Anybody who tells you they saw this coming is a liar. Donald Trump pulled off one of the great stunners in political history, sweeping past Hillary Clinton to become the 45th President of the United States.
How did he do it? He channeled the rage and anger of his supporters and used it to smash a gaping hole in the Democrats' vaunted "blue wall" of states. He won states that haven't gone Republican in years, like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He won battleground prizes like Florida and Ohio. Team Clinton was shell-shocked. Pundits were left speechless. Pollsters went into hiding. Trump becomes just the fifth president with no previous experience in elected office. The others? Zachary Taylor, Ulysses Grant, Herbert Hoover and Dwight Eisenhower.
The acceptance speech: After Clinton conceded early this morning, Trump struck a conciliatory tone in his acceptance speech. He said the country owes a debt of gratitude to Clinton for her decades of public service, then he promised to bring the country together after the most bitter presidential race of our times.
How Clinton lost: Going in, everyone thought this race was Clinton's to lose. And she did, because she couldn't keep the Obama coalition together. She underperformed with women, African-Americans, Hispanics and younger voters. We didn't hear from her on election night, but she's expected to address her supporters sometime today.
How the pundits missed it: The polls, the turnout models, the prediction markets -- they were all wrong. Why? Because both the media and pollsters underestimated rural white voters who would come out for Trump, and overestimated the turnout of Clinton's more diverse supporters.
Should we really be shocked?: This shocker ending really shouldn't be a shock. Come on, this is 2016, the year of the Brexit bombshell in Great Britain and the spiked FARC peace deal in Colombia. Polls were wrong there too.
What happens next? President-elect Trump will now have to flesh out his policy proposals and we'll have to keep an eye on the markets, which didn't like the Trump win. At one point Dow futures were down a mind-boggling 800 points.
As for Clinton, her campaign tweeted out a prescient photo, of her smiling and hugging a young girl, that seems to say "I'm so sorry, but I tried." | |
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