There will be thousands of articles written about tonight. But I’d like to bring a few points I have yet to see into the discussion.
First, I don’t think that the Clinton Campaign could have done much technically that would have changed the outcome. The campaign was well run, it used the best practice that people knew to use, and its use of messaging was impressive.
The problem is mostly what whites want from government, and what they want economically. They have chosen to follow someone who, as Michael Caine’s character says in The Dark Night, that they do not fully understand. That, together with a failed press and the decline of other institutions like the FPI, are the parents of what transpired today. Given the role of the radical right in Trump’s coalition, I don’t believe that a Jewish socialist would have fared much better, if at all. If anything, it would have given the business community more of an excuse to support Trump than they already had.
But that said: the numbers do not lie. Look carefully to states where it was close, and you find in several cases, the Libertarian ticket exceeds Trump’s margin of victory. I don’t hear this being discussed yet, but the data is too clear to deny. As angry as many of us are, a good chunk of was once the US GOP will look at the results, and will treat Gary Johnson a lot worse than many us treated Ralph Nader.
We’ll need to figure out how to game out 2018. Trump’s deficiencies will surface fast, and it will split the GOP, which is now in charge. These will be hard times. But there are opportunities to found in the wreckage.