So much for the changing demographics of America.
Donald Trump must be wondering what all the fuss was about.
What happened Tuesday was a kickback from an America that had not been shoved aside, or engulfed by immigration, diversity, and the votes of various groups that made up the grand Obama coalition in 2008 and 2012.
What happened instead was that Trump reached back into a heartland that had never gone away and which Hillary Clinton had never really met.
This election will be remembered for many things and many moments.
One will be Hillary’s “Basket of Deplorables” remark.
There was a basket in play all right. It was full not of deplorables, but rather undependables, Democrat, Democrat-leaning, and Independent voters who might have opted for the first ever woman presidential candidate, but who went AWOL on November 8.
Hillary owned that basket.
A comment that leads to the immediate firing up of machine that make t-shirts is never a good idea in a presidential election.
Trump’s “Nasty Woman” jibe was another that ended up on cotton tees likely made in, well, China or such like.
But Trump not only got the last laugh, but got in the last telling zinger.
His riposte to the images of Hillary on stage with the like of Beyoncé and Bruce Springsteen was a line that will go down in political lore: “Just me, no guitar, no piano.”
Somewhere, the next Democratic candidate for the White House is writing a note to himself, or herself.
“Memo to me. Party has to reduce its infatuation with movie actors and rock singers. It’s all about the retail politics stupid.”
And that’s where Trump won the game. His brand of retail was better than Hillary’s.
Standing on stage with rich celebrities will only get you so far. Travelling to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and shaking hands with the locals will get you farther.
That said, Hillary didn’t run an entirely bad campaign, though some will be asking who was actually running it. She did win the popular vote.
Nevertheless, it was more noticeable that some of the best political operatives that the Democrats brought to bear over the last 25 years were still around for this election – sitting in television studios and working as pundits.
Memo to self, writes the future candidate. “I want Axelrod, Carville, Begala. Don’t care how old they are, don’t care how much they cost.”
Trump has started the de facto part of his presidency on the right note. He says he wants to unite Americans, those who voted for him, those who didn’t. In fairness, he should be taken at his word.
Ironically, though, it would be easier to believe this if he didn’t have, just up the avenue from the White House, a Congress that will not only be Republicans in both houses, but a particular strand of Republican in the House of Representatives.
As much as anything, Trump’s first term will be defined by how he deals with the House Freedom Caucus, or how it deals with him.
And that grouping, made up of Tea Party types who would like nothing more than pack Hillary Clinton off to an albeit minimum security jail, will be casting a cold eye on the incoming 45th president.
Donald Trump was once Democrat. Then he was an Independent. And now he calls himself a Republican.
They will be looking at the New Yorker and asking the question: “So just who, or what, are you?”
We’ll get a good idea in President Trump’s first hundred days.
:: Ray O'Hanlon is editor of the New York-based Irish Echo and a regular contributor to the Irish News.
