Surprise presidential outcome a lot of America knew was coming

His most ardent supporters tried to tell the rest of America that Donald Trump was going to win. They pointed to the outrage and the angst. Like most heavily invested partisans in this, the strangest presidential election ever, the “deplorables” consistently harped on the sins of the Clintons — Hillary, her husband and her foundation — and that proved out.

A lot of us — even those of us who voted against Hillary but did not support Trump during the GOP nomination process — are stunned.

Stunned about how wrong the opinion polling was. Dear buckets of hanging chads, were the polls wrong. Even number-crunching guru Nate Silver — a guy so good at forecasting the 538-member Electoral College in previous elections that the website he runs is called fivethirtyeight.com — missed this one by a lot.

We are stunned by the disconnect between the media and the general public. Or, at the very least, the voting public. Before we move along, I know I am a full-blown member of the media, writing for the daily paper and getting three hours of talking time on a local radio show in a top100 market. This is a miss that all of us in this industry must shoulder.

In truth, the storylines that mattered — costly Obamacare, the fear that resonates across America’s heartland, the boiling angst at the traditional politician and Washington gridlock, the bewilderment at the most powerful nation being pushed around in negotiations and being more than $20 trillion in debt, to name but a few — were like jacks scattered on the table with commentators scrambling to grab as many as possible before the next bounce of the TV ball.

And before we go much further, we have to say this about the Van Jones contingent and the claims about this election being a ‘white-lash’ against a sitting black president.

OK, maybe for some. Race is an undeniable part of our society. And in truth, Mr. Jones’ rant last month about how Donald Trump would be viewed if he were black was thought-provoking.

But maybe, just maybe, this is not as much about race as some think. Maybe this is not about rage against a black president as much as it was a statement about a bad president in a lot of voters’ eyes. There certainly was no mention of our racist ways when we elected Obama eight years ago, and the biggest weapon in his historic march to the White House eight years ago this month was that he was not George W. Bush. There were no calls about racism then; it was about failing leadership in the eyes of the voting public.

Obama ran — and won — on the promise of change. Donald did too.

That change reaches beyond the White House and covers all of Washington and its entrenched establishment and bureaucracy. And if that underplayed fact was meaningful to a larger part of middle America than anyone reported — and it certainly appears so — then Hillary Clinton, who has been part of every level of bureaucracy, was the most despised candidate in presidential history.

Because, if our stagnating government was the biggest issue on way more voters’ minds than any pollster concluded, not only did the American voters buck the expectation, they bucked the age-old saying that the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.

And that’s a powerful statement for leaders at all levels. It’s a statement more about reliability and responsiveness than race, even for President Obama, who so far is saying all of the right things in an effort to unite a divided country before the most divisive president in our history is inaugurated.

And that’s the rub. No matter which candidate won, the divisiveness was going to exist the day after, the week after, the month after and, well, you get the idea.

Regardless of which candidate won this election, there was — and is — a divide that needs repair. The country needs healing — and to be made whole — more than anything right now.

To be fair, Trump was gracious in his victory speech early Wednesday morning, as was Clinton in her concession later in the day.

Regardless of how this turned out, there was going to be fear and the need for the leadership of each side to try to meet in the middle of America.

Because if Tuesday told us anything, it’s that Middle America is sick and tired of being ignored.