The Democratic vote consists of minorities and educated whites.
The one thing I'm quite critical of Hillary Clinton for, and it obviously hurt her, is that at some level, the Clintons had to know that she was going to run for president. Why did they feel it necessary to make tens of millions of dollars with speaking engagements? They must have known that it would look grotesque. The word for it is "buckraking." It's beyond me. I don't understand it.
I know from my conversations with people in the administration that every world leader that Obama met in Berlin, in Peru, in Athens was extremely alarmed by Trump's election. That very much includes Angela Merkel.
I think the Electoral College is an absurd 18th-century construct. But that is the law.
I know, too, that millions and millions of people voted for Trump not because they are cartoon racists, but because they did not like Hillary Clinton for a variety of reasons, because they had real economic and social grievances.
Donald Trump is going to have to live in the real world in which Vladimir Putin is exactly who he presents himself to be, and Putin is extremely skilled. He's not going to make it very easy for the United States or Germany. And he's going to test Trump.
I would like to see Russia not invade Ukraine or put pressure on and threaten Baltic states. But we live in the real and existing world.
I would love to have a stable, productive relationship with Russia.
Maybe Santa Claus is real. Here's the problem: reality.
There's nothing wrong with creating jobs. What's wrong is to seed the illusion that you will magically bring back the economy of 1970, that you will reopen coal mines.
Democratic institutions, even in the oldest operating democracy in the world, are anything but perfect.
