Thoughts I have as we digest Tuesday's election results:

At a recent campaign stop, Hillary said, “I want to be the President for EVERYBODY...  Everybody who agrees with me, people who don’t agree with me, people who vote for me, people who don’t have to vote for me...” And I don’t doubt that she did...

But neither she, nor her handlers, nor the pollsters realized or acknowledged the undercurrent of opposition to the practices and policies of the current Administration, the widespread resentment to the intransigence in Washington, and the frustration of a significant segment of the populace that is being “left behind,” for one reason or another, by the rapidly changing cultural and business realities in our country.... 

Tuesday was, as much as anything, a slap in the face at the status quo - our legislators in DC have frittered away the populace’s faith that they really are on the same page as their electorate... Preservation of that status quo keeps the majority of these politicians in their comfortable positions of power, feeding at the extravagant public trough, gallivanting all over the country and the world on the taxpayer’s dime, yet stalemated at every corner by their intractable positions on so many issues of importance... 

Hillary failed because she did not communicate fresh ideas that were going to address these concerns... The prospect of eight more years of the same policies that had failed much of her base was not much of a motivator to encourage the fringes of her constituency to vote in numbers great enough to offset the multitudes of the frustrated, who were not excited by the promise of more of the same or less.

Maybe it is just a fact of life in America today that many citizens do not want their worlds, as they have grown up with and have known all their lives, to change rapidly... perhaps their religious beliefs or the DNA of their family values are unsettled by the continuing onslaught of change being forced upon them by the ruling proliteriat and the court systems... 

That does not make these people wrong; they are not necessarily under-educated; they are not bad people... they are just uncomfortable with the rapidity of the change coming down in America today and may want it to slow down a bit... and these folks are not alone, as we see in Europe today.

The pundits are telling us that the “less-educated white males” swung this election in Donald’s favor... but maybe there is a deeper truth... Even the educated college graduates, male and female, have difficulty finding good-paying jobs to support themselves and a family in today’s economy... many younger college graduates are forced to live three and four to an apartment just to pay the rent in urban areas where the higher paying jobs are. The fact is that, even in these areas with desirable jobs, wages are not high enough tor many graduates to live in a place of their own and have enough money to marry and raise a family... And most young or even older grads cannot or do not want to return to the rural areas where they may have grown up because jobs available there pay a minimum wage for work that does not fulfill their educational training nor help repay college loans. 

Thus, it is not a mystery why young, well-educated citizens did not swamp the ballot boxes in support of Hillary and were not as passionate for her as they had been for Bernie Sanders, or for Barack Obama eight years before. Why should they have been as excited to vote for the candidate who would perpetuate an economy that seemed to be failing them? 

In essence, Hillary was sunk by adhering to Obama’s policies that have disenchanted many. She could not convincingly articulate new specifics that would appease those left behind by the shortcomings and failures of the current Administration, and, thus,she was reduced to hoping that the electorate would perceive her as the lesser of the two evils presented to the voters Tuesday. 

But her limo is too full of baggage to be genuinely convincing on that claim.

A New York Times article reported today:

Mrs. Clinton won by a greater margin than Mr. Obama among affluent whites, particularly those living in the Democratic Party’s prosperous coastal strongholds: Washington and Boston, Seattle and New York. In Manhattan, where Mr. Trump lives and works — and where his fellow citizens mocked and jeered him as he voted on Tuesday — Mrs. Clinton won by a record margin, amassing 87 percent of the vote to Mr. Trump’s 10 percent.

These large urban areas of the country, unlike the rural, apparently are benefitting economically from the rapid changes in today’s business world and may be better able to accept the dizzying speed of social changes we face today. But, as we saw Tuesday, much of the country raised its hackles and said “No” ...more willing to double down on the uncertainty that Donald’s election brings rather than taking a redeal from the Clinton family and its entourage.

Time will tell if the underbelly of America made the correct choice... We have faced tumultuous times in the past with inexperienced, untested leadership... perhaps the results of Tuesday will motivate the other 535 legislators in Washington, DC to step up to the plate and swing the bat with conviction and purpose instead of taking the intentional pass.