Kinda of Late to the Party But Some Pressing Post-Election Questions

[Kevin]

Hey I know thins ins late but I had some broad post-election questions.

1. How in the hell did Trump manage to pull off a victory!? Let alone manage to achieve massive swings in places like PA, MI, and WI? I feel FL, OH, and IA are explainable considering they were close in 2012 but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the results in the former. Also if you told me in the hours before the results came in that Trump would win and with over 300 electoral votes I'd thought you were insane or on LSD.

2. What happened in NH!? According to such esteemed analysts like our very own OC or TN Volunteer this state was ultra-blue and the next Vermont. Yet Trump came within less then a hair of winning.

3. Is the Freiwal done as a concept?

4. Are Hillary and Trump still friends? What kind of candidate loses to their own plant!?

[Fuzzy Bear]

I consider Trump's victory to be brilliant strategic piercing of "the firewall" to where more vulnerable states were able to be taken by small margins.  Almost a "guerrilla" operation.

Trump's bloviating about "the polls are wrong", etc, was a pep talk for supporters to not lose hope, while a targeting plan was executed.  This is something that lots of candidates could have done in theory, but Trump's team pulled it off.

I do not "worship" Donald Trump, but I certainly believe that he understands things about politics and the electorate that others seem to be dense about.  Trump's always been a "goals and objectives" guy, and objectives are steps to goals.  The idea that you could target counties, as he appears to have done, in ways to breach firewalls, was either brilliant, or absolute luck. 

Trump's rural-small town strategy has had implications beyond MI, WI, and PA.  Twenty-one (21) upstate counties in NY state that had gone for Obama twice, and for other Democrats since 1992, went for Trump.  While he's a long way from carrying NY in 2020, that is one of the prerequisites.  These counties still have many local GOP officials.  We shall see if the trend of such counties abandoning the Presidential Democratic Party continues.