* Like a lot of you, I’m still processing this thing called democracy in action, even if that meant about 45 percent of the electorate were recent MIAs. So be it. We know what just happened: The Trump White Out. Who would have figured this version of demographics as destiny?
* Hillary Clinton ran a charisma-free, ground-game-oriented, surrogate-stumping establishment campaign that referenced ideals and a direction for the country. Donald Trump ran a “tell-it-like-is” George Wallace concert tour that pandered to the lowest common denominator. That shouldn’t have been rewarded.
* Indeed, the system seems rigged. The one who got the most votes finished runner-up. Maybe the Electoral College is as flawed as Trump University.
* “Women for Trump.” How was that even possible? It’s an oxymoron.
* Whatever else factored into the vote, history will not be kind to FBI Director James Comey. His last-minute, political blindsiding should be an indictable offense.
* But Comey’s unconscionable intrusion and the Trump phenomenon notwithstanding, this election was more a function of unforced errors. Smart and experienced should have carried the glass-ceiling shattering day against a disingenuous populist wastrel channeling frustration, resentment and hatred.
Clinton is part of a calculating power couple. She had been told since high school and college that she could be the first female president. The talent and ambition were more than manifest.
By 2008 she was formally running–and would have won had she not overlapped the historic candidacy of the charismatic Barack Obama. But she knew she would be back. We knew she would be back. A stint as secretary of state further burnished her credentials.
So why not separate herself from the Clinton Foundation then–instead of waiting until her official presidential announcement in 2015? Why court the pay-to-play accusations? And why the private email server? Carelessness and arrogance are not indictable–but, alas, they are indicative of something very unflattering and politically fatal.
And let’s not forget Clinton’s “basket of deplorables.” While that label is frankly accurate–if not an understatement–it is campaign contraband. It was an insulting, gift-wrapped, red-meat morsel that was doubled down on by the Trump campaign’s anti-elite messaging to working-class white America.
Such a shame. It was hers to lose, and she lost it. We saw a Sunshine State version in 2010.
* President Barack Obama’s White House sit-down with President-Elect Donald Trump looked pitch perfect. It was reserved and respectful. It was what transition-of-power optics should look like. Especially this one.
It would be no surprise, however, if off-camera Obama let it be known that there were serious, non-legacy reasons not to trash the Paris Accords on climate, the Affordable Care Act, the Iran nuclear deal and the Cold War-ending rapprochement with Cuba.
* Sarah Palin presaged Trump. Thanks again, Sen. John McCain. That’s your most lasting legacy–not being shot down, captured, tortured and ridiculed by Donald Trump. Palin paved the way for an uninformed, unhinged, celebrity-demagogue to make a viable White House run.
* Trump is really a cult figure; the rules are different. Your followers will find a rationale to justify anything you say; anything you do; and anything you don’t do that you said you would. The Kool-Aid works with a vulnerable, easily-pandered-to electorate.