Esquire has an article out – The Untold Stories of Election Day 2016. If you haven’t read it yet, do so: it will bring pure joy to your heart. Here’s the crux of the matter:

Omarosa Manigault, Trump campaign: If we believed what was on the television, we would have thought we lost. But looking at the numbers that were in front of us in the key battleground states, we were up…or we were neck and neck, with expectations of higher turnout and more enthusiasm. We were going off of our own internal data. What was being shown on CNN and MSNBC and some of these other networks was showing a stark contrast to what was in front of us.

That was it, all along. The race was always tight – it never was anything but. Hillary did have her chances to win, but it was never going to be a walk over. It is like everyone in the Expert Class simply refused to remember that she was terribly unpopular and an absolutely awful retail politician. The whole of the MSM – including Fox – was feeding out this story that Trump was just terrible and Hillary was so polished and accomplished and was sure to win…and to support it, they rolled out poll after poll showing Hillary ahead.

Now, as I wrote back then, I was unsure who was going to win going into election day. I was off from work that day and was also scheduled off the following day: perfect for the political junkie. I didn’t pay the least attention to what was going on through the day: I knew from experience (especially from 2004), that the early reports would not only be wrong, but would be done deliberately wrong to try and boost Democrat turnout while depressing GOP turnout. No sense watching that sort of thing: best to wait until there were some actual votes. I already had my mental marker on how the night would go: if FL and/or PA was called fast for Hillary, she had won…if either of them were delayed, or called for Trump, it was all over for Hillary. I went out and about with the Mrs and, after dinner, came home to settle in for the watch. I think I clicked around a few channels but the coverage was so annoyingly pro-Hillary that I quickly got irritated. I actually decided, I think, to watch something else and just follow on Twitter, but I eventually surfed by Fox Business and Stuart Varney was on doing early coverage…he’s a huge Trumpster, but after the nauseating coverage on the other networks, he seemed to be completely fair and detached. I stayed on it.

I was watching out of one eye, checking Twitter (especially Decision Desk – a must-follow for election day) and really just waiting for it. Keep in mind that I’m on Pacific time: the first polls would close at 4 pm my time. I tuned in about 5 pm. The Mrs periodically checked in on me – she seemed pretty sure that Trump would win it, and she’s always right about how elections will go (don’t know were she gets the intuition from: she hates politics with a passion…but once she sees a bit about how a campaign is going, she always gets it exactly right). As I continued to watch the TV, it switched over to Neil Cavuto hosting – don’t know if he’s a Conservative, but he’s always a level-headed guy who goes with the facts as far as he can find them. During one tune out, he mentioned offhand that there were odd numbers in Michigan. That was my first inkling – this was before Ohio was called at 7:36pm my time…but I had been looking at Ohio and wondered by 6pm why it hadn’t been called for Trump already. My guess was that if Ohio was going Trump – and it was – then Florida likely would as well. I expected Trump to win all of Romney’s 2012 States (I never believed the BS that AZ and UT were in play). Add FL and OH to Romney’s 2012 total and Trump was up to 253 electoral votes…add Michigan to that, Trump was at 269. When Ohio was called for Trump, in my mind, it was over – at 7:36pm Pacific. The Mrs checked in a few minutes after that – and I said words to the effect of, “I think Trump might have this”. She said, “told you so” and exited.

By the time the MSM got around to calling Florida at 7:50pm my time, I was starting to perceive – looking at numbers elsewhere, as well – that the MSM was slow-walking the State calls because they didn’t want to get out in front of Hillary and her team. Until they told the MSM it was ok to call the race, the race wouldn’t be called. From that point on, the night got merely irritating. The sycophancy of these people! The numbers were the numbers; the votes were being counted. They were holding back calling States which had 90%+ in and all of Hillary’s territory reported. It really isn’t as difficult to call a State as the MSM was making out that night…and the number-crunchers working for the MSM were doing all they could to let everyone paying attention know that it was all over. They kept going back to the un-called States and pointing out, relentlessly, that there simply weren’t enough possible Hillary votes to overcome Trump leads in State after State. The Mrs hung it up at 10pm our time and went to bed – I kept hanging on, hoping to see Hillary concede. It was only after the report flashed that Hillary had called Trump that the MSM called the necessary States to show Trump over 270.

To me, the lesson of the night was simply to ignore the MSM, entirely. They will not do anything against the wishes of the Democrats. There is really just no point in listening to them any more, except for laughs. In areas non-political, they might some times get things right, if only by accident. But in anything which can be construed as political, they are just going to take their marching orders – and talking points – from the DNC, no matter how divorced from reality DNC press releases are. What will happen over the next years is unknown – but the last thing I’ll do is follow the lead of the MSM. I’m going with whatever facts I can find…and I should have been more bold in 2016 when I saw that a net 100,000 people had switched from Democrat to Republican in Pennsylvania. That, right there, was the whole story: people were abandoning the Democrats in droves. And I’ve seen reports, buried deep, that they have continued to abandon the Democrats all through 2017, as well. The proof will be in the pudding, of course – we’ll see how things shake out when the votes are counted. But I’m betting that they’ll be counted mostly in Trump’s favor for quite a while.

I say that because everything seems to be revolving around him – especially regarding our Progressives. I think a week ago or so I was thinking that the left’s lunacy about Trump had peaked. I was wrong. One of the accounts I follow on Twitter is that of Godfrey Elfwick (@GodfreyElfwick), who describes xirself thusly:

Genderqueer Muslim atheist. Born white in the #WrongSkin. Itinerant jongleur. Xir, Xirs Xirself. Filters life through the lens of minority issues.

Someone like that is going to have a hard time over the next four to eight years as satirizing the left is getting difficult. However, Godfrey xan’s up and comes up with this:

Calling people racist worked a treat during both Brexit and Trump. We just weren’t screaming it loud enough is all

And that does seem to be what the left is doing – but as Godfrey also discovered today, there are quite a lot of tolerant, caring Progressives who figure that peace, justice and unity will best be created by calling for actual violence – scroll through his TL to earlier today for some samples of it.

I’ll make this prediction – unless we’re sitting on 25% unemployment in 2020, Trump will get re-elected. The left is just going to keep going bonkers, as far as I can see, and thus just continue to remind all of us why we sucked it up and voted Trump.

There is a wonder – will Obama be booed as Bush was? Decorum says it shouldn’t happen – if it does, though, it is because of the nastiness Obama has injected into American life.

Ok, so how you get elected President of the United States has been entirely been re-written. Turns out that you don’t need friendly media, lots of money, massive campaign infrastructure…but, you do need to be smart. Trump and his team was just that – where they needed to be on it, they were smart.

Trump does have some good policy proposals – we’ll see if he can get them done. He will have a GOP Congress. There is a chance for massive, genuine reform in America…and maybe Trump is the oddity who can break the log-jam? We’ll find out over the next year or so.

I hold nothing against anyone for how they voted this year – it was a very strange year and it wasn’t a cut-and-dried thing. Time to unify – everyone from all sides needs to come together and figure out what is best for the nation.

I’ll have more to say tomorrow – hope you all had a good day.

First off, let me just say that if the Experts prove wrong today, I fully expect them to apologize and promise to show some humility in the future.

Ok, stop laughing.

Still don’t know who is going to win – the aforementioned Experts are all for Hillary winning…but I note, with great care, that some of them started to furiously hedge right around Friday afternoon…”if this happens, if that happens, if the polling is correct”…in other words, doing a bit of CYA. But my guess is that they are still sticking with their Hillary projections mostly because there’s less downside for getting that wrong than picking Trump and getting it wrong – do that, and the pundit will never hear the end of it.

The DNC/MSM machine was in full “depress the GOP” mode all day on Monday: and with Hillary and Obama making a stop in Michigan – which hasn’t gone GOP since 1988 – it is just a fact that this election hasn’t gone as anyone expected. The Experts are already wrong – and will remain wrong, even if Hillary does win today. If you want to present yourself as an election expert to me, then pick a day, make your prediction and hold to it right up until election day. Things really don’t change that much – polls showing massive swings in a week are, in my view, garbage…people don’t change their minds that fast, or in that large a number. What is going to happen today, in my view, has been rather baked-in for a couple months…

I have to say that I am not in the least depressed – a little anxious, as I think most are, because we really don’t know what will happen. As the co-author of The Worst President in History, I am also quite confident that whatever the result, we are getting the better part of the deal. Obama really has done a terrible job – I don’t think Hillary will be so much of an improvement as that she’s just incapable of the single-minded, purposeful screw-ups of Obama (Obama is able to do that because he really believes he’s doing the right thing – I don’t think Hillary really believes in much of anything other than just grasping power and wealth). Whatever betide, Obama leaves office in a little more than two months.

I have noticed over the past couple days some long hold-out Conservatives coming around to saying they are voting for Trump – also noticed that the few remaining Never Trumpers are now ever more openly rooting for Hillary. I suspect a good portion of them, if Trump does win, will eventually move over to the Democrat Party over the next year or two and reveal themselves as mere Progressives who like low corporate taxes and bombing stuff. If Hillary wins, they’ll try to lay claim to the mantle of being the only True Conservatives…and most of us will just laugh at them and Move On.

American politics has been shaken to the core this year and there’s no going back – the current crop of leaders might well cling on to power for four or eight more years, but they are done for. No one trusts them, no one likes them. And the MSM is doomed as soon as some rich people figure out there’s this massive market for anything which isn’t the current MSM. There have been rumors of Trump TV, and I actually hope they are true – in the sense that someone simply has to make a duplicate MSM which isn’t this nauseating stew of political correctness and blind, Democrat partisanship. Such a series of networks, magazines and newspapers would make their owners billions.

However it comes out, this is still my wonderful and beloved United States of America. And all of my fellow Americans, of whatever views, are my brothers and sisters and I, at least, pledge to try and be a good, decent citizen, no matter who is in charge.

UPDATE: Ace of Spades Decision Desk called it for Trump.

UPDATE II: Associated Press calls Pennsylvania for Trump.

I’m sure we’ve all heard that FBI Director Comey is re-opening the investigation into Hillary Clinton. Apparently this is due to information unearthed in the investigation of Anthony Weiner, the soon-to-be-ex of Hillary’s particular aide, Huma Abedin. None of us know what, precisely, is being uncovered and Democrats are in a panic trying to downplay it all, but the bottom line, for me, is that the FBI wouldn’t do this unless the matter was quite serious.

What effect will this have on the election? Impossible to know – but polls have been tightening all week (one poll which had Hillary up 12 has her up 4, now…that’s quite a crash in just a few days). Will this push Hillary support over the edge? Or was her support already ebbing away? Or has Trump’s support been surging? There are reports that GOPers, faced with the stark reality of President Hillary Clinton, are coming home to Trump. I read a report which claims that Hillary is going up on the air in Wisconsin while Trump is re-entering Virginia. Is Trump just doing a head-fake? Perhaps…but if Hillary does have to fight for Wisconsin, then things out there are not what we were lead to believe even just a few days ago.

Incomplete results of Nevada’s first week of early voting show an overall Democrat lead of 151,000 to 122,000 over the GOP…but with 69,000 “other” also having voted. If that breaks for Trump – and it should, Indys do tend to support Trump over Hillary – then the Dems lead is rather small…and may vanish in week 2. We’ll have to see.

I have to admit I’ve been laughing all day over these developments. It will be the perfect action of hubris and nemesis if Hillary is brought low due to the actions of another woman’s husband.

So, the Mrs and a good friend went to early vote here; two entirely different locations. No biggie – it’s still nearly 3 weeks before election day, but might as well get it out of the way. It isn’t out of the way – they both came across hour-long lines to vote. Just to put it into perspective here, folks: this was on a balmy Saturday afternoon…and people were lined up to vote.

Why line up to vote? There’s plenty of time to vote – all the way until November 8th. Unless you’re leaving town tomorrow and won’t be back until the 9th, why bother if there’s any wait, at all? But people were bothering. Lots of them. Who are they voting for? No idea, of course. Now, ask yourself, who is more likely to generate enough excitement to convince someone to wait in line on a beautiful Saturday afternoon for an hour to vote? You can make your own guesses. I’ve made mine. We’ll all see on November 8th.

Almost everyone is in a bubble this year. Trumpsters. HillBots. Beltway Conservatives. I don’t think anyone really knows what is going on – but they keep yammering on as if they do. I have decided to come through to November 9th with the certainty of no egg on my face. It’s an easy trick to do – all you have to do is admit ignorance. I’ve seen the predictions for a Hillary Landslide and a Trump Landslide and everything in between. But no one really knows. It isn’t a matter of “the polls may be wrong” – given that we have polls showing everything from a 12 point Hillary lead to a 2 point Trump lead, at least some of the polls are definitely wrong. I’ve seen State polls come out within a day of each other showing 180 degree difference in the direction of the race. Supposedly, the pollsters are calling the same population and should generally come up with the same result – but, they aren’t. The problem, I think, is that the electorate is in flux…rich people who normally vote GOP are flooding into Democrat ranks, while working class people who normally vote Democrat are on fire for Trump…and the joker in the deck is rare- and never-voters. Some indicators are out there that the number of Independents in some Battle Ground States have massively grown in numbers. Grown in numbers to vote for Hillary or Trump? No one can possibly know.

I refuse the bubble. I’ve even started closely following some Progressive Twitter accounts – they are often more interesting than the Conservative accounts this year because all too often those accounts are just yelling at each other over Trump. The depth of Progressive dislike of Hillary, by the way, is astonishing. I do expect them to pull the lever for Hillary because Trump, for most of them, is very much a bridge too far…but you just watch what happens in 2017 if Hillary does win…there’s going to be a Progressive revolt in the Democrat ranks because Hillary, especially if she has a GOP Congress, won’t be able to bring about the sort of Progressive policies they are demanding. The sort of revolt we’ve seen against the GOP leadership is brewing now on the left against the Democrat leadership. And more power to them – I don’t see why they should continually put up with Democrats who talk a great game of bashing the banks and then take $250,000.00 speaking fees from them.

In the United States and around the world, the post-WWII consensus is crumbling. As long as people felt financially secure, all was well – but now people don’t feel all that secure, and so all bets are off. Trump might not duplicate the Bexit result, but the fact that he’s even in the mix shows that American politics isn’t what is used to be. He’s said a dozen thing which, had anyone said them even 4 years ago, would result in him being down 20 points in the RCP averages by now. Even if the reality is a 6 point Hillary lead as RCP indicates, then that shows how close to the edge of destruction the Establishment is. They might well drag granny across the finish line this year, but it will be at the cost of losing the last of their credibility with the people…and that is right and left. And if the average folks of the left and right ever figure out that, ultimately, their problem is the same group of people, then look out.

Unlike many who appear to be in agony over this election, I’m not. I’m quite happy and content. I’m going to vote and then just see what happens. No matter what the result, you won’t see my shocked face. You will see my happy face if Hillary loses – but that will mostly be because of the sweet satisfaction of seeing that grifter couple brought low. But if Hillary wins, you won’t see my sad face – I’m too familiar with history to see anything but destruction ahead for the people who would make a Hillary victory. They don’t see it, of course – some how or another they expect that this fake money, debt-ridden, low-growth economy can just keep going, and that no matter how nauseatingly corrupt they are, they’ll never be turned out. The Bourbons thought that, too.

The votes are there to turn them out, right now. It’s just a question of when they will coalesce to do so. This year? 2020? 2024? Eventually, it will happen. One thing that is very clear to me is that both Trumpsters and BLM have genuine reasons for complaint. Both of them miss some very important things, and that’s a pity. But the bottom line is that the system sucks for poor and working class people – BLMers are still looking to the Progressives who created the problems, while the Trumpsters are going after a man who talks the talk, but no one has any idea if he’ll walk the walk. It is forgotten these days that Reagan won by cobbling together a coalition of Conservatives and Populists against the GOP Establishment for the primaries and then the overall Establishment for the general election. Since Reagan, however, Conservatism has tried to step away from the people…to argue things out on issues, rather than on underlying philosophy. This has led Conservatism to be a bizarre defense of low corporate taxes while the people lose their jobs and homes and the Constitution is steadily shredded. Someone is eventually going to figure out how to properly tap into the frustrations out there and build a winning coalition. Trump still has his chance to do it – but if he doesn’t, you just watch Rubio or Rand Paul or some such do it. People expecting Rubio to slam Trumpsters and become Romney 3.0 for 2020 are simply not paying attention. There’s a reason for his refusal to break with Trump even as he cruises to a now-easy re-election. The reason is that he’s smart – he knows that if he ever wants to enter the White House (and I believe he does, very much) then he’s going to need the Trumpsters…meaning, he’s going to need some of those angry poor and working class people who have flocked to Trump’s standard this year. And if that means shedding a few traditional Conservatives on the side, he’ll do it.

We’ll all know soon enough how this year goes. I’ll end by saying that if we Conservatives want to be relevant then the time is not right for purges, but for figuring out how to ride the wave of political re-alignment.

First, from IBD which has Trump up by 1:

By gender, Clinton does much better among women — 47% to 37% — but Trump’s lead among men is just as strong at 47% to 32%. Trump does better among parents (46% to 32%), married women (44% to 41%), lower-class households (53% to 37%), and the religious, among whom Clinton’s support never tops 38%. Among those who express no religion, Clinton handily beats Trump 63% to 16%.

The fact that Trump is crushing it among lower-class households is a warning sign for Democrats – even if they win this one, they are getting in to a situation where they have no backup if their core voters abandon them. This is akin to the position the GOP was in where we only won as long as we kept certain groups happy (for us, it was suburban voters). We’re one financial crash away from Democrats losing everything. Meanwhile, most other polling (other than Rasmussen and LA Times) shows this race a walk-over for Hillary. My thinking – Hillary’s support is a mile wide right now, but an inch deep. If Trump can find a convincing argument for why people should vote for him – and stick to it without being distracted for even just a week – then he could still pull this off.

Malik Obama – the President’s half-brother – wants to Make America Great Again.

People are very much keying in on the amount of Anti-Semitism bubbling up in some areas of the right this year – but less examined is the rising Anti-Semitism of the left. At least Trump can say kind things about Israel and not risk any substantial support…Hillary’s people were worried that even mentioning Israel might be problematic. As the linked article states, Hillary is likely to be less hostile to Israel than Obama has been (and this is in keeping with my view that neither Trump nor Hillary can be as bad as Obama has been), but the bottom line is that, for Democrats, there isn’t much upside in being friendly to Israel…and as the left wallows ever more deeply in things like BDS, there is a risk that supporting Israel in the future will become an entirely GOP thing. Small wonder that Israel is reaching out to places like India and Russia…

Proof that some people keep in the public eye way too long after their sell-by date.

O’Keefe’s videos showing Clinton skullduggery were absolutely nothing – but, they went ahead and fired the guy anyway.

I don’t think I’ve ever been this disgusted with politics. The combination of willful blindness, mercilessness and vulgarity in 2016 has reached epic proportions. I admit to going on some Twitter rants today and saying some very intemperate things. But no insults! Still, calm reflection is now replacing anger and I’m really just thinking things over.

Never Trump is saying that the whole problem lies with Trumpster – but the reality is that both Never Trump and Trumpster were demanding all-or-nothing this year. Both sides got what they wanted – nothing. I lay the larger share of the blame on Never Trump. It appears to me that Never Trump, by refusing to treat with Trumpsters, was essentially resigning any ability to educate and channel Trumpster voters towards a more traditionalist, Conservative view of affairs. It was an abdication – but as it was also done in the meanest spirit possible, it was also a purposeful division (yes, plenty of Trumpsters were mean, as well – but when one side is feeling betrayed and acting out on that feeling, it is incumbent upon the other side to be the bearer of sweet reason and humility). And, now, the Trumpsters are justifiably feeling that this was Never Trump’s plan all along – knife the guy when the going got tough…and then demand in January that the Trumpsters just forgive and forget. I do think people should forgive and forget – but I suspect that the Trumpsters won’t be in a mood to do so. It was the duty of the Conservative leaders to go, hat in hand, to the Trumpsters, listen to their complaints, declare their support for the nominee and then work on ensuring that as much Conservatism as possible was injected into the Trump movement. They refused – and for all I can tell, their refusal was a matter of overweening pride rather than careful thought. Furious that the GOP base rejected their warnings, the leaders of Conservatism decided to teach the base a lesson.

Trump will almost certainly lose in November – I think that Independents are going to be vastly turned off by his vulgar comments and will either sit it out, or hold their nose and vote Hillary. Trump will retain his core supporters – and there is a high risk that these core supporters will abandon the GOP, never to return, thus making the GOP a minority party for a long time. Hillary as President – and possibly with a Democrat Congress – will be an utter disaster, and now there’s no assurance that the GOP can come back in 2018, as Trumpsters will still be furious for what they’ll view as a betrayal by the GOP. If Conservative leaders wanted to teach a lesson then they are also going to be taught a lesson – you can’t insult a substantial portion of your base and win – not now, not later. At all events, insulting people is never the way to go – tends to poison the well.

How do I feel right now? To paraphrase Chesterton, “as much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I believe in republicanism. But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Republicans”.