn't win, does that mean Biden did? If not Biden, who did?

The super-rich, the political establishment, government bureaucrats, Wall Street and big corporations were the real winners. They all got what they wanted: the removal of Trump, who was the first US President in decades to refuse to do their bidding. For all of Trump’s faults – which were many – he was never beholden to anyone but the American people. In short, he set a dangerous precedent. He got elected the first time in spite of them. He owed them nothing.

That’s why it’s clear that while Trump was defeated, he wasn’t actually defeated by Biden. Yes, Biden will be declared the winner, but he won’t ever be running the country. Nor will Kamala Harris. Nor will the far left. Nor will Pelosi, Schumer, or The Squad.

All of the above are simply figureheads. Useful idiots, if you like. Puppets to be precise. Whether they realize it or not, and I suspect cynical Party leaders do know it, they are just fronts for nakedly commercial interests they ostensibly and quite publicly claim to abhor.

As always, it’s useful to follow the money.

Who benefits from open borders, giving citizenship to millions of illegals, and expanding H-1B programs? Who benefits from ending tariffs on foreign goods? Who benefits from easing up on China? Who benefits from subsidizing student loans and wiping out student debt? Who benefits from Medicare for all, and government-run healthcare? Who benefits from subsidizing housing, subsidizing rich taxpayers in high-tax states, and bailing out select industries?

Think about that for a moment.

The real beneficiaries are big business. And the uber-rich.

The supposed foes of Democrats and the working class.

The party that claims to fight for the working class against the greedy rich is in reality, without a doubt, the party of the greedy rich. The party of career politicians who somehow become millionaires in office. The party of tech billionaires. The party of Wall Street. The party of top executives at multinational corporations. The party of millionaire sports stars, celebrities, and media moguls.

That’s exactly who funds Democrats, who pushes them, and who they ultimately work for.

Doubt that? Consider this:

Do more immigrants and expanded H-1B programs help our working class? Nope, they drive down labor costs on the low end and freeze out American citizens from many tech jobs on the high end. The idea of ending tariffs and easing up on China positively thrills multinationals and Wall Street. Colleges and universities who refuse to control costs are the real beneficiaries of the government subsidizing student loans; wiping out student debt mainly benefits the offspring of the already affluent.

Medicare for all and government-run healthcare will actually enrich the health insurance industry – remember, it and the pharma industry drafted the original Affordable Care Act. Other Democrat promoted subsidies allow slumlords to charge more, encourage poorly run high-tax states to keep spending like drunken sailors, and provide financial assistance to “favored” industries to survive even when they shouldn’t, or have far more than enough cash on hand already.

Does anyone truly believe these things were actually dreamed up to help ordinary citizens? Of course they weren’t. They were designed to help the rich and politically connected stay that way. But they were all sold to the public as benefitting everybody and absolutely essential.

When the US Chamber of Commerce, General Motors, Goldman Sachs, media conglomerates, and the heads of Facebook, Amazon, Google and Twitter are all on the same side as Bernie Sanders and AOC, you can’t possibly think this is sheer coincidence. When most of the big campaign contributions to Democrats came from Silicon Valley, trial lawyers, the teachers’ and public employee unions, and Wall Street, how does this comport with the Democrats “party of the working class” claim?

Democrats and Biden ran on a “return to normalcy” promise after all the years of chaos under Trump. But what does that really mean? I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret.

It means the real power will return to the same entities that held it before Trump; the same forces that fought Trump behind the scenes and worked diligently to delay and derail anything that didn’t fit their agenda at every turn.

Big business. Big money. Big unions. Big tech. The military-industrial complex. The poverty-industrial complex. The US Chamber of Commerce. Deep-pocketed lobbyists. Career government bureaucrats. Our intelligence community.

They’re all back.