Skip to main content
In an disquieting upset driven by economic resentment and the rise of white nationalism, real-estate developer and reality television icon Donald J. Trump has defeated former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in the race for American president.
The result ends a vicious election with a gut-twisting result: Trump, disparaged as a joke and a boogeyman, will inhabit the White House.
Trump's victory was projected tonight by The Associated Press, National Public Radio and the Washington Post. CNN reports that Clinton has called Trump to concede.
In the Oregon Convention Center on Tuesday night, Democrats gathering to cheer on Gov. Kate Brown and Sen. Jeff Merkley watched the presidential results with dread.
"We somehow underestimated how much people in this country hate women," said Amanda Blum, 40, of Portland. "Social media has created an echo chamber. We've lost the ability to have a conversation with each other."
"We just grossly underestimated how angry people are."
In Oregon, now a reliably blue state, Clinton won with ease. The rest of the nation proved more difficult.
Few observers predicted the chaotic rise of Trump, who seized on economic anxieties and fear of immigrants to run a campaign that embraced sexism, racism and demagoguery, while flirting with even darker elements: Russian hackers, white supremacists and the furthest misogynist corners of the web.
Republican leaders and influential donors fled the seemingly unhinged campaign. In August, the chairman of onetime Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's Oregon and Washington fundraising efforts told WW he would endorse Clinton.
David Nierenberg said Trump lacked "the basic human decency" to be president. "I don't want to bequeath that kind of leader to my kids' generation," Nierenberg said. "I owe them better."
The Republican nominee seemed to self-detonate in September, when video emerged of him bragging about sexual assaults, including grabbing women by the genitalia.
Yet those tapes, and claims by more than 10 women that Trump groped or assaulted them, did not destroy his campaign.
Instead, the race tightened in its final month—especially after FBI Director James Comey sent Congress a letter reviving questions about Clinton's use of a private server for her government emails during her time as secretary of state. (Comey said that his agency had discovered more emails on a computer used by former Congressman Anthony Weiner, under investigation for messages exchanged with a 15-year-old.)
Comey announced Nov. 6 that the new emails showed no reason to reopen the investigation of Clinton—but the Democrats spent much of the past month defending Clinton from the scandal and the contents of campaign emails revealed by Russian-sponsored hacker organization WikiLeaks.
At the victory party for Portland City Council candidate Chloe Eudaly, Portland Tenants United organizer Margot Black was equally horrified.
"He is the embodiment of what the Civil Rights movement has been fighting for 100 years," Black said. "He is the whitest white man. He is unabashedly sexist. He is unabashedly racist. He is the embodiment of our enemy."
Eudaly canvasser Kate Sherman, 31, who was a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the Democratic primary, says she voted Green and wasn't a fan of either candidate.
She was studying the results projected on a screen at Southeast Portland nightclub Holocene. "I'm waiting to see what brand of screwed we are."
Black Lives Matter organizer Gregory McKelvey struck a defiant tone.
"I think no matter what, if Trump wins our city will definitely rise up," McKelvey said. "The silver lining is our resistance will only grow stronger."
Even before the shocking end, the 2016 presidential campaign revealed deep fractures in American public life—including large swaths of the population eager to embrace a candidate who gleefully demonized Mexicans, Muslims and the nation's first black president.
Now the nation waits to see how closely Trump will hew to a nativist movement that swallowed the Republican Party and now casts a long shadow over the nation.
WW staff writers Nigel Jaquiss and Rachel Monahan contributed reporting to this story.
Willamette Week