America Has Done What Seemed Unthinkable. Donald Trump Is The Next President.

There are no adjectives to describe what happened on Tuesday night , at least none that seem appropriate for an election result as unfathomable as what transpired.

American voters were presented with a choice: Hillary Clinton , a candidate with a lengthy record of governance and a history-making story arc, but who also was distrusted and disliked, predominantly for her handling of email; and Donald Trump , who defied every norm in politics, was openly misogynistic and contemptuous of minority groups, played to the worst of our social instincts, and spoke cavalierly of nuclear war.

We chose to jump into the abyss. Barring the unexpected, we elected Trump. Although its unclear if he will win the popular vote, he appeared comfortably on the path to an Electoral College victory by early Wednesday morning.

What happens now is anyones guess. These waters are uncharted. But if campaign past is governing prologue, there are remarkable, existential changes in store for the country.

Trump has pledged to take away health care coverage from 20 million people, with no actual plan to replace it. He has called for the largest tax cut in history. He has described climate change as a hoax and has no discernible policy for or interest in addressing it. He has talked about banning entire religious groups from entering the country and forcibly removing other ethnic groups. He is not a conventional Republican. He is a nativist, and one who has brought in his wake a scary thread of anti-Semitism and racism that has marred the entire 16-month presidential campaign. At a minimum, he will have the power to nominate justices to the Supreme Court, where there is currently one vacancy and several others could open soon.

What he can do with these ambitions will be the largest test of Americas democratic experiment since the passage of civil rights legislation and, perhaps, the Civil War. The country ends this presidential campaign more bitterly divided than at any point in recent memory. It seems impossible to imagine Trump putting it back together.

But, frankly, he doesnt seem like the type to try. He has talked, for instance, about going around Congress to implement an immigration policy that would bar those coming from countries where terrorists have attacked.

\r\n\r\n","

\r\n\r\n"],"adCount":0},"isCollectionEmbed":false,"enhancements":{},"defer":true,"addPlaceholder":false}">

Democrats arent the only people who are petrified by the possibilities. The markets are too. Stock futures plummeted Tuesday evening as his prospects for winning brightened. And analysts are fairly certain that this unease will continue in the near future.

Even some Republicans had refused to accept the possibility of a Trump presidency, especially those from the partys national security wing. Trump has spoken about upending the NATO alliance, a bedrock of international relations for the Western Hemisphere since the Cold War. He has pledged not just to bring back waterboarding a widely denounced form of torture but to go far beyond that in his anti-terrorism campaigns.

How Trump came to win the presidency will be endlessly debated, especially if the consequences play out as feared. Clintons failures as a candidate make her a prime suspect. The mistakes she made were plentiful, but none more so, it appears, than her failure to focus more on working-class white voters who abandoned her in droves, drawn it seems to Trumps talk of restoring a type of 1950s social construct when America was great.

Blame will undoubtedly be laid at the feet of FBI Director James Comey as well, for announcing that he was re-starting an investigation into Clintons emails with just days left in the campaign an investigation that ultimately turned up nothing demonstrably new but stalled her momentum.

Among those who will also get tagged for derision are the institutions that have, for generations, been the bedrock of our political system. The power of political parties has been incredibly diminished by this campaign. Trump won the Republican nomination despite the pushback of virtually all the partys elites.

The Democratic Party , meanwhile, failed in its efforts to turn the policy gains of the Obama years into a durable voting coalition. Those gains now seem incredibly fragile. And the Clinton campaigns ground game, vaunted for its size and precision, clearly came up short.

Your Support Has Never Been More Critical

Other news outlets have retreated behind paywalls. At HuffPost, we believe journalism should be free for everyone.

Would you help us provide essential information to our readers during this critical time? We can't do it without you.

Can't afford to contribute? Support HuffPost by creating a free account and log in while you read.

You've supported HuffPost before, and we'll be honest we could use your help again . We view our mission to provide free, fair news as critically important in this crucial moment, and we can't do it without you.

Whether you give once or many more times, we appreciate your contribution to keeping our journalism free for all.

Whether you give just one more time or sign up again to contribute regularly, we appreciate you playing a part in keeping our journalism free for all.

Support HuffPost

Then there are the media, whose failures may be as large as anyone elses. We propped up Trump when it served our bottom-line needs and failed to adequately understand his appeal. By the time that news outlets began highlighting his lengthy history of lies and the worst elements of his campaign, the publics trust in our reporting had been widely shattered. Many Americans didnt particularly care to read or hear what we had to say.

How all this gets addressed going forward is anyones guess. To offer answers in the haze of Tuesdays results would be to throw darts in the dark. The country has changed. The world will change. How deep this abyss goes, we will find out.