MODO ON WHAT HAPPENED – AT 7:03 P.M. ET:   I've been searching for the best pieces written on yesterday's monumental election.  One is by Maureen Dowd of The New York Times.  I don't normally agree with her, but when she's good, she can be very, very good.  From her: 

The Republican establishment couldn’t stand Trump. The Democratic establishment mocked him. The Republican nominee didn’t even really seem to have much of a campaign. He spent more on “Make America Great” hats than on polling. When I visited his campaign headquarters this summer, there were more pictures, paintings and cardboard cutouts of Trump around than Trump advisers. If you don’t count Newt Gingrich — and I don’t — only one major political historian, Allan Lichtman, had predicted that Trump would win.

But then the impossible happened. As Salena Zito had presciently written in The Atlantic: “The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.”

Absolutely terrific line.  Quote it to people.  It defines exactly what happened.  Salena Zito is a conservative commentator from Pittsburgh. Maureeen quotes her conservative brother, Kevin:

“She is a weak campaigner with a documented history of unsavory dealings,” Kevin wrote in an essay for my new book, “The Year of Voting Dangerously.” “She is declared unlikable by 55 percent of the electorate and untrustworthy by 67 percent. ... When the director of the F.B.I. laid bare her gross negligence for arrogantly setting up her own email system while secretary of state and announced there would be no prosecution, you could hear the heavens thunder for justice. Not since O.J. Simpson had someone so obviously guilty by the facts, walked away.

Yesterday's Trump victory reminds us of the Chinese notion of a thousand cuts.  It was one thing after the other that angered the American people.

“With Brexit, the markets went down and bounced right back,” Kevin mused at 3 a.m., sounding serene as Democrats keened and Hillary failed to show up at her party at the Javits Center. “Trump voters did the country a service. Anybody but Clinton.

“The Clintons remind me of the Universal horror movies where you thought the monster was dead and then the monster would show up in a bad sequel. I’m glad now that they’re finally gone.”

COMMENT:  Read the whole thing.  Well worth it.  We'll be trying to understand this election for years to come.  Trump detected something that many of us never saw coming.

November 9, 2016