Donald Trump Is Elected President in Stunning Repudiation of the Establishment

By MATT FLEGENHEIMER and MICHAEL BARBARO
NOVEMBER 9, 2016

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.

Picture 2 Slide Show | Looking Back on Donald J. Trump’s Campaign Since
Donald J. Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015, he has
tried to rally the Republican Party behind him.

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.