Humility is hard. So is contrition. As is taking responsibility for one’s own unjustified arrogance and undeniable mistakes.
But all of that and more is what America’s political and media establishments owe to the country. They failed ”” we failed, I failed ”” to grasp the extent of the seismic shift that the rise of Donald Trump portended. Trump’s campaign and personal behavior are so offensive to so many things that the members of these establishments take for granted, believe in, and valorize, that the thought that Trump could prevail electorally was close to unthinkable for most.
We can’t blame James Comey. Hillary Clinton’s slide in the polls began before he temporarily reignited his investigation into her State Department emails, and she rebounded from some of that decline over the past week.
The polls were just plain wrong.
When Trump was getting 10,000 people at his rallies and Clinton was having trouble breaking 100, that should have indicated to the pollsters that their models might be flawed.