The great reversal

When the New York Mets won the 1986 World Series, a best-selling book by Jeff Pearlman described their “season of brawling, boozing, bimbo chasing, and championship baseball with … the rowdiest team ever to put on a New York uniform—and maybe the best.”

Thirty years later, New Yorker Donald Trump ­culminated a life of all that (except boozing) with the rowdiest campaign in American history—and, we learned on Nov. 8, maybe the most surprising. After relying on big rallies, ignoring the “ground game,” and name-calling in a way that delighted those tired of courtesy, he shocked hostile media, defied pollster and pundit expectations (and WORLD’s), and gained a golden ticket to the White House.

Trump predicted he would win in Florida and the northern Rust Belt. He was right: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa went his way. Democrats hoping for a Senate majority also were ­disappointed as Republicans won races once seen as toss-ups in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, and Pennsylvania.

For the loser, Hillary Clinton, Nov. 8 was the end of 25 years, one month, and five days of a continuous campaign—or, counting the minutes, 13,201,920 since Bill Clinton announced his candidacy for the presidency on Oct. 3, 1991. He told voters they would get “two for the price of one,” with Hillary serving virtually as a co-president. He promised “a new covenant to rebuild America.”

The 2016 election turned out to be a referendum on that purported covenant, which President Barack Obama tried to extend with his 2008 claim to bring “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” Hillary Clinton did not use the same 2-for-1 line her husband had, but she said Bill would be “in charge of revitalizing the economy.”

The voters decreed otherwise, and fundraising for the Clinton Foundation now becomes much harder. Meanwhile, the opportunity for a president to throw his weight around will be easier than ever before. Sean Davis, a former aide to former Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., tweeted, “If ­progressives were capable of introspection, they would be kicking themselves for ­cheering on Obama’s lawless expansion of exec. power.”

When the last person to be elected ­president from outside of politics, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, gained his ticket to the White House in 1952, the incumbent Harry Truman said: “He’ll sit here, and he’ll say, ‘Do this! Do that!’ And nothing will happen. Poor Ike—it won’t be a bit like the Army. He’ll find it very frustrating.” Sixty-four years and many accretions of presidential power later, Donald Trump will have the opposite impression: When he sneezes, the ground from Wall Street to Tiananmen Square will shake.

Now we will see whether concerns about Trump’s character were discerning or overwrought. Trump won the support of many evangelical leaders who believed he would nominate Supreme Court justices in the mold of Antonin Scalia: Will he come through on that pledge? Trump’s election forces Democrats to examine their own ­positions: Former Obama aide Michael Wear tweeted, “Those who promised Democrats the call for repeal of Hyde would be a magical elixir to turn out women should have to answer for these results.”

Voters in several states passed referenda that some thought were magical elixirs. California, Massachusetts, and Nevada voters legalized marijuana for personal use, but Arizona voters said no to that. Florida, Montana, and North Dakota voters approved medical use of marijuana. Colorado voters gave their blessing to doctors who choose to give suicide pills to some patients. Nebraska voters replaced the death penalty for murder with life in prison without parole, but California voters turned down a similar measure, as well as a measure that would have required performers in “adult films” to use condoms.

The biggest story, though, was the tale of one man. Trump did poorly among African-American voters, but he asked poorer blacks to vote for him: “What do you have to lose?” He appealed to white voters with stagnant or no incomes by saying he would end America’s free-trade tilt and bring back blue-collar jobs: Will he? Some Hispanic voters were hostile to Trump’s anti-immigration stance: What will happen to those here illegally?

Other questions abound: What should dictators in Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea expect? Will Trump feud with Republicans, make deals with Democrats, treat abortion as a bargaining chip, and halfheartedly defend religious freedom? Will he increase the national debt as much as Democrats have been doing? Trump got off to a good start on Nov. 9 when he graciously claimed ­victory and said it was time to “bind the wounds of division … to come together as one united people. I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans.”

CORRECTION: My election night note about Nebraska voters abolishing the death penalty in their state was incorrect. Voters by a 61 to 39 percent margin actually overrode the state legislature’s abolition, so Nebraska now once again has the death penalty. Nebraska has not executed anyone since 1997, but Gov. Pete Ricketts, according to the Omaha World-Herald, gave $300,000 of his own money to the pro–death penalty campaign and said he would “make capital punishment work again in Nebraska to protect public safety.” Ricketts’ father, Joe Ricketts, founder of the discount stock brokerage TD Ameritrade, gave $100,000 to the campaign. The Ricketts family owns the Chicago Cubs major league baseball team. —M.O.