Archive for November, 2016

Now what?

Wednesday, November 9th, 2016

1:43 pm — So here we are. A shocking upset that developed state by state, well into the early hours of this morning. The possibility of a Trump win became plausible after Florida, and then Ohio made it even more conceivable. Up to that point, I had been totally convinced that Hillary would prevail. I was as wrong as those who voted for her. Too many Democrats were content to denigrate a massive chunk of the population and missed the mood of the electorate. They would have done better with James Webb, who has understood what was happening. They should have read BORN FIGHTING. The pollsters were astonishingly wrong. I think the Democrats would have preferred to have known they were behind. The media bias appears to have backfired. It energized those who felt disaffected and may have convinced members of the liberal coalition to believe that a second Clinton presidency was a done deal. Two major factors that not many are talking about today: the NRA ground game and the defection of countless union members to the Republican candidate (a throwback to the 1980s). Apparently, Clinton under-performed among educated white women, who identified less with their gender and more with the security concerns and economic uncertainties that Trump exploited. After an overnight scare, the markets have stabilized a bit today, but I expect continued volatility and perhaps a sharp technical correction over the coming weeks. At any rate, I didn’t see this coming — for Trump’s populist uprising to carry the day — and, sadly, I cannot foresee any kind of “honeymoon,” in spite of the millions who yearn for a national healing.

“We don’t for a moment think that every Trump voter shares his darkest views or instincts, only that they were willing to accept them as a way of casting a vote against ‘the system,’ as they’ve seen it. Now, their candidate is the system, and we’ll be there to hold him to account for how he runs it.”
Jon Avlon, The Daily Beast