I did not vote for him - I voted for Hillary Clinton. And I voted for Clinton, not because I thought Trump was awful (although I did think that), but because I thought she was a capable leader and would do a better job.
A lot of political pundits today are talking about this being the "anger" election, about some previously unrecognized undercurrent of hatred and racism and misogyny and so forth. And maybe all that is there...but I think the real story of the this election is that Hillary Clinton's base didn't turn out. It wasn't a victory for anger so much as a failure for an apathetic Democratic party.
In poll after poll - including internal polls done by the Trump folks - Hillary was ahead by anywhere from 3 to 8 per cent. And it does look like she may have won the popular vote by a tiny margin. But she did not win in a lot of states that the polls indicated she would win, and there's basically one explanation - her people didn't show up and vote.
Donald Trump didn't get some groundswell of new, untapped white male angry people - he got fewer votes than Mitt Romney. But Hillary Clinton got fewer votes than Barack Obama by a much larger margin. Maybe the coalition of women, Latinos and African Americans just didn't turn out in big enough numbers, maybe the small but significant part of the white male vote Hillary was expecting decided to sit this one out. But the numbers don't lie - she just got a lot fewer votes than Obama, and they didn't go to Trump, they just didn't vote for anyone.
