On Wednesday morning, the entire nation woke up to the news that Donald Trump would become President of the United States. Its safe to say that many people, even some of his supporters and maybe even Trump himself, did not expect this to happen. A new chapter has been written not just in American politics but also in world history for this is a game changing event. The Republicans are now in charge of all three branches of government and Democrats are quickly salvaging what's left of their party to mobilize a defense throughout the next four years. In order to be prepared for the next four years, we must look critically on how to solve the issues that helped propel Trump to win the Presidency. That starts with a close examination of ideas, institutions, and with ourselves.

Hillary Clinton was a deeply flawed candidate

As the President-Elect would say, I know it, you know it, everybody knows it. Hillary Clinton may have had 30 years of political experience and was championed as the most qualified individual to seek the Presidency but the office is not just a simple resume check. A candidate had to connect with people and appear authentic which she failed to do through her cringe worthy attempts to reach out to minorities and appear down with millennials along with claiming to be a true progressive. Charisma, Barack Obama had it, Joe Biden had it, Bernie Sanders had it, so did Donald Trump. She had none of it but still felt entitled to the office. She also had a LOT of baggage. Her close ties to Wall Street, her emails, being under FBI investigation, the Benghazi scandal, her still existent ties to the Clinton Foundation while serving as Secretary of State, made her incredibly difficult to trust. The Democratic National Committee failed to understand how much people really hated Hillary Clinton as they anointed her as the default candidate even before the election race started. Former chairman Ed Rendell admitted that she should not have run this time and revealed that the committee chose her as the default candidate and discouraged other candidates like Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley because Hillary was good friends with the committee members and leaders. However, just because your friend is running for President does not mean she is the better candidate. Had Joe Biden made a run or Bernie Sanders became the candidate, they would've won over Trump voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, etc. and became President as a result in a theoretical match up against Trump and appeared to be more hopeful and pure than Hillary could have ever claimed to be. She had every advantage a candidate could ever have; she had the President, Vice President, First Lady, former opponents, singers, rappers, actors, film makers, billions of dollars, the media, and the entire Democratic party on her side and she still lost. That says a lot about her.

We underestimated Donald Trump

When Trump announced his candidacy, we all had a good laugh. We made fun of him and took him as a joke. And then, he became the Republican nominee, beating out 16 skilled Republican politicians for the title. That should've been the time to seriously look at how he got this far. The populism that carried the little known Senator from Vermont also carried a real estate billionaire. Trump's belligerent nature, nonconformity to established rules, and desire to shut down the Washington elites empowered voters who really wanted to break the system that disenfranchised them. We have heard a lot about voting the lesser of two evils, debatable to a degree, but that didn't quite match up to what people really saw this election was. Hillary Clinton was the epitome of the Washington establishment and was the perfect boogeyman to what Trump promised to fight against since he was an outsider. People always want some big change (whether good or bad) and Hillary was not that change, Trump was.

The media failed to do its job

Trump should give a big thank you shout out to the media networks, especially cable news. Millions of dollars of free coverage all for the sake of ratings which the president of CBS freely admitted, exclaiming that "Donald Trump may not be good for America but he's damn good for CBS." The news cycle is driven by outrage and craziness to which Trump provided every single day. Instead of holding him accountable, they gave him a microphone and said have at it. He has said so many things that were just factually untrue and has switched positions on policy so many times that we have no idea what he's going to do as President because he flip flopped so many times. Meanwhile, we spent more time talking about Hillary's emails than actual policy on issues like climate change. Social media too had a role to play in this with Facebook being the source of where half of adults receive their news. A false article about Pope Francis endorsing Donald Trump was shared millions of times on Facebook. Even if a correction was made, it wouldn't be received by those same millions of people which has prompted Facebook to start thinking about how to crackdown on false articles and media sites. The media likes to hail itself as the gatekeepers of information, its true we have lots of information than ever before but whether it was good information was something the media never truly championed and is now facing an identity crisis after Trump's win after all of their polls and analysts got it wrong.

The two parties have changed

Speaking of identity crisis, the Democratic and Republican parties have begun to start a new political realignment. The Democrats have traditionally represented the working class but Trump's win can be argued that the Democrats have failed their traditional constituents. Now that Hillary is defeated and President Obama is leaving office, there is no clear leader of the Democratic party. The de facto leaders would be Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and minority leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. There will be a strong incentive to reshape the Democrats into a progressive party and cut loose Washington establishment politics if they want to retake the Senate and the White House in future elections. The Republican party, on the other hand, has become a nationalist party and can be argued, a white nationalist party. Trump's rhetoric of America first and isolationist views when it comes to NATO is a strong pivot away from traditional American politics set by previous Democrat and Republican Presidents. The endorsements of white nationalists like Neo-Nazis and the KKK, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, along with the appointment of Steve Bannon, the former head of the Alt-Right news source Breitbart, as chief strategist on Trump's White House team, was slammed by Democrats and Republicans. Trump has given a platform to the wrong people who possess tendencies of every -ism and -phobic behavior from the book. These same people will reject moderate, mainstream conservatism which the current members of Congress adhere to and aim to shape the party to a more hard line stance on every issue by voting in Congressional members who are on the fringe conservative movement.

Race and class

Middle America voted overwhelmingly in support of Trump for a variety of reasons. It is true that he led one of the most divisive, racially charged campaigns in history and attracted the likes of people who legitimately hold every kind of racist tendency you can imagine. However, for the average working voter, they voted mostly in part of his economic message and bring back jobs from a declining manufacturing industry from China, Mexico, Japan, etc., and rejuvenate impoverished communities. Not all of them were the boogeyman racists that people were portraying them to be and if some of them were, it was Trump's stance on trade and jobs that sealed the deal for them. Many people forget that the white working class and impoverished African-Americans have a lot of things in common as pointed out by Tom Hank's SNL sketch. Race and class are two sides of the same coin. Both feel disenfranchised by their political leaders, feel that nobody truly understands or cares about their economic woes, and see no hope in future years that their situation will get better. Clinton was pushing for racial equality but not enough on how she planned to bring jobs back. Her remark that she would gleefully end the coal industry did not sit well with these voters who saw this as an affront to their livelihoods. These people really just wanted to see an improvement of the economy as Bernie pointed out, "more people are working longer hours for lower wages." Trump took advantage of this feeling and successfully launched his career as a politician. If Democrats want to win in future elections, they will have to win these voters over and not with the same neoliberal establishment policies.

Whether or not Trump will follow through on all of his promises (he has backtracked a lot already), this election will be one for the history books. Entire courses will be designed to cover this election and be a pivotal moment in American history; beating the odds of the Republican and Democratic establishments and winning over traditionally Democratic working class voters. What he will do for America, good or bad, we will have to just wait and see.