Intelligent people will get this

What have we learned? That Trump was being taken very seriously, indeed, by the people who ultimately mattered. Voters. Not all the voters, surely. It is not yet clear that he even won the popular vote, as counting continues in some states and Hillary Clinton might still that metric. Much of the country woke up the day after in disbelief at the news of his election, even as financial markets were reeling from a night of selloffs around the world. Yet Trump racked up a clear majority in the Electoral College. And he did it by ning the Anglo white vote (58 percent of it, according to the exit polls). Among people of color, he got just 21 percent. He won among men (53 percent), people older than 44 (53 percent) and people without a college degree (52 percent). When Donald Trump came down the escalator in June of 2015 in the tower he named for himself in Manhattan, few of us who do politics for a living took his offthecuff announcement for president seriously. But the last 17 months have been a lesson to all of us who flattered ourselves ??? as campaign pros, polling pros and media pros ??? that we knew more about politics than he did. Among white people without a college degree, his share was a stunning 67 percent. The Democratic Party, which rose as the party of labor when that meant the party of the white working cl, could not even compete for that vote in the critical states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. Trump won the last three by about one percentage point each ??? and with those slim margins, he claimed the presidency. Trump narrowly lost those voters who have a college degree. But he managed to among white college graduates by four percentage points, avoiding a loss with this group that would have been the first for a Republican nominee since data of this kind have been collected. It must also be said that Trump has been elected with the worst favorableunfavorable ratio of any major party nominee in the history of polling ??? consistently above 60 percent unfavorable. He kept that number up by insulting immigrants and women and NATO and Gold Star veterans families. He did it making friendly noises toward Russian President Vladimir Putin. But those who do like Trump, or who dislike all his rivals more, were enough to make him a ner. It started in the primaries. In a field of 17, Trump stood out by connecting with people who previously thought of him as a TV celebrity, a real estate mogul or a casino magnate. They knew he had no background as a politician. And they liked that about him. They knew he had little respect for the last four or five Republican candidates for president, including those who had won. And they liked that about him. He was critical of the Iraq War begun by GOP President George W. Bush, and the trade deals negotiated by presidents of both parties over several decades. And they liked that about him. Trump said outrageous things, insulting former POW John McCain and Fox News host Megyn Kelly, among others. He refused to commit to supporting the Republican nominee unless his own candidacy was treated fairly. None of this seemed to bother Trump supporters nearly as much as we, the pros, said it had to. And when a Muslim couple with ties to ISIS killed 14 people and wounded 22 more in San Bernardino on Dec. 2, 2015, many campaign pros thought Trump would fade as a candidate. After all, he had no military service and no previous office. Wrong again. Trumps candidacy took off again after he called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S. Trump stitched together an unlikely coalition of voters to outpace 16 intraparty rivals. He did it with outreach to those not yet recovered from the 200809 recession, or from the loss of highwage factory jobs. He did it by ning over evangelical Christians, abortion opponents, gun owners and ordinary people incensed at Washington and Wall Street and fearful about terrorism and immigration. And once he had become the nominee of the Republican Party, Trump needed only to hold his base constituency and add the reluctant votes of other Republicans and compatible independents. He didnt need all those GOP officeholders who kept their distance or the big donors who looked away or the conservative opinionmakers who denounced him. His convention in Cleveland was rocky, with highprofile rival Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas refusing to endorse him and homestate Gov. John Kasich boycotting the proceedings. In the fall, after a series of controversies about Muslims, immigrants and allegations of ual ault, Trump stumbled through three debates with Hillary Clinton that most people thought she won. Late in October, the Trump campaign seemed rudderless and sinking. Clintons lead in some polls ran out to double digits. Then came a ray of hope. FBI Director James Comey announced the discovery of a new stash of emails that might be relevant to the earlier, monthslong investigation of Clintons personal email server. Suddenly, the Democratic nominee was back at the bottom of the rain barrel. The polls moved Trumps way. Financial markets moved lower, anxious about Trumps trade antagonism ??? among other issues. But in the final days before Election Day, Comey sounded an all clear. Nevermind, he said, the emails were duplicates or personal matters. The polls turned around again, the markets rose dramatically on Monday and trended higher until the close on Election Day. So on election eve, the consensus of highquality independent polling was that Clinton was leading nationally by four points. Most of us pros were expecting the suspense to be about her margin of victory. Would it be big enough to bring home a Democratic majority in the Senate? Would it be enough to give her a mandate? Even some of Trumps surrogates and staffers seemed resigned to falling short. There was talk of how much blame to put on recalcitrant party leaders such as Speaker of the House Paul Ryan or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.