Trump is president; Who is to blame?

[Tonus]

Thing about that is, the evangelical voting block in America has stridently crowed about family values and the importance of that sort of personal 'integrity' for decades and decades.  They skewered candidates on their personal 'immoralities' before, but suddenly with Trump everything is totally fine.  It was something that politicians had to care about for the last half century because it was always something that could get used against them.

Evangelicals voted overwhelmingly for Trump, which means that he owes them a few political favors if he stands any chance of (1)getting anything done in his first term and (2)winning a second term.  And I think that's how they see it; his personal moral or ethical sensibilities won't matter if he can pay back their generosity at the polls.  The alternative was to let Clinton win, and that wasn't going to get them anything.

As for blame, "blame" the people who voted for Trump.  But there are a number of factors that led to his victory, and I don't think that there is one single factor that can be pointed to as "the" reason for his win.  A few that I can think of off the top of my head:

1- Evangelicals, as I said above.  There was a guy on Fox this morning claiming that he got upwards of 75-80% of the Evangelical vote.  I don't know if that number is accurate but it's clear he got a ton of support from them.  I think there's a good chance he'll do at least one thing to make them cringe and want to smack the back of his head, but if they can get his support on a few items on their agenda they might let him live.

2- Hillary was a poor candidate in a number of ways, and she was weakened by Sanders' campaign and the anger over the way super-delegates were used to make an end-run around him.  Sanders stayed in the race a long time, made the super-delegates an issue, and wasn't exactly an enthusiastic supporter once he dropped out.  Obama stayed out of the fray too long and tried to help when it was too late (shades of Bill Clinton's too-late and too-lukewarm support of Gore in 2000, so that might be a bit of karma coming back to bite them).  She was easy to portray as just another career (and corrupt) politician who would be More Of The Same.

3- Low turnout among key constituencies in key states.  At one point, CNN showed that the turnout among African Americans in certain districts in PA was much lower than in 2008 or 2012, to the extent that they might have swung the state in her favor if they had shown up.

4- Loss of support among Hispanics in Florida.  In most places, her support from Hispanics was well ahead of Trump's, to the tune of 65-20 or thereabouts.  In Florida, it was closer to 60-30 in some districts, and he won Florida by a relatively close margin.

5- Trusting the polling data too much?  Apparently, her campaign ignored Wisconsin, assuming that the polling numbers showing her ahead by 5-6% were accurate.  Those numbers also led the Trump campaign to ignore Wisconsin as a lost cause.  Both campaigns made a mistake, but Clinton's was the costly one.

And of course...

6- The GOP tried to neutralize Trump by "welcoming" him into the fold and scrambling to get rid of him when their plans went awry.  The GOP leadership must have a very bittersweet taste right now-- Hillary was so vulnerable that Donald Trump beat her.  Don't tell me that the entire Republican primary field isn't looking in a mirror this morning and thinking "I would've beat her... I COULD BE PRESIDENT-ELECT RIGHT NOW!"  The party will need to keep him on a short leash and hope that the worst that he ever does is embarrass the country a few times and stay out of the way long enough for them to enact some of their ideas before the 2018 mid-terms.

The USA has a history of balancing elections over time, and I think this one would ordinarily have left us with Clinton as President and a Republican majority in the House and Senate.  But enough things went wrong to leave us with a President Trump enjoying congressional majorities and a pocketful of IOUs made out to the Family Research Council.  The next four years hinge on the economy, IMO.  If things are going well in time for the mid-terms, the GOP could add to their majorities in congress.  If that doesn't happen but things improve in his third or fourth year, he'll be dealing with a tougher congress but should win a second term by a similar or better margin than this one.