President-elect Donald Trump smiles as he arrives to speak at an election night rally, Nov. 9, 2016, in New York. (AP)

At 6:21 am Eastern Standard Time on November 9, 2016, the sun cast its first light on the United States atop Maine’s Cadillac Mountain, and a new day began in America with Donald Trump as it’s next president.

Pollsters, pundits and political junkies are left trying to explain how they so badly missed seeing the strength of Trump’s support. So far, Hillary Clinton has a slight lead in the overall popular vote, but she was unable to attract enough votes in the usually reliable Democratic strongholds of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin to win the Electoral College.

Americans spoke loudly Tuesday in favor of change. They gave Republicans control of the White House, Congress and the opportunity to stack the Supreme Court with like-minded justices. Expectations are high. Can Trump and his political party meet those expectations? And what kind of change will we see?

A New Political Reality

Yuval Levin – National Review

To me, this election was always a lose-lose proposition. I did not want Donald Trump to be president and I am not glad that he will be, just as I did not want Hillary Clinton to be president and would not have been glad had she been successful last night. …

This will require a new way of thinking from Republican members of Congress about a Republican president. But among other things, it should yield a revival of an old way of thinking in Congress about the presidency. This moment may present an incomparable opportunity for a recovery of the separation of powers and a reassertion of Congressional authority, which may to some extent now be pursued in a bipartisan way.

President-elect Donald Trump pumps his fist after giving his acceptance speech as his wife Melania Trump, right, and their son Barron Trump follow him during his election night rally, Nov. 9, 2016, in New York. (AP)

An American Tragedy

David Remnick – The New Yorker

All along, Trump seemed like a twisted caricature of every rotten reflex of the radical right. That he has prevailed, that he has won this election, is a crushing blow to the spirit; it is an event that will likely cast the country into a period of economic, political, and social uncertainty that we cannot yet imagine. That the electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump’s world of vanity, hate, arrogance, untruth, and recklessness, his disdain for democratic norms, is a fact that will lead, inevitably, to all manner of national decline and suffering.

Trump’s Victory Is a Win for the Little Guy over the Elite

Michael Goodwin – New York Post

And so this is how the Obama era of Hope & Change really ends. With the world turned upside down, and with President Obama having to pass the baton to Donald Trump….

Trump stands today as the greatest disrupter in modern politics, the winner of the biggest upset imaginable, but for most of the campaign, he was not even the best argument for his own candidacy. That distinction belonged to the millions upon millions of everyday Americans who found in him the bare-knuckled brawler they were desperately seeking.

Mourn. Then Organize

Peter Dreier – The American Prospect

Former President Bill Clinton applauds as his wife, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks in New York, Nov. 9, 2016. Clinton conceded the presidency to Donald Trump in a phone call early Wednesday morning, a stunning end to a campaign that appeared poised right up until Election Day to make her the first woman elected U.S. president. (AP)

I feel awful for my 19-year-old twin daughters, who voted for the first time this year and now have to spend their college years with Trump as president. They’re upset. They talked about moving to Canada. They were half serious….

After Nixon won, I considered moving to Canada myself, not just out of fear of Nixon’s agenda but also to avoid the draft and Vietnam. I even submitted an application to the University of Toronto.

But I stayed. I didn’t want to abandon my country. Like many others of my generation, I wanted to change it….

This is no time for liberals and progressives, Bernie Sanders supporters and Clinton followers, to point fingers. This is a time for cooperation and strategizing.

In Victory Speech, Donald Trump Discovers the Power of ‘We’

Christian Lundberg – The Conversation

The core theme of Donald Trump’s campaign – that the establishment was broken – drove waves of his supporters to the polls.

Surprisingly, this theme didn’t make it into his victory speech. Nor did any reference to the seismic shift in American politics that took place, save for brief mentions that the night was “historic.”…

But the most notable thing about President-elect Trump’s victory speech was how different it was from the speeches he delivered on the campaign trail. In an effort to unify an intensely divided country, Trump discovered the rhetorical power of “we.”