Can you believe it?
Of course you can. Of course you do. Never a doubt, right? You didn't believe the polls. You didn't believe the pundits. You just knew.
Sure you did!
OK with me.
The culmination of an amazing election night, Donald Trump has won the presidency. He will be the 45th president of the United States. The AP's call of Pennsylvania for Trump puts him at 274 electoral votes, and that's all she wrote.
And he did it by taking states like Wisconsin and Michigan, which haven't gone Republican since 1988, as well as Bush states that were taken away by Barack Obama, like Florida, Ohio and North Carolina. Trump brought them all back into the red column.
Amazing.
As it stands right now, the electoral vote count is 274 for Trump and 219 for Hillary. She has not conceded and indications are that she will not do so tonight. Fine. Doesn't matter. Hillary won't accept the result of the election! And the nation doesn't need her to. She lost. She can now go away.
What made the difference? It's hard to say at this point, but I have to believe the American people took a really good look at the dishonesty and corruption of the Clintons and simply decided they did not want to put all that nonsense back in the White House for another four years.
But I'm sure there are other factors. People know ObamaCare is a disaster, and Hillary would have done nothing to fix it. They know our economy hasn't been growing, and Hillary would have continued the same policies that have held it back.
One thing we certainly know: While Hillary is the night's biggest loser, the media are not far behind. They tried everything they could to sell us on the idea of electing her, and made much of the fact that Trump had almost no major newspaper endorsements.
It didn't matter. The media influences no one.
And with the House and Senate still in Republican hands, we can only imagine what might be possible come January.
That said, we should remember that the last time we had the White House and both houses of Congress, very little got done. This time we need to demand more and hold Republican leaders accountable - and that certainly includes Trump. It might take the nuking of the filibuster to repeal ObamaCare. Does Mitch McConnell have the nerve to do that? He'd better.
But these are topics we can deal with soon enough. Tonight . . . my goodness, what a night. Congratulations, President-elect Trump, on your YUUUUUUUGE victory.
Now the hard work really starts.
