WASHINGTON (AP) – Americans are choosing a new president Tuesday, but not just that. They are making history, reshaping Congress, saying good riddance to a campaign of numbing negativity and setting the political calculus of a nation that won’t be healed any time soon.
Whether the glass ceiling shatters or not, precedent will.
Never before has the country had a woman as president, not to mention the spouse of an ex-president. Never before has the country had a president like, well, Donald Trump, unique in lacking the public-service background that everyone in our lifetimes and deeper into the past brought to the office (both his weakness and his strength). Whether the 45th president is Hillary Clinton or the billionaire outsider, the U.S. is turning a corner.
CLINTON vs. TRUMP
The two New Yorkers pounded each other relentlessly, each preaching that the other is wholly unqualified, as the race tightened in the final days after a persistent if elastic lead for Clinton, the Democrat, in preference polling. Those who dreamed of Bernie Sanders for the Democratic ticket or anyone but Trump for Republicans face their time of reckoning. Will they come home to their party, or just stay home?