RUTHFULLY YOURS

No thanking them for their efforts. No acknowledging their discomfort, and no call for national unity.

Hillary Clinton broke tradition and did not address the thousands of supporters gathered at New York’s Javits Center for a victory party. No thanking them for their efforts. No acknowledging their discomfort, and no call for national unity. Instead, campaign chairman and prolific emailer John Podesta was given the job of facing the disappointed throngs and telling them to go home because the race is — cough – “too close to call.”

This raises the obvious question: what was she doing?

Did she have a seizure and go stiff, the way she did at the 9/11 ceremony? Did she get drunk?

At least now she has time for her grandchildren, and plenty of leisure to take care of her health.

At least for now.

Donald J. Trump’s unlikely defeat of Hillary Clinton is a political earthquake of a kind that rarely disturbs American politics. Not since Andrew Jackson has a winning candidate so defied the settled order, for better or worse. The political and media establishments are bewildered, and markets are unsettled, and no doubt many voters are too.

But Mr. Trump winning was always an outside possibility, and the political analysts and Wall Street forecasters who wrote the Republican off as doomed ignored the multiple surprises of this disruptive year. Hillary Clinton called Mr. Trump in the wee hours Wednesday morning to concede after Mr. Trump crossed the 270 Electoral College majority by winning convincingly in the Southeast through the Upper Midwest to the Mountain West.

If Mr. Trump’s election is nonetheless a moment of intense uncertainty, voters understood the choice, and their judgment can’t be dismissed as merely a fluke of an unconventional and bitter election year. Mr. Trump can congratulate himself for seeing around corners to spot political opportunities where very few did.
Mr. Trump’s support is a testament to the democratic power of discontented voters. It turns out that many of them live in states like Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin that Mitt Romney didn’t carry but Mr. Trump did. President Obama has too often governed as if their needs and preferences are illegitimate, and this contempt was bound to generate a political challenge.

The lesson the political class should have learned—we include ourselves here—is to be more respectful of voter sentiment and the refusal of the American public to accept economic decline without a fight. We didn’t expect the Obama counter-reaction to take the form of Mr. Trump, who lacks any political experience and whose convictions on public policy are especially elusive.

The businessman likely didn’t win on his program, to the extent he has one. Voters decided he was an agent of change and rejected the progressive agenda and the third Obama term that Mrs. Clinton represented. Above all, Mr. Trump is a walking rebuke to the general liberal indifference to economic stagnation, as if the status quo is the best this country can do. CONTINUE AT SITE

The principles that America stood for – liberty, freedom of speech, free market capitalism – were eroding. Government had become isolated from those it governs. Political correctness, arrogance, hubris, hypocrisy, fabrication, mendacity, vilification, divisiveness had become common. Washington’s establishment and the media were blind to the rumblings of the earth beneath their feet. Even Britain’s vote to leave the European Union did not alert those who stood deaf and blind to changes around them.

To borrow a phrase from Donald Rumsfeld, Donald Trump’s victory means America has taken a chance on an unknown, rather than continue ahead with a known. Mr. Trump is the oldest person ever elected President. He has never help political office. He has never served the United States in the military, or in any other capacity. On the other hand, his competitor was well-known. Hillary Clinton has been in the nation’s public eye since her husband was elected President twenty-four years ago, when he famously told the American people they were getting two for the price of one. She served in the U.S. Senate for eight years and as Secretary of State for four years. She is probably as experienced as any candidate since John Quincy Adams. Yes, the American people do know her and because of that (or despite it) they rejected her.

Donald Trump should express humility at the awesome task before him – not only of returning the country to its democratic roots, but of healing the divisions that exist and that this campaign has magnified. He must reach not only across the aisle, but down it. He must help bind up a wounded nation. He must restore America’s faith in government, by making it worthy of respect. But he should not forget the the factors that have brought him to this pinnacle – corruption and cronyism; a sluggish economy; an immigration policy that keeps out too many of the aspirant and lets in too many of those simply seeking assistance, and who have not gone through the legal process; trade policies that ignore their effect on millions of workers; inner city schools that cater to unions, not students; and a sense that Washington, its tax policies and regulation, favor the status quo over the creative and innovative.

Donald Trump must rid himself of those expressions that cause people to think him misogynist, racist or xenophobic – words that had allowed the media to create a cartoonish character. He must let the people know the character of those individuals who will advise him.

Everything is about to change. Daniel Greenfield.

This wasn’t an election. It was a revolution.

It’s midnight in America. The day before fifty million Americans got up and stood in front of the great iron wheel that had been grinding them down. They stood there even though the media told them it was useless. They took their stand even while all the chattering classes laughed and taunted them.

They were fathers who couldn’t feed their families anymore. They were mothers who couldn’t afford health care. They were workers whose jobs had been sold off to foreign countries. They were sons who didn’t see a future for themselves. They were daughters afraid of being murdered by the “unaccompanied minors” flooding into their towns. They took a deep breath and they stood.

They held up their hands and the great iron wheel stopped.

The Great Blue Wall crumbled. The impossible states fell one by one. Ohio. Wisconsin. Pennsylvania. Iowa. The white working class that had been overlooked and trampled on for so long got to its feet. It rose up against its oppressors and the rest of the nation, from coast to coast, rose up with it.

They fought back against their jobs being shipped overseas while their towns filled with migrants that got everything while they got nothing. They fought back against a system in which they could go to jail for a trifle while the elites could violate the law and still stroll through a presidential election. They fought back against being told that they had to watch what they say. They fought back against being held in contempt because they wanted to work for a living and take care of their families.