In the aftermath of this election, my thoughts are occupied by two questions. First, how did it happen; and second, what happens next.

We first must ask, how did Trump win? This is not the same as asking how the polls got the result ‘wrong’ – which is something of a red herring when most gave a sizeable approximately 20 per cent chance of a Trump victory. Instead, we want to know what the key factors that contributed to his win are. We are still waiting for a lot of the data that can answer this, but preliminary evidence suggests there are three important groups of voters to think about. First, the hardcore Trump supporters – people who are suffering economically and misidentify the causes and viable solutions, and the people who are just plain racist and take pleasure in the idea of kicking large groups out of the country.

But Trump’s low favorability ratings suggest that those who fully agree with him cannot entirely explain the result. We must consider a second group, the people who held their noses and voted for Trump. This is a diverse set of voters. It includes those who feel economically left behind, who do not support many of Trump’s racist or sexist views but are desperate for someone, anyone to take seriously their fears about their disappearing manufacturing and mining jobs. There are those who hold strong religious or moral convictions and couldn’t bear the idea of a liberal Supreme Court; and those who feel that everything they know is being swept away by a cosmopolitan, globalist, multicultural tidal wave and that while they don’t want to deport all the Muslims per se, they do not want to lose the white privilege they have held for so long.

A third and final group to consider is those who didn’t vote: those (hopefully not too numerous) who wouldn’t vote for Hillary because she was not progressive enough; those at the political centre who felt she was too left-wing (or too female…) but couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Trump either; and those who couldn’t vote because the time cost of voting is too high. This is a broad swathe of people with very different motivations, with no silver bullet alteration that would have led all of them to change their behaviour.

The second question is, what happens next? How much damage can be done by a President Trump and a Republican congress? My biggest concerns relate to climate change, the ideological direction of the USA, and the globalization project more broadly. It is alarming that the stated position of the incoming leader of one of the world’s largest energy consumers and greenhouse gas emitters is that climate change is a fabrication, or at the very most a wildly exaggerated phenomenon that we don’t really need to worry about. The pace of political development to combat climate change is already too slow relative to the environmental changes we are seeing, and we do not have the time to delay any action by four years (at least).

Ideologically, it has felt in recent years that the USA was on a path to becoming a society that could embrace and encourage true diversity. We have seen more women in the upper echelons of power structures, from the Federal Reserve to the Supreme Court and even the presidential race. The voices of people of colour have become louder, demanding that the country take note of the structural racism that they continue to struggle against on a daily basis. Gay couples finally won the right to marry. And yet today it seems that, for far more of the population than any of us had wanted to believe, this is not the direction they want to see the USA going. Even if not all of those who voted for Trump are as racist and sexist as he is, they were insufficiently repulsed by him to withdraw their support. For those who are members of the minority groups he has threatened, this is a cause for genuine fear.

The movement away from globalization is also a serious concern for me. The economic benefits of trade are clear, although it is equally clear that not enough has been done to ensure they are shared. But beyond that, I had hoped that increasing interconnectedness would over time bring about a more global sense of identity and a sense of shared responsibility and mutual obligation to citizens of other countries. The “my country first” mentality that Trump directly endorsed in his acceptance speech makes this a more distant dream.

But what happens next is not only about what Trump does; it is about what other Americans and I do in response. Increased political engagement is vital – we must vote in the midterm elections, and put pressure on our congressional representatives (Republican and Democratic) and state and local governments. We can also continue to vote with our wallets and feet. Concern about climate change and global responsibility can be manifested through conscious consumerism as well as giving support in the form of either money or time to relevant action groups. We must also stand up and be counted in the defence of those for whom Trump’s victory is a direct threat to their right to live in the USA free of persecution. Democracy – the rule of the people – is about more than ticking a box once every four years, and now more than ever we must step up to that responsibility.

I am proudly American. My country’s fundamental values including individual freedom, equality of opportunity, and respect for underlying constitutional order have molded me as they have molded the half-billion or so people to have ever been American. Like my compatriots I am the product of a collective national struggle that has transformed our polity from a tiny confederation of 3.9 million newly liberated colonies to a sprawling republic of 319 million citizens and permanent residents spread over 50 states, 16 territories, and a federal capital district. Our principles are bound up equally with the thousands of American soldiers serving abroad, and the millions of expats like me scattered across the globe. The progress for which we remain grateful in advancing egalitarian prosperity, democracy, and civil rights has come at a high cost, but it has always proceeded in step with these basic norms and laws. These fundamentally liberal ideals are as real and tangible to the vast majority of us as the booths we enter to cast our votes.

My country, its Constitution, and the progress that that document has made possible will endure Donald J. Trump. Our laws may be bent, our norms pushed to the edge, but it is my firm conviction that the republic will not break. That is because no matter where they are, Americans remain inextricably linked by the same basic principles enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and the worldview that respect for those living documents produces. The bonds that enjoin us remain indissoluble as long as the Constitution survives, and its unity as a guiding star is the basis for our unity as a people.

Our shared legal and political fate over more than two centuries has also cultivated shared cultural characteristics – from Guam to the San Francisco Bay to the Great Lakes, we are boisterous, friendly, stoic, and we strive to be committed to our families. We are punctual, hardworking, and optimistic. Again, this unity is real – our system influences who we are as people. I don’t think it is naive to say that I am who I am, and most Americans are who they are, because of a living Constitution that enshrines our right to live our lives as we choose and which defends that right with the unflappable force of law. It is because of my – our – commitment to our Constitution that I know the republic must and will outlast a Trump presidency.

As a people, we obey the rule of law, and expect our government to do likewise; we respect a plurality of views and enshrine this respect in inflexible protections for the press and the free exercise of religion; we nurse a healthy skepticism for centralized authority that we nonetheless expect to reflect some element of our political spectrum as determined by a democratic process. As his brutal, disrespectful campaign makes clear, Donald Trump may be authoritarian, arbitrary, xenophobic and ill-informed, but he is not stronger than our constitutional order, nor our collective expectation that he be held within its limits.  

The Constitution provides for men like President-Elect Trump, soon to be our executive and commander-in-chief. It denies him absolute veto power. It prevents him from enacting legislation. Without funding and authorization from Congress, he cannot wage protracted war. His numerous thoughtless, dangerous proposals will have to face an internally divided Republican Congress that has no clear consensus on Ukraine, Syria, NATO, the Muslim ban, press censorship, or numerous of the other ways in which he could threaten our national security and basic way of life. While Republicans can likely push through their agenda on the Affordable Care Act and taxes, the Democrats retained enough Senate seats to filibuster non budgetary matters. Trump’s ability to enact tariffs of 35 percent on Mexico and 45 percent on China, which could trigger a global recession, will require a congressional vote unlikely to succeed. With Democratic obstruction, Republican intransigence, and his own demonstrated tendency to change course and pander, he will not fund his Deportation Force, he will not build a towering wall, he will not ban Muslims, and he will not renegotiate our debt. Our Constitution places a break on lunacy.

However, the Constitution’s primary role in deterring Trump and preserving the America I love comes not from roadblocks but from its protections for a democratic and Democratic resistance. Article One schedules midterm elections for 2018. The First Amendment protects the right to protest, to report, and to join groups like the American Civil Liberties Union. Republicans were not powerless when they took Obamacare to the Supreme Court and won religious exemptions, and we will not be powerless if Trump attempts to reinstitute torture, implement mass deportation, weaken libel laws or criminalize abortion.

We can donate, volunteer, protest, and come 2018 and 2020 we will vote. My party faces a great internal reckoning on how to regain the trust of a white working class that has to be integrated into a respectful liberal social agenda, without changing our principles on LGBTQ rights or the rights of other endangered minorities. But after we reflect and come up with a path forward, it is incumbent upon us to act. If you have the time and you care about liberalism with a small “l,” start planning for how to get Democratic House members and senators elected in your district and state. That work will lay the foundation for evicting Trump in four years. And if for reasons of principle you cannot vote for a Democratic candidate, cast every vote between now and Trump’s last day in office with the knowledge of your obligation to restrain his ability to victimize the weakest among us. Our Constitution, the document that makes us American, buys us the time to resist the worst of this man, but it cannot defeat him. That enormous moral responsibility falls to each and every one of us.

As the results began pouring in to decide who would occupy the office that Americans like to style “leader of the free world,” my country collectively held its breath (except, presumably, those prognosticators who had assigned Hillary a greater than 99% chance of victory; they must have had better things to do than follow the actual results). By the end of the evening, they had all believed they had witnessed the most stunning upset of modern political history. But had they?

I should think not. To begin with, there are two ways to think about a politician doing better in a race than is expected. The first is as the candidate winning an upset, but the second is as the polls having a miss, and this latter interpretation is much closer to reality. Trump did not especially overperform, but actually received fewer votes than any Republican as far back as George W. Bush’s first run in 2000, which is especially pitiful considering that the pool of eligible voters grew by twenty million over the intervening span.

Rather, Trump’s victory came decidedly from Hillary Clinton’s weaknesses, which evidently were not sufficiently understood prior to the election. Perhaps some of the blame for this nearly nationwide myopia can be assigned to the prevailing model of political punditry, which seeks to explain polls with electoral factors, rather than using electoral factors to predict results. In other words, even many of our savviest talking heads tried to explain what was shaping the race by starting with the conclusion that Clinton was winning by several points, and working backwards from there to try and figure out why. Investigations into the minds of voters, the trends on the ground, and the actual issues at stake in the race all took second billing to running horse-race backup. Is it any wonder that they got it so wrong?

Having been disabused (rather suddenly and rudely) of the notion that Clinton had a secure lead, we can now more easily see the factors that led to the race being so competitive. They are not so mysterious; major warning signs presaged them and were ignored, including by myself personally.

One of the most obvious warning signs was Clinton’s ability to blow huge leads in Clinton in both the 2008 and 2016 Democratic primaries. Both times, she lost due to a lack of personal magnetism and an inability to capture the “change” vote. Perhaps we forgot at some point this cycle, but all one needs to do to realize the charisma gap between her and the last two winning Democrats, Obama and Bill Clinton, is watches clips of their speeches side by side. And Clinton’s being closely tied to the political establishment in the primaries presaged how many would feel about her in the general. Ironically, all her greatest strengths–mass support from politicians, financiers, and the media–merely served to emphasize that losing attribute.

Another warning sign was the shifts that white, less educated midwestern states had already undergone. Obama won Wisconsin in a landslide in 2008, but his margin fell by about 7 points in 2012, and Clinton’s margin fell by almost exactly the same amount four years later, handing Trump a narrow lead in the state. The same trajectory of improving Republican margins can be mapped out, if not quite as accurately, in Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. In the lower-turnout midterm elections of 2010 and 2014, Republicans won 16 of 21 of the senatorial and gubernatorial races in those states, an impressive three-quarters.

So the question could have been framed as, “will 2016 have turnout that’s higher or lower than usual?” The sheer negativity of the race helped settle that. With both candidates less popular than any since polling began, two-party turnout dropped dramatically, to 51%. It had been 57% in 2012 and 59% in 2008. With low turnout, Trump carried all of the previously mentioned 6, except Minnesota, where he lost narrowly.

The final warning sign was the enthusiasm gap in the Democratic and Republican primaries. Democratic turnout fell by a third from 2008, the last year there was a competitive primary. Republican turnout increased by half. In a bruising, dirty election with depressed turnout, it should have been clear that Republicans would be likely to stick around to vote at a higher rate.

But these are trends, not absolutes, and one would be mistaken to read them that way. At best, someone reading these trends properly should have deemed the race merely competitive, a toss-up. Predicting a Trump victory would have required getting the final tallies almost exactly right.

For Trump’s victory was incredibly slight. His “tipping point” state that won him the presidency was Pennsylvania, which he carried by only a 1.24% margin. In other words, had just two thirds of one percent of voters switched from Trump to Clinton nationally, she would have won, and all the analysis about what this election says about America would have been different. The winner-take-all nature of the presidency, then, really creates a false binary: only Trump advances to take office, but America remains cleaved very nearly in two, when it comes to the ballot box. There is likely truth–but not absolute truth–to many of the various claims and counterclaims: racial resentments drove buoyed Trump, as did economic grievance, and anger at liberal condescension. The Democratic claim to the progressive majority majority of the future also seems supported by Hillary’s slight popular vote victory, as well as improved showings in states like Arizona, Georgia, and Texas. There is no reason why these cannot all be true to a significant degree, each driving their own share of the final tally.

America, after all, contains multitudes, and though the Republican Party will start 2017 controlling the country more thoroughly than any party has in decades, it would do well to remember that.