“On Tuesday, when Donald Trump defied the polls, the Clinton machine and much of his own party establishment to become president-elect of the United States, he also became the closest thing to a black swan event we’ve ever seen in American politics: Statistically unlikely, rationalized only in hindsight—and carrying an impact that could be off the known charts,” Politico reports.

“On one hand, Trump is a pragmatic businessman with a very flexible ideology and a desire to be seen in a positive light; on the other, he’s a ruthless and often improvisational dealmaker with no allegiance to the norms and institutions that set the boundaries for traditional political power. And in 10 weeks he’ll be commander-in-chief.”

“I’m a rich white guy, and I’m sick to my stomach thinking about it. I can’t imagine being a Muslim right now, or a woman, or an African American, a Hispanic, a handicapped person. How disenfranchised they might feel. And for anyone in those groups that voted for him, it’s just beyond my comprehension how they ignore all of that. My final conclusion is, my big fear is—we are Rome.”

— San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, quoted by Deadspin, on the election of Donald Trump.

David Plouffe: “In Detroit, Mrs. Clinton received roughly 70,000 votes fewer than Mr. Obama did in 2012; she lost Michigan by just 12,000 votes. In Milwaukee County in Wisconsin, she received roughly 40,000 votes fewer than Mr. Obama did, and she lost the state by just 27,000. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, turnout in majority African-American precincts was down 11 percent from four years ago.”

“It’s a reminder that presidential campaigns are driven in large part by personality, not party. Ronald Reagan, President Obama and now Mr. Trump all were able to create electoral coalitions unique to them.”

Financial Times: “Donald Trump’s victory is no ordinary shock. For once the word seismic is merited. On the domestic front, it was a rejection of the US establishment personified by Hillary Clinton — in much the same way Mr Trump’s capture of the Republican nomination closed the book on the Bush era.”

“For a country seething with resentment at Washington’s oligarchic ways, there could be no more tempting piñatas than America’s leading dynasties. The Clintons and the Bushes are now over. Mr Trump’s victory also marks a sharp break from more than 70 years of American global leadership, a role he has railed against for decades. Having launched a hostile takeover of the Republican party, Mr Trump has now pulled off the same with the US federal government. Democracy’s capacity to surprise apart, Mr Trump’s win signals a disruption of almost everything the world has taken for granted about America.”

David Maraniss: “Few Americans knew the voters who rejected Hillary Clinton better than her husband. He lived among them growing up, and then studied them with a fanatical intensity during his political rise.”

“But now, with any notion of a dynasty dead and gone, one explanation for the stunning political demise of the Clintons might be the extent to which they moved away from a middle-American sensibility into the realm of the coastal elite, from McDonald’s to veganism to put it in symbolic terms, making it harder for Hillary to bridge the nation’s yawning social divide. This rendered her vulnerable even to the most unlikely opponent, a wealthy Manhattan real estate developer who had nothing in common with many of his voters except his uncanny ability to speak their language of discontent.”