His candidacy was born in spectacle, nurtured on controversy, and careered from one self-inflicted disaster to another, overturning every rule of modern American politics along the way. With virtually no on-the-ground organization, lackadaisical support at best from the leaders of his own party, and outspent by a large margin in advertising, Donald J. Trump won the presidency with a campaign built around raucous rallies and a visceral appeal to a shrinking slice of the American electorate, the rural and small-town white working class. To say he did it his way is almost an understatement.
He was helped by running against a deeply unpopular opponent. Historians will debate how much damage was done to Hillary Clinton during the week that the FBI kept the country in suspense over a renewed investigation of her emails, but her troubles with the electorate began long before and ran deeper. She took a hit in the primary from the left wing of her party, and analysts will be poring over exit polls to figure out whether the Sanders voters defected in numbers large enough to affect the outcome. But in the end, Americans just didn’t like or trust Clinton, and the chance to make history by electing the first woman president of the United States didn’t bring enough women to her side to offset Trump’s huge advantage among white men.
