Trexit

Facebook walls and the Twitterverse are exploding this morning. Emotions are running high, friendships are being strained and Americans are moving to Canada. The American Republic has cast its votes and Trump has won. Here are some quick takeaways.

1.  There Is A Silent Majority.

The polls were all over the place in the days before the election. Some of that is because some polls were inherently biased or constructed in such a way as to make a Clinton win look inevitable. Mostly, however, it was because the pollsters were asking the wrong questions of the wrong people, and people were not being honest about their answers.

As I said several weeks ago, you generally do not win a jury trial by calling the jurors bigoted cavemen. Clinton's entire strategy was to make Donald Trump radioactive. She focused her efforts on calling him names and labeling his supporters as misogynists. She had to make it unacceptable in gentle company to voice support for him. So they kept quiet.

This strategy failed because not everyone lives in posh homes in Washington and New York. In fact, the vast majority of the nation lives in "fly-over country," has never eaten arugula and generally will not pay $7 for a cup of coffee. Clinton lost these votes because she deeply offended the average person with her labeling. 

2.  Identity Politics Has Reached Its Breaking Point.

We still do not have all the numbers, but the exit polling shows that Trump over performed with women, African Americans and Hispanics. Hillary Clinton spent most of her campaign telling minority voters that there is no place for them in "Trump's America." She defined Trump's America as white, bigoted, and uneducated. She drew her line in the sand - Us non-white women vs. those angry white men.

The angry white men won because they and their wives still make up 70% of the electorate. Hillary Clinton alienated a huge segment of this very large voting block with predictable results. As unpalatable as she had made Trump, she still could not gather enough minority votes to make up for the white voters she shoved off the cliff.

The same is true for her gender politics. Our country is about half male and half female. When not focused on calling Trump and his supporters racists, Clinton proclaimed herself the great champion in the final battle of the sexes. She would raise her fist and smash, once and for all, those oppressive fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, boyfriends, etc. She apparently expected men to just lay down and take it. Instead, they voted against her in record numbers. She knew this would happen, and planned to create a gender gap of her own among women. That gender gap did not materialize on Election Day the way it had in the polls. This is most likely due to the fact that men and women really are not that far apart on the issues. Also, as I've written before, wives and husbands tend to vote together or don't vote at all. The Clinton fantasy that a bunch of angry wives would come out of their oppressive kitchens, knife their husbands and then race to vote for Clinton was just that, a fantasy. Instead couples talked about the election and made a collective decision.

In the future, if the Democrats want to win, they will have to reach out to majority voters as Trump did; the Forgotten Men and Woman left behind by the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama new world order.

3.  The Establishment Will Suffer.

This election was a rejection of both political establishments. Nevertheless, the voters are sending Trump to Washington with control of both houses of Congress. He will be able to fill Supreme Court vacancies with ease, end regulation, and pass his version of immigration reform. In other words, voters were not just giving the Establishment a collective middle finger. They also wanted Trump in a position to actually succeed. Lucky for Paul Ryan and company he lifted them up, even as they tried to drag him down.

The Conservative Elite Media will not be so lucky. A number of careers are either badly damaged or outright destroyed. All the Karl Roves, George Wills, Bill Kristols, and Erik Eriksons lost. They lost in spectacular fashion. Not only were they completely wrong about the electorate, but they have misread their own audiences. The first rule of being an opinion writer is making sure your opinion matters. George Will's opinion of Trump and his voters no longer matters.

In the days and weeks ahead Trump owes it to the nation to begin to heal some of the divide. It is not entirely his fault, but some of the damage is his and he has a duty to fix it. The Clinton/Bush Era has finally come to an end. It is up to Trump supporters to show the world how good, old fashioned, red state values can fix a nation.