President-Elect Trump He will now need to pick smart advisers and show generosity in victory.

Posted By on November 9th, 2016

http://www.wsj.com/articles/president-elect-trump-1478680866

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

 

Categorized under: POLITICS.
Tagged with: no tags.

Comments are closed.