Donald Trump Is Elected President in Stunning Repudiation of the Establishment
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avinash shahi
Nov 9, 2016, 3:27:50 AM11/9/16
to sayeverything, worldopinion
Donald John Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States
on Tuesday in a stunning culmination of an explosive, populist and
polarizing campaign
that took relentless aim at the institutions and long-held ideals of
American democracy.
The surprise outcome, defying late polls that showed
Hillary Clinton
with a modest but persistent edge, threatened convulsions throughout
the country and the world, where skeptics had watched with alarm as
Mr. Trump’s unvarnished
overtures to disillusioned voters took hold.
The triumph for Mr. Trump, 70, a real estate developer-turned-reality
television star with no government experience, was a powerful
rejection of the establishment
forces that had assembled against him, from the world of business to
government, and the consensus they had forged on everything from trade
to immigration.
The results amounted to a repudiation, not only of Mrs. Clinton, but
of President Obama, whose legacy is suddenly imperiled. And it was a
decisive demonstration
of power by a largely overlooked coalition of mostly blue-collar white
and working-class voters who felt that the promise of the United
States had slipped
their grasp amid decades of globalization and multiculturalism.
In Mr. Trump, a thrice-married Manhattanite who lives in a
marble-wrapped three-story penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue, they
found an improbable champion.
“The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no
longer,” Mr. Trump told supporters around 3 a.m. at a rally in New
York City, just after
Mrs. Clinton called to concede.
Mr. Trump’s strong showing brightened Republican hopes of retaining
control of the Senate. Only one Republican-controlled seat, in
Illinois, fell to Democrats
early in the evening. And Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, a
Republican, easily won re-election in a race that had been among the
country’s most
competitive. A handful of other Republican incumbents facing difficult
races were running better than expected.
Mr. Trump’s win — stretching across the battleground states of
Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania — seemed likely to set
off financial jitters
and immediate unease among international allies, many of which were
startled when Mr. Trump in his campaign cast doubt on the necessity of
America’s military
commitments abroad and its allegiance to international economic partnerships.
From the moment he entered the campaign, with a shocking set of claims
that Mexican immigrants were rapists and criminals, Mr. Trump was
widely underestimated
as a candidate, first by his opponents for the Republican nomination
and later by Mrs. Clinton, his Democratic rival. His rise was largely
missed by polling
organizations and data analysts. And an air of improbability trailed
his campaign, to the detriment of those who dismissed his angry
message, his improvisational
style and his appeal to disillusioned voters.
He suggested remedies that raised questions of constitutionality, like
a ban on Muslims entering the United States.
He threatened opponents, promising lawsuits against news organizations
that covered him critically and women who accused him of sexual
assault. At times,
he simply lied.
But Mr. Trump’s unfiltered rallies and unshakable self-regard
attracted a zealous following, fusing unsubtle identity politics with
an economic populism
that often defied party doctrine.
His rallies — furious, entertaining, heavy on name-calling and
nationalist overtones — became the nexus of a political movement, with
daily promises of
sweeping victory, in the election and otherwise, and an insistence
that the country’s political machinery was “rigged” against Mr. Trump
and those who
admired him.
He seemed to embody the success and grandeur that so many of his
followers felt was missing from their own lives — and from the country
itself. And he
scoffed at the poll-driven word-parsing ways of modern politics,
calling them a waste of time and money. Instead, he relied on his gut.
At his victory party at the New York Hilton Midtown, where a raucous
crowd indulged in a cash bar and wore hats bearing his ubiquitous
campaign slogan
“Make America Great Again,” voters expressed gratification that their
voices had, at last, been heard.
“He was talking to people who weren’t being spoken to,” said Joseph
Gravagna, 37, a marketing company owner from Rockland County, N.Y.
“That’s how I knew
he was going to win.”
For Mrs. Clinton, the defeat signaled an astonishing end to a
political dynasty that has colored Democratic politics for a
generation. Eight years after
losing to President Obama in the Democratic primary — and 16 years
after leaving the White House for the United States Senate, as
President Bill Clinton
exited office — she had seemed positioned to carry on two legacies:
her husband’s and the president’s.
Her shocking loss was a devastating turn for the sprawling world of
Clinton aides and strategists who believed they had built an electoral
machine that
would swamp Mr. Trump’s ragtag band of loyal operatives and family
members, many of whom had no experience running a national campaign.
On Tuesday night, stricken Clinton aides who believed that Mr. Trump
had no mathematical path to victory, anxiously paced the Jacob K.
Javits Convention
Center as states in which they were confident of victory, like Florida
and North Carolina, either fell to Mr. Trump or seemed in danger of
tipping his
way.
Mrs. Clinton watched the grim results roll in from a suite at the
nearby Peninsula Hotel, surrounded by her family, friends and advisers
who had the day
before celebrated her candidacy with a champagne toast on her campaign plane.
But over and over, Mrs. Clinton’s weaknesses as a candidate were
exposed. She failed to excite voters hungry for change. She struggled
to build trust with
Americans who were baffled by her decision to use a private email
server as secretary of state. And she strained to make a persuasive
case for herself
as a champion of the economically downtrodden after delivering
perfunctory paid speeches that earned her millions of dollars.
The returns Tuesday also amounted to a historic rebuke of the
Democratic Party
from the white blue-collar voters who had formed the party base from
the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt to Mr. Clinton’s. Yet Mrs.
Clinton and her
advisers had taken for granted that states like Michigan and Wisconsin
would stick with a Democratic nominee, and that she could repeat Mr.
Obama’s strategy
of mobilizing the party’s ascendant liberal coalition rather than
pursuing a more moderate course like her husband did 24 years ago.
But not until these voters were offered a Republican who ran as an
unapologetic populist, railing against foreign trade deals and illegal
immigration,
did they move so drastically away from their ancestral political home.
To the surprise of many on the left, white voters who had helped elect
the nation’s first black president, appeared more reluctant to line up
behind a
white woman.
From Pennsylvania to Wisconsin, industrial towns once full of union
voters who for decades offered their votes to Democratic presidential
candidates, even
in the party’s lean years, shifted to Mr. Trump’s
Republican Party.
One county in the Mahoning Valley of Ohio, Trumbull, went to Mr. Trump
by a six-point margin. Four years ago, Mr. Obama won there by 22
points.
Mrs. Clinton’s loss was especially crushing to millions who had
cheered her march toward history as, they hoped, the nation’s first
female president. For
supporters, the election often felt like a referendum on gender
progress: an opportunity to elevate a woman to the nation’s top job
and to repudiate a
man whose remarkably boorish behavior toward women had assumed center
stage during much of the campaign.
Mr. Trump boasted, in a 2005 video released last month, about using
his public profile to commit sexual assault. He suggested that female
political rivals
lacked a presidential “look.” He ranked women on a scale of one to 10,
even holding forth on the desirability of his own daughter — the kind
of throwback
male behavior that many in the country assumed would disqualify a
candidate for high office.
On Tuesday, the public’s verdict was rendered.
Uncertainty abounds as Mr. Trump prepares to take office. His campaign
featured a shape-shifting list of policy proposals, often seeming to
change hour
to hour. His staff was in constant turmoil, with Mr. Trump’s children
serving critical campaign roles and a rotating cast of advisers
alternately seeking
access to Mr. Trump’s ear, losing it and, often, regaining it,
depending on the day.
Even Mr. Trump’s full embrace of the Republican Party came exceedingly
late in life, leaving members of both parties unsure about what he
truly believes.
He has donated heavily to both parties and has long described his
politics as the transactional reality of a businessman.
Mr. Trump’s dozens of business entanglements — many of them in foreign
countries — will follow him into the Oval Office, raising questions
about potential
conflicts of interest. His refusal to release his tax returns, and his
acknowledgment that he did not pay federal income taxes for years, has
left the
American people with considerable gaps in their understanding of the
financial dealings.
But this they do know: Mr. Trump will thoroughly reimagine the tone,
standards and expectations of the presidency, molding it in his own
self-aggrandizing
image.
He is set to take the oath of office on Jan. 20.
Amy Chozick, Ashley Parker, Patrick Healy and Jonathan Martin
contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/us/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-president.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-abc-region®ion=span-abc-region&WT.nav=span-abc-region
--
Avinash Shahi
Doctoral student at Centre for Law and Governance JNU
on Tuesday in a stunning culmination of an explosive, populist and
polarizing campaign
that took relentless aim at the institutions and long-held ideals of
American democracy.
The surprise outcome, defying late polls that showed
Hillary Clinton
with a modest but persistent edge, threatened convulsions throughout
the country and the world, where skeptics had watched with alarm as
Mr. Trump’s unvarnished
overtures to disillusioned voters took hold.
The triumph for Mr. Trump, 70, a real estate developer-turned-reality
television star with no government experience, was a powerful
rejection of the establishment
forces that had assembled against him, from the world of business to
government, and the consensus they had forged on everything from trade
to immigration.
The results amounted to a repudiation, not only of Mrs. Clinton, but
of President Obama, whose legacy is suddenly imperiled. And it was a
decisive demonstration
of power by a largely overlooked coalition of mostly blue-collar white
and working-class voters who felt that the promise of the United
States had slipped
their grasp amid decades of globalization and multiculturalism.
In Mr. Trump, a thrice-married Manhattanite who lives in a
marble-wrapped three-story penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue, they
found an improbable champion.
“The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no
longer,” Mr. Trump told supporters around 3 a.m. at a rally in New
York City, just after
Mrs. Clinton called to concede.
Mr. Trump’s strong showing brightened Republican hopes of retaining
control of the Senate. Only one Republican-controlled seat, in
Illinois, fell to Democrats
early in the evening. And Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, a
Republican, easily won re-election in a race that had been among the
country’s most
competitive. A handful of other Republican incumbents facing difficult
races were running better than expected.
Mr. Trump’s win — stretching across the battleground states of
Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania — seemed likely to set
off financial jitters
and immediate unease among international allies, many of which were
startled when Mr. Trump in his campaign cast doubt on the necessity of
America’s military
commitments abroad and its allegiance to international economic partnerships.
From the moment he entered the campaign, with a shocking set of claims
that Mexican immigrants were rapists and criminals, Mr. Trump was
widely underestimated
as a candidate, first by his opponents for the Republican nomination
and later by Mrs. Clinton, his Democratic rival. His rise was largely
missed by polling
organizations and data analysts. And an air of improbability trailed
his campaign, to the detriment of those who dismissed his angry
message, his improvisational
style and his appeal to disillusioned voters.
He suggested remedies that raised questions of constitutionality, like
a ban on Muslims entering the United States.
He threatened opponents, promising lawsuits against news organizations
that covered him critically and women who accused him of sexual
assault. At times,
he simply lied.
But Mr. Trump’s unfiltered rallies and unshakable self-regard
attracted a zealous following, fusing unsubtle identity politics with
an economic populism
that often defied party doctrine.
His rallies — furious, entertaining, heavy on name-calling and
nationalist overtones — became the nexus of a political movement, with
daily promises of
sweeping victory, in the election and otherwise, and an insistence
that the country’s political machinery was “rigged” against Mr. Trump
and those who
admired him.
He seemed to embody the success and grandeur that so many of his
followers felt was missing from their own lives — and from the country
itself. And he
scoffed at the poll-driven word-parsing ways of modern politics,
calling them a waste of time and money. Instead, he relied on his gut.
At his victory party at the New York Hilton Midtown, where a raucous
crowd indulged in a cash bar and wore hats bearing his ubiquitous
campaign slogan
“Make America Great Again,” voters expressed gratification that their
voices had, at last, been heard.
“He was talking to people who weren’t being spoken to,” said Joseph
Gravagna, 37, a marketing company owner from Rockland County, N.Y.
“That’s how I knew
he was going to win.”
For Mrs. Clinton, the defeat signaled an astonishing end to a
political dynasty that has colored Democratic politics for a
generation. Eight years after
losing to President Obama in the Democratic primary — and 16 years
after leaving the White House for the United States Senate, as
President Bill Clinton
exited office — she had seemed positioned to carry on two legacies:
her husband’s and the president’s.
Her shocking loss was a devastating turn for the sprawling world of
Clinton aides and strategists who believed they had built an electoral
machine that
would swamp Mr. Trump’s ragtag band of loyal operatives and family
members, many of whom had no experience running a national campaign.
On Tuesday night, stricken Clinton aides who believed that Mr. Trump
had no mathematical path to victory, anxiously paced the Jacob K.
Javits Convention
Center as states in which they were confident of victory, like Florida
and North Carolina, either fell to Mr. Trump or seemed in danger of
tipping his
way.
Mrs. Clinton watched the grim results roll in from a suite at the
nearby Peninsula Hotel, surrounded by her family, friends and advisers
who had the day
before celebrated her candidacy with a champagne toast on her campaign plane.
But over and over, Mrs. Clinton’s weaknesses as a candidate were
exposed. She failed to excite voters hungry for change. She struggled
to build trust with
Americans who were baffled by her decision to use a private email
server as secretary of state. And she strained to make a persuasive
case for herself
as a champion of the economically downtrodden after delivering
perfunctory paid speeches that earned her millions of dollars.
The returns Tuesday also amounted to a historic rebuke of the
Democratic Party
from the white blue-collar voters who had formed the party base from
the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt to Mr. Clinton’s. Yet Mrs.
Clinton and her
advisers had taken for granted that states like Michigan and Wisconsin
would stick with a Democratic nominee, and that she could repeat Mr.
Obama’s strategy
of mobilizing the party’s ascendant liberal coalition rather than
pursuing a more moderate course like her husband did 24 years ago.
But not until these voters were offered a Republican who ran as an
unapologetic populist, railing against foreign trade deals and illegal
immigration,
did they move so drastically away from their ancestral political home.
To the surprise of many on the left, white voters who had helped elect
the nation’s first black president, appeared more reluctant to line up
behind a
white woman.
From Pennsylvania to Wisconsin, industrial towns once full of union
voters who for decades offered their votes to Democratic presidential
candidates, even
in the party’s lean years, shifted to Mr. Trump’s
Republican Party.
One county in the Mahoning Valley of Ohio, Trumbull, went to Mr. Trump
by a six-point margin. Four years ago, Mr. Obama won there by 22
points.
Mrs. Clinton’s loss was especially crushing to millions who had
cheered her march toward history as, they hoped, the nation’s first
female president. For
supporters, the election often felt like a referendum on gender
progress: an opportunity to elevate a woman to the nation’s top job
and to repudiate a
man whose remarkably boorish behavior toward women had assumed center
stage during much of the campaign.
Mr. Trump boasted, in a 2005 video released last month, about using
his public profile to commit sexual assault. He suggested that female
political rivals
lacked a presidential “look.” He ranked women on a scale of one to 10,
even holding forth on the desirability of his own daughter — the kind
of throwback
male behavior that many in the country assumed would disqualify a
candidate for high office.
On Tuesday, the public’s verdict was rendered.
Uncertainty abounds as Mr. Trump prepares to take office. His campaign
featured a shape-shifting list of policy proposals, often seeming to
change hour
to hour. His staff was in constant turmoil, with Mr. Trump’s children
serving critical campaign roles and a rotating cast of advisers
alternately seeking
access to Mr. Trump’s ear, losing it and, often, regaining it,
depending on the day.
Even Mr. Trump’s full embrace of the Republican Party came exceedingly
late in life, leaving members of both parties unsure about what he
truly believes.
He has donated heavily to both parties and has long described his
politics as the transactional reality of a businessman.
Mr. Trump’s dozens of business entanglements — many of them in foreign
countries — will follow him into the Oval Office, raising questions
about potential
conflicts of interest. His refusal to release his tax returns, and his
acknowledgment that he did not pay federal income taxes for years, has
left the
American people with considerable gaps in their understanding of the
financial dealings.
But this they do know: Mr. Trump will thoroughly reimagine the tone,
standards and expectations of the presidency, molding it in his own
self-aggrandizing
image.
He is set to take the oath of office on Jan. 20.
Amy Chozick, Ashley Parker, Patrick Healy and Jonathan Martin
contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/us/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-president.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-abc-region®ion=span-abc-region&WT.nav=span-abc-region
--
Avinash Shahi
Doctoral student at Centre for Law and Governance JNU
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