Donald Trump’s resounding victory over Kamala Harris sent shock waves through the entire world this week. I don’t know that even the most enthusiastic Trumpeter could’ve seen what happened actually happening – but make no mistake, it did, and definitively.

So what actually did happen? First off, let’s acknowledge right out of the gate here that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are viewed favorably by the majority of Americans, both with less than 40% approval ratings from the nation. So, this was clearly not just about party politics.

With everyone assuming that the presidential race was tight going in; it really shouldn’t come as a total surprise that either candidate won or lost. What is surprising is that the Hispanic vote, black males, and young males – traditionally very left-leaning – overall went far, far heavier for Trump than anyone could have foreseen.

In fact, if those demographics follow national trends in the still undecided battleground states of Arizona and Nevada, the decisive result we already see quite likely will turn into a borderline landslide victory – and by any measurement or expectation from anyone, that is surprising.

With that said, I hope that none of us will pay much attention to pre-election polls anymore. Given the fact that pretty much every one of the ‘expert’ pollsters had the presidential race as about as dead even as it could get then Trump won the popular vote by more than 4,000,000 should tell you about all you need to know about their polls. Essentially – much like the mainstream media – they aren’t to be trusted any further than you can throw your car.

As has been said many times before, when someone enters that voting booth with no real allegiance to either party and has to make a decision on who to vote for, more times than not the state of their wallet/pocketbook determines their vote. Given the fact that inflation has been an irrefutable part of life as an American during the majority of the last 48 months, that exact scenario was one most independents found hard to dance around.

An interesting factor that arose was an underlying frustration among left-leaning moderates who resented the fact that no democratic process was involved in Harris being named the Democrat candidate. A long-time, liberal friend of mine confided the following: “…it felt to me like the powers that be among Democrats just assumed all of us would be overjoyed with Harris, when in reality very few of us were even marginally pleased with Biden, and the two simply could not be separated. It felt like the machine was too presumptive and manipulative, and I didn’t like it.”

One element that made this particular election so interesting is that you basically had an unprecedented side-by-side comparison that Americans could lean on to steer their choices. We already had four years of Trump as president and we’ve already had four years of Harris as vice-president under Joe Biden. So it’s a reasonable assumption that we had a pretty good idea of what each might bring to the table for the next four years.

It’s very, very clear that the nation was not happy with the direction it has been heading in the last four years, and that side-by-side comparison of the last four years with the previous four – especially regarding the economy – was a telling factor for those independents who absolutely swung the election for Trump.

One of the biggest mistakes Harris made on the campaign trail was declaring that there was nothing she would change regarding the last four years under Biden – which essentially told those undecided voters that eventually determined the outcome of the election that she was planning to continue the policies that Biden put in place during his time as president. Now, she did try to go back and add that she would’ve added more Republicans into leadership positions to at least try to give a little more non-partisan flavor to her campaign, but the damage was already done.

As mentioned before, at some point along the way Harris desperately needed to establish herself as her own candidate with her own ideas and platform. The impression among those swing voters was that she was inextricably stuck to Biden, and that’s clearly not a place they wanted to see the nation stuck in.

When you get right down to brass tacks, this election was a scathing rejection of the direction the Democratic party seems to have chosen to take in the last decade. The Democrats kowtowing to way-far-left progressives simply made too many moderates too uncomfortable to support them with their vote.

And, being honest, the election was more a mandate regarding Joe Biden as it was any endorsement of Donald Trump. Too many of the promises made four years ago rang hollow with too many voters, and as mentioned before, those Hispanic/black male/young males who so deeply swung the final result walked into the voting booth with a “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me” view that absolutely impacted their choice and the eventual outcome as well.

Biden’s performance over the last 48 months was something Harris stood no chance to overcome without disassociating herself from it – mainly because it was a direct reflection of her performance, too.

Or, perhaps even more importantly, the lack of it.