1. It’s Tuesday, November 22, 2016.

2. President Kennedy was murdered 53 years ago today.

He will mark the day in the same way as the other 37 deceased presidents – turning in their graves at the thought of No. 45.

3. There’s so many things to loathe about Trump that it’s hard to know where to either start or stop.

But here’s what sticks in your craw the most. He won.

It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Two weeks later, it’s turning out that this is not just a bad dream, and that you can’t just wish this away.

Now here’s the other problem.

Winning has its rewards.

I bring this up because of the new CNN/ORC poll out this morning. The poll shows that 53% of the country believe Trump will do a good job as president. 

Considering that a little less than 47% of the American electorate thought enough of Trump to vote for him for president, that’s a sign that he’s getting at least the majority of the country behind him.

It’s hard to believe for those of us who see him as an unspeakable creature. The guy who has picked a racist as attorney general, a white nationalist as his strategic adviser, picked a fight with the “Hamilton” cast and the TV networks, and offered just muted resistance to the idea that his election has spurred neo-Nazi sentiment in the United States.

But the thing is that this is a natural tendency after a presidential election. Even one as cantankerous as this one.

The country has had to deal with election crap for the better part of two years. It’s sick of it. It wants to get on with its life.

And so the people who are not as nearly invested emotionally in this fall in behind the guy who won. Only the true believers – my hand is raised here – dissent.

Believe it or not, the same dynamic would have occurred if Hillary Clinton had won. In fact, there’s a chance the optimism rate would have been higher than 53%, since she would have started from the higher base that comes from getting – as of this moment – 1,754,867 more votes than he did.

4. Does that mean the anti-Trump forces should just throw in the towel?

Hardly.

It just means that demonstrations like the ones that have taken place for two weeks – and which are completely understandable given the despicable way Trump campaigned – are nonetheless counterproductive. Right now.

All they look like to the people on the other side or in the middle is sour grapes. There hasn’t been anything new or substantive to protest.

Now, that’s about to change. We have the identity of some of Trump’s cabinet and chief advisers and revelations about policy direction. We have disclosures about his conflicts of interest and the admission to the IRS revealed today that the Trump Foundation did – as the Washington Post has intrepidly reported – that the charity’s money has been used to benefit Trump, his family or his business. 

The policy disclosures are the big thing.

Because his campaign was pretty much a few broad ideas and trashing Clinton, lots of what Trump stands for is unknown.

For example, I highly doubt that Trump voters, many of whom either are Medicare recipients or close to that age (again, my hand is raised), signed up for wholesale changes in a program they rely on for their health care. And yet, that’s what the Republicans in Congress have up their sleeves.

While there are people who grouse about Obamacare, they’re generally not the people who benefit from it. The backtracking began early when the transition team floated the ideas of keeping the no-preconditions and the cover-kids-until-they’re-26 provisions – which probably can’t be sustained if the rest of the Affordable Care Act goes.

And so it goes.

Not to mention that today it seems Trump broke one of the biggest campaign promises: He doesn’t want to pursue criminal charges against Hillary Clinton.

All those people shouting “Lock her up”? It ain’t gonna happen – unless Trump cowers, as he often does, in the face of protests by Breitbart and the like.

At some point in the not-too-distant future, there will be actual things to protest that can garner support from the people who voted for this turkey.

When that happens, when it seems as though the people protesting are more than sore losers, the honeymoon – as limited as it is – will end.

With a thump.

It’s November 18, 2016. It’s the 38th anniversary of the Jonestown massacre that gave us the unfortunate expression “drinking the Kool-Aid.”

And it’s time for 20 Questions Friday, my weekly attempt at wit and wisdom in interrogatory form. Instead of straightforward pearls of wisdom, I couch them in questions that you can answer if you wish.

Have a good weekend:

— Why do I think of Gen. Buck Turgidson when I see that Michael Flynn is going to be Trump’s national security adviser?

— Did you know that there’s still one Senate race – Louisiana – to be decided, and that the Democrat in the race is State Sen. Foster Campbell? 

— Do you think if the presidential debates hadn’t spent so much time on Hillary Clinton’s e-mails that there might have been a discussion about Republican plans to privatize Medicare?

— When will Trump announce that the official language is now Swedish, everybody has to change their underwear twice a day, and that to make sure they do, they have to wear it on the outside?

— Is it me or has there been a rash of bad driving since the election?

— Do you think Trump will ever have a post-election news conference?

— Will the Confederate flag fly outside the Department of Justice during the Jeff Sessions era?

— Will burning the Confederate flag be outlawed?

— How cool is the head of the Anti-Defamation League for saying that as a proud Jew he would register as a Muslim if Trump’s minions bring that about?

— What other non-Muslims will join him?

— What ways can you think of to show support for Jewish people in the face of this wave of anti-Semitism?

— Has the Tuesday before Thanksgiving become a more difficult driving day that the day before Thanksgiving?

— Ever since I can remember, the winner of the presidential election has met the loser in an effort to bring about reconciliation. Will Trump meet with Hillary Clinton?

— Do you still think he won’t go through with his threat in the campaign to prosecute her?

— Have you ever called the Butterball hot line?

— What are the chances the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade will be politics-free?

— Is deep-frying turkeys still a thing?

— Who can I turn to? (11th in a series of song-title questions)

— Did Kate Upton make her point well in protesting her boyfriend Justin Verlander’s not winning the American League Cy Young Award? Or was that TMI?

— Is the insidiousness of fake news the biggest threat to global security?

1. It’s Thursday, November 17, 2016.

2.On this day 48 years ago, I was watching the New York Jets play the Oakland Raiders. The Jets had just taken the lead in a tough contest, and there was about a minute to play.

My sister, who had just turned seven, was excited about the prospect of a TV special scheduled after the game. It was a production of “Heidi.”

I could, of course, care less. The Jets were close to a big win against a big rival.

But as the Jets kicked off to Oakland at exactly 7 p.m., the black-and-white football field – we didn’t get our first color TV set until a month later – instantly became some black-and-white Swiss Alp village.

NBC, which was airing the game, had committed to airing “Heidi” at 7 p.m. sharp. And that’s what happened.

That didn’t sit well with me and other Jets fans. Being only 14, I wasn’t going to make a fuss beyond complaining to my unsympathetic parents – they weren’t into football then.

Apparently, people who did make a fuss fried the NBC switchboard with complaints. The network was forced to apologize – particularly after it turned out the Jets would go on to lose the game and everybody who rooting for them in New York missed it.

Nowadays, that would never happen. In fact, nowadays, that doesn’t happen because this happened. Games run until they’re over.

During the games, the play-by-play announcer will occasionally interject that whatever non-football thing you were planning to watch will air immediately after the conclusion of this 42-7 blowout involving two teams you could care less about.

If you want to buy the DVD of “Heidi,” click here.

3. I hadn’t thought about the anger I felt about the Heidi Bowl in a long time.

I don’t imagine that will be the case with the 2016 election. Although, given that I’m 62, I doubt I’ll be around in 2064 to know if the anger of 48 years past ever subsided.

The anger gets restirred anytime I see a story about who Trump is considering for his regime. Although I have to say I wasn’t as upset to see South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s name bandied about for Secretary of State – I certainly would rather have her than Giuliani the deranged or Iraq War cheerleader John Bolton.

4. Last night, the other emotion of the past nine days – sadness – resurfaced. That’s because Hillary Clinton spoke.

She appeared at a Children’s Defense Fund ceremony in Washington honoring children who have fought through personal adversity with the organization’s help.

Clinton began her career working with the fund when she was a student in law school. She and fund founder Marian Wright Edelman are obviously very close – although I seem to remember some friction when Clinton was First Lady.

The speech was mostly about the children – as it should have been – and what people can and should do to focus on making the kids’ lives better.

But there were moments when she reflected on the campaign. She urged her supporters to keep working toward their goals.

“We need you. America needs you, your energy, your ambition, your talent,” Clinton said. “That is how we get through this.” 

She also got a little emotional talking about her late mother, who was orphaned when she was eight, placed on a train with her little sister and sent to live with relatives in California.

Clinton said he imagined going back in time to talk to her mother as a little girl in order to give her strength.

“I dream of going up to her, and sitting next to her and taking her in my arms and saying, ‘Look, look at me and listen. You will survive. You will have a family of your own: three children,'” she said. “And as hard as it might be to imagine, your daughter will grow up to be a United States senator, represent our country as Secretary of State, and win more than 62 million votes for President of the United States.”

That last phrase got a roar from the crowd. And it was a not-so-subtle reminder that Trump got more than 61 million – at this writing, 1,232,214 fewer votes than she did.

In introducing Clinton, Edelman referred to her as the “people’s president.”

There is usually no such thing. But these are not usual times. 

The idea that there are people who are going to suggest that Hillary Clinton really won last week isn’t going to sit well with the thin-skinned guy who won the Electoral College. It will be interesting to see how he deals with her and those who still raise her banner in the coming days and weeks.

1. It’s Wednesday, November 16, 2016. The month is past the halfway mark.

2. It’s the 109th birthday of actor Burgess Meredith.

He, of course, was among the most accomplished performers on the stage, screen and on TV.

The veteran character actor is best known for playing Mick, the battle-scarred trainer, in the “Rocky” film series.

3. Right now, those of us devastated by Trump’s win could use a Mick.

We’re watching this freak show of a transition, with the names of one horrible human being after another being bandied about for positions of major responsibility.

We’re seeing this clown, who didn’t even get the most votes eight days ago, attempting to give his children access to the essential cogs of the government.

And that’s not all of it. There’s the Congress in Republican hands. Led by the supposed Mr. Responsible, the Speaker of the House, who has plans to gut Medicare and other similar destructive impulses.

So why do we need a Mick?

4. We need to focus.

We need to divvy up responsibilities and protect the things that the people who voted for Trump somehow forgot.

That, if they’re 65 or older, or getting close to that, it has been a promise for half a century that most of their health care is taken care of.

That, if they’re 62 or older, they’re entitled to get back the money they poured into a system for the purpose of giving them security in retirement.

That, if you’re a poor woman in Texas, you shouldn’t have to scrounge up the money to get to New York or California if you feel the need to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.

That, if you’re an undocumented immigrant, somehow who has lived in the shadows while doing jobs that Americans didn’t want, that you’re not about to be part of a heartless forced exodus that will be the shame of the world.

5. There’s going to be a slugfest for at least the next two years to determine the fate of America’s soul.

Mick made Rocky chase a chicken to get faster.* He made him tie up his left hand, his natural punching hand, so that he would surprise Apollo Creed with a strong right hand.

We need to be as ready as Rocky was. We need to be organized. We need to show discipline.

And we need to stick together. We need to show the people who voted for Trump that they screwed up. Big time.

We need to show Trump and Pence and Ryan and McConnell and the menagerie of discredited, addled jerks that will hold the job titles that they don’t really have the power they think they have.

Through our campaigning, our protests, our demonstrations of our own strength of conviction, we can try to stop them.

Like Rocky, we might go 15 rounds and lose. But these miscreants need to know they’re going to get bloodied. This is going to hurt them, too.

As Mick might have said, “Keep hitting ‘em in the ribs…Don’t let those bastards breathe!” 

*Corrected to reflect that the sequence didn’t take place in “Rocky,” but “Rocky II.” Thanks to my brother and noted Rocky Balboa student, Seth Adam Meinero, for the fix.

1. It’s Tuesday, November 15, 2016.

2. It’s the 71st birthday of character actor Bob Gunton.

He played the evil warden in “The Shawshank Redemption” who decides to take matters into his own hands before getting his comeuppance.

Unfortunately, at the same time this classic film about a wrongly imprisoned man came out, we acquired a “Sesame Street” VHS tape about a visit to a firehouse. And the kindly fire chief in the video was played by – yup, Bob Gunton.

My father and I have the same problem – we have difficulty disassociating an actor from the first role in which we see them.

In my dad’s case, he could never watch a Folger’s coffee commercial with the actress who played Mrs. Olson without thinking that she played a Nazi in some World War II movie (he might have had her confused with another actress, but that would ruin the story). And anytime Mrs. Olson tried to get someone to drink her coffee, my dad would yell at the set “Get away, you lousy Nazi!”

With Gunton, I had the dissonance of having seen the “Sesame Street” tape first. So I bemoaned the fact that a guy who could be so nice to Muppets could turn out to be the religious-zealot louse that he is in “Shawshank.”

So here’s wishing Bob Gunton a happy birthday, and hoping he’s back helping Big Bird learn about fire trucks.

3. I’m a big Keith Ellison fan, proudly signing Bernie Sanders’ online petition to urge him to run for chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Ellison is a Democratic Congressman from the Twin Cities. He is a leading voice for the progressive wing of the party, having backed Sanders in the primaries but becoming a full-throated backer of Hillary Clinton when she won the nomination.

Ellison is African-American and Muslim. There will be detractors, to be sure, and the fringe end of the people who just elected Trump will jump on Ellison’s background as a sign that the Democrats are out of touch with “real” Americans.

He’s not. He saw Trump’s rise before others in the party, and understands what happened as middle-income voters abandoned Clinton and the Democrats last week.

He’s also unapologetic about what Democrats are supposed to stand for. People of all backgrounds, coming together to form a coalition to change everyone’s life for the better.

Today, Ellison said he’s in. Besides Sanders, he has such high-end support as current Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and pending leader Chuck Schumer.

So, with the tragedy of Clinton’s defeat a week in the rearview mirror, it’s time for Democrats to start their comeback by looking at Ellison and saying I’m with him.

4. I’m almost always impressed when Barack Obama speaks. And yesterday’s news conference was nothing if not impressive.

When the nearly one-hour session was over, the commentary on CNN was how restrained and graceful the President was. How he seemed to be urging Americans to give Trump a chance. That, because Trump doesn’t seem to have an ideology, he might see his way to understanding why Obama did some of the things he did.

That’s nice. But if you look at the transcript of the first few minutes, you realize that Obama isn’t Mr. Nice Guy – and that’s a good thing. 

This part seemed like a dig at Trump to me:

“This office is bigger than any one person and that’s why ensuring a smooth transition is so important,” Obama said. “It’s not something that the constitution explicitly requires but it is one of those norms that are vital to a functioning democracy, similar to norms of civility and tolerance and a commitment to reason and facts and analysis.”

Am I right? Civility. Tolerance. Facts. Those were words we heard a lot eight days ago, when the campaign against Trump was still going.

Obama also talked a lot about turning over the keys with the car of state running smoothly,

“We are indisputably in a stronger position today than we were when I came in eight years ago,” the President said. “Jobs have been growing for 73 straight months, incomes are rising, poverty is falling, the uninsured rate is at the lowest level on record, carbon emissions have come down without impinging on our growth.”

By doing that, Obama is trying to lay down markers. Here’s what I did. Let’s see what your numbers are in a year or two. I already made America great – there ain’t a lot of upside.

The news conference itself was kind of a dig at Trump. It’s traditional for a president-elect to talk to reporters within a couple of days of election. Obama did that three days after his win in 2008.

Trump hasn’t done that. He talked to “60 Minutes” – and that’s it. Part of it might be his way of spiting the media, as he did all campaign. Part of it might be the fact that he’s going to have some embarrassing things to talk about – see: Bannon, Steve.

Finally, I was struck by Obama’s comments about his signature achievement, the Affordable Care Act, widely expected to be extinct not long after he gets in the limo for his new home in D.C.

Obama said he would offer congratulations if Republicans find a way to get rid of Obamacare and improve on its results: 20 million Americans with insurance, kids getting coverage until they’re 26, free mammograms and more.

“If, on the other hand, whatever they are proposing results in millions of people losing coverage and results in people who already have health insurance losing protections that were contained in the legislation, then we are going to have a problem,” he added.

He mentioned the American people would too. But the fact that he had to add them to the statement is a subliminal reminder of the following:

In Britain, the opposition party has what’s called a shadow cabinet – people who holds positions comparable to the official ones, such as a shadow chancellor of the exchequer.

We haven’t done that in the United States. But given the nature of this election, that could well happen.

Democrats and even those Republicans who couldn’t stomach the idea of voting for Trump will look to someone for guidance on how to deal with whatever the administration coughs up. Until the Democrats figure out their next group of leaders, there might very well be a shadow president.

His name is Barack Obama. He’s just 55 years old. And, man, does he have a way with words!

1. It’s Monday, November 14, 2016.

2. On this day 75 years ago, between 9,000 and 10,000 Jews were slaughtered by Nazi occupiers in what was then Slonim, Poland – the city is now in Belarus.

Some accounts say people were machine-gunned 300 at a time. Some say women, children and the elderly were drowned in a nearby river.

Unfortunately, it’s never really hard to find some historic abuse of the people of the Jewish faith.

3. So about one in four American Jewish voters might be a little conflicted this morning.

Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart “News” Service and the last guy in charge of Trump’s campaign, will be the dolt’s chief strategist in the White House.

Breitbart has a reputation for disparaging the Judaism of people it opposes – conservative commentator William Kristol comes quickly to mind (I will not ever link to a Breitbart “story” – I will in no way add even one page view to their count).

And Bannon’s ex-wife, in court documents for their divorce, said he told her he didn’t want their daughters going to school with Jews.

And that follows the rash of anti-Semitic tweets from supporters of Trump during the campaign. Most notably, there was the tweet going after Hillary Clinton that used anti-Semitic imagery – which was retweeted by Trump himself.

But, according to Pew Research, 24% of Jewish voters overlooked all that. They voted for Trump.

So if you’re among that 24% – and, living in my liberal bubble, I’m proud to say that none of my Jewish friends fall into that category – it must a weird morning.

Either you must want the kind of cataclysmic change that’s about to befall the United States.

Or you got punk’d.

4. So the first Trump slap of the majority of American voters who didn’t pick him goes to those of us who are Jewish.

They weren’t as high on the radar as others, but they’re a historic favorite of the bigots.

The second slap looks like it’s headed for Hispanics, with Trump’s declaration on “60 Minutes” that he plans to go ahead with the immediate deportation of up to 3 million undocumented immigrants.

Who knows how the hell he intends to do it? For all we know, this is something he and his people have been working on for months. It should be quite a plan he rolls out.

In fact, that seems like it would be appropriate for his Christmas message to America. Peace on Earth? That’s media elite stuff. The thought of rounding up 1% of the population will really get people singing the praises of baby Jesus.

Trumpistas are going to love the optics of this. The crying. The screaming. The violent protests. The disruption to the nation’s economy.

It’s going to make America look like the Soviet and Nazi and other totalitarian states that we were not supposed to be. The ones who were the bad guys in the John Wayne movies that Trump supporters supposedly love.

There’s no joy in this. There’s only pain. And it’s all been there for the past year and a-half – Trump never hid any of it.

What you saw is what you’ll get.

1. It’s Sunday, November 13, 2016.

2. The postmortems for the election continue ad nauseum.

On the one side are the people I sympathize with: the Clinton supporters. They are the people terrified by what Trump said during the campaign, and how that will translate to his imminent presidency.

There is a record of what he said. There is no nuance. There is no amelioration. It’s there – as Casey Stengel said, “You can look it up.”

We’re also hearing a lot from Trump supporters explaining why they voted. They explain their anger.

It’s a rage at people – mostly on the two coasts – that they believe don’t care about them or their values. They think their struggles to get ahead – or even hold what they have – are ignored, by people like Clinton and President Obama. They think they struck a blow against arrogance, against protecting corporate interests, against accelerated social change, against spoiled elites who have more sympathy for minorities than for them.

3. So I want to bring out a quote from a campaign speech made in early September. 

In this speech, the candidate spoke about “people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from.”

The candidate said moments later that these people want their lives to be different. “They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end.”

The candidate, of course, was Hillary Clinton. The speech, of course, came on Sept. 9 at a fundraiser in New York.

And it was the quote before that everyone remembered: “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?”

The “basket of deplorables” came to symbolize how out-of-touch Hillary Clinton was supposed to be with people struggling to get by in places like post-industrial Pennsylania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin.

But as the first quote illustrates, she knew exactly what the problem was. She had all the sympathy in the world for the problems of the struggling middle class.

4. Now, to be fair, she didn’t say it well. Why she had to put everybody into two baskets will haunt her until the day she dies.

I don’t know if anybody read over the speech before she gave it, or she delivered it ad lib on a day she found out she had pneumonia. But, yes, her wording stinks.

But because of the way things are reported, the other ideas of that speech were lost. And because the campaign was so embarrassed by it, all she ever did was give a half-hearted apology.

She would have been better off owning it and clarifying it. She never really did.

That’s on her. What’s on journalists is the reporting of it – the playing up the one part without providing equal weight to the other. The idea of balance, which supposedly equated Trump’s multiple offenses with Clinton’s e-mail server blunder, never seemed to apply to any other part of her campaign.

Because, yes, there were more than a few Trump supporters for whom the word “deplorable” is being charitable. The white nationalists. The Holocaust deniers – or embracers. The woman haters. With Trump’s victory, those cockroaches have emerged from the cracks, thinking this is their deliverance.

Had Hillary Clinton been merely more elegant about what she said, perhaps we wouldn’t be at the point we’re at today.

But to say she and the Democrats were clueless about the struggles of people watching their way of life get away is misleading and unfair.

It’s just that Trump and the Republicans found a hole in the backfield and ran with it.

That’s point one.

Point two is this:

5. I understand the frustration with what was revealed in the John Podesta and DNC e-mails. The arrogance, the favoritism, the cozying up to moneyed elites on Wall Street and elsewhere.

What I don’t understand is the lack of outrage that this information was obtained nefariously. It was obtained through the connivance of a foreign power, one with a vested interest in affecting the outcome of our election. And one candidate, rather than condemn this invasion of privacy, encouraged and took advantage of it.

Do not dare tell me that the disclosures by Putin’s tame WikiLeaks pals are some great contribution to American democracy. If you say that, you’re basically supporting theft as political action.

What’s in the hacked e-mails of John Podesta and the DNC is embarrassing and stupid. What’s indisputably criminal is the fact that they were stolen from computers, and put to use to advance the agenda of Russia.

I am absolutely not a Marco Rubio fan. But the Florida senator was absolutely right in October when he told CNN “as our intelligence agencies have said, these leaks are an effort by a foreign government to interfere with our electoral process, and I will not indulge it.” 

Rubio also said: ”I want to warn my fellow Republicans who may want to capitalize politically on these leaks: Today it is the Democrats. Tomorrow it could be us.”

6. While they probably should focus on how to recover quickly from this debacle, Democrats and progressives will dwell for next few weeks on why this went so terribly wrong.

That’s good – you can’t completely do the first part without the second.

But Democrats have nothing to apologize for. They are not insensitive to anyone – including those people in now former blue states that turned away from Clinton. Yes, they didn’t present it as well as they should have.

But now, with the elevation of Trump and the Republican agenda, those people will get to see what insensitive really looks like.

1. It’s Saturday, November 12, 2016.

2. Again, I’m not a fan of the protests against Trump’s election.

Yes, I’m sympathetic – and angry. But all the protests do is rile up the Trumpistas (I don’t believe my inability to settle on one name for Trump’s supporters is the reason the jackass won, but it does trouble me).

The day will come in the Trump years that the people who voted for him will be on our side. Wait until then.

And here’s something that really bothers me: One of those leading the protests in Miami is a supporter of Jill Stein.

So here’s my message to this clown: You can’t have voted for Jill Stein and be mad that Trump won!

Jill Stein was never going to win the presidency. Hillary Clinton had a chance. If you really hated Trump, Clinton was your only option. And you have no credence being upset – you knew when you voted for Stein that you were risking a Trump win. Or you were an idiot.

3. Some Clinton supporters in their despair are hoping the Electoral College will reverse the gloom and choose her instead of him.

Their reasoning, if that’s the right word, is that because Clinton won the popular vote, she should win. And the electors will see the wisdom in that and do the right thing.

Which, of course, it isn’t.

Yeah, it sucks that Clinton, as of this writing, got 574,064 more votes than Trump and didn’t win. If that holds, she gets a place in history as having the biggest popular vote margin without winning, surpassing the 543,895 margin of Al Gore over George W. Bush.

But, alas, that’s not how we elect our presidents. It’s a federal system, meaning each state gets an individual say through the electors chosen Tuesday. Those electors are going to do what the people of their state told them to do.

And if, by some quirk, you could find 37 faithless electors, why would you want the crisis that would unfold?

Trump would claim the system was rigged and the most non-violent protests you’re seeing against him would be full-scale rioting against her. A Republican Congress would make the lack of cooperation President Obama got seem like a lovefest.

She’d be a powerless president. That’s not what any of us want for the first woman in the White House.

Unfortunately, we’ll all just have to wait.

4. There was one issue about which Trump and Clinton agreed: The nation needs a massive infrastructure rebuild.

And I’m betting that the first priority when he takes office.

Why? Because it’s popular.

Everybody laments the crappy roads and bridges they use to get to work or play. Lots of folks have a bad water story – even in the leafy suburbs. Fixing all that gets a big thumbs up.

And infrastructure puts lots of people to work, spurring the economy. If Trump follows through on his other promises, that’s going to counter the damage he’ll do dismantling trade agreements and pissing off the rest of the world.

When President Obama proposed massive infrastructure as a stimulus to blast us out of the Great Recession, he faced obstruction from Republicans. They claimed it was big government interference and dragged their feet.

That caused the package that passed to be smaller than he desired, and limited the boost to the economy.

But one thing we’ve learned in this election is that Republicans will gladly burn principles to stay in power. Trump will get support from enough Republicans to go with that of idealistic Democrats and get whatever size package he wants through.

It will be distasteful for Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi to help Trump. But Democrats shouldn’t sacrifice beliefs for political expediency. That would make them Republicans.

And, believe me, there will be other fights worth fighting.

It’s November 11, 2016, Veteran’s Day.

And it’s time for 20 Questions Friday, my effort to shape the end of this absolutely crazy week in American history in interrogatory form.

Try to enjoy this weekend.

— Will Trump’s Attorney General follow through on a campaign promise and appoint a special prosecutor to look into Hillary Clinton?

— Should President Obama try to protect Clinton by pardoning her before he leaves office?

— How can we convince the people protesting Trump’s election that, for now, what they’re doing is counter-productive because it keeps the Trump supporters in their riled-up state?

— On the other hand, aren’t the protesters just following the example that Republicans and the Trump trumpeters set?

— In what way does bringing Washington lobbyists into Trump’s transition team and administration change the direction of Washington?

— Does anybody remember any questions in the debates about whether Trump would back Paul Ryan’s proposals to make Medicare a voucher system and privatize Social Security? Or do we only remember the umpteen questions about Clinton’s e-mails?

— Do you think the people in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin who voted for Trump are going to be thrilled when the low-cost health care they’ve been promised after age 65 comes with strings attached?

— Are you wondering if it was Trump who got the “Access Hollywood” tape released so that we’d talk about that instead of real issues, about which he had no clue?

— Do you feel as though you wasted a significant chunk of your life that you’ll never get back checking the fivethirtyeight.com election forecast?

— Will the reporters in the front row of Trump’s first news conference as president – assuming he ever has a news conference – be from Fox, Breitbart, Newsmax, Infowars and the National Enquirer?

— Should New York Mayor Bill de Blasio delete the city’s database of undocumented immigrants?

— Would you be willing to harbor an undocumented immigrant in the event Trump follows through on his mass deportation idea?

— Is California Gov. Jerry Brown the new leader of the Free World?

— What do you think will be the capital of the resistance: New York, Los Angeles or some other city?

— Does this election upend the idea that the North won the Civil War and the U.S. won the Cold War?

— When you hear some politician or business leader say that everything will be all right, do you want to shake him/her?

— Will Trump gold-plate everything in the White House? (For a great look at his trashy hotel three blocks up the street, read my former colleague Emily Jane Fox’s Vanity Fair story.) 

— Why aren’t we as relieved that this election is over as we thought we’d be?

— How will I laugh tomorrow? (Tenth in a series of song-title questions)

— Will this sick feeling ever leave my stomach?

1. It’s Thursday, November 10, 2016.

2. It’s the 250th anniversary of the chartering of what is now Rutgers University, my son’s alma mater.

3. Trump’s election has sparked big protests in cities around the country.

His supporters are outraged by this, complaining that they didn’t protest when Obama won twice.

To them, I will spell out the difference: the people protesting have spent the last year and a-half hearing their champion trash them.

Not once or twice, in some moment of weakness during a long campaign, after which the candidate apologized. Every day, sometimes multiple times each day, Hispanics and Muslims and women and African-Americans and lots of other people have heard the insults – and, by the way to the Trump cheerleaders, your lack-of-a-heart-felt exhortations and taunts and Internet memes with Confederate flags.

When you win with a divisive campaign, you reap the whirlwind. That was the danger about which sober-minded people, including those Republicans who couldn’t vote for the candidate, warned.

Author Stephen King is absolutely right. Saying he was getting off the grid for awhile just to heal his wounds from this campaign, his message to Trump and his triumphant minions is the old antique shop sign: You break it, you own it.

4. But this is not to say that I think it’s a great idea for those opposed to Tuesday’s result to take to the streets.

Trust me, I’m sympathetic. The result of this election has made me angry and sad, and there’s a part of me that wants to go into some of kind of time-lock chamber that won’t open until Jan. 20, 2021.

And yet all these protests will do, coming on the heels of Hillary Clinton’s concession speech and President Obama’s message of reconciliation, is fire up the Trump types to prove the point I’m going to make beginning two paragraphs down.

It’s not worth the escalation. At least not for now. I strongly suspect there will be opportunities to tie up traffic across the country in the months ahead. And a lot of the people on the other side might be joining ours.

5. I got some great insight from students in my Media Writing class yesterday, as we pretty much ditched the curriculum for a day to discuss the event that kept us up all of the night before.

One of them said he could never understand why experts thought Pennsylvania was such a lock for Clinton. He had driven through the commonwealth, going all the way to Pittsburgh, and saw nothing but Trump signs along the road.

Now, as one political operative says, yard signs don’t equal votes. I couldn’t drive five miles through Rockland County, New York, without seeing hundreds of signs for a Republican county judge candidate. He lost. He couldn’t even win my precinct, which Trump won.

But my students thought the Trump enthusiasm they saw in Pennsylvania and in their home state of New Jersey was genuine.

By contrast, they never saw the same level of furor for Clinton. And they’re right. Except in pockets of liberals, there were few signs or other visible indications that someone supported the Democrat.

One other enlightening point from these young men and women. Most of them seemed visibly distraught by Trump’s victory.

But few – if any – shared that feeling about Clinton’s defeat. They didn’t like her.

There was the sense that she’s dishonest and feels entitled. Some believe she robbed Bernie Sanders of a fair shot at the Democratic nomination; they believe unequivocally that Sanders would have crushed Trump.

I asked if they felt this way because she’s a woman – having just written yesterday’s post giving that a reason No. 1. The male students said no, but some of the female students believe that strongly.

I asked if it was because of her husband, and their answers were kind of hemming and hawing.

That reflects a simple fact: They don’t really know Bill Clinton. They were born in his presidency. The credit Bill Clinton gets for a booming 1990s economy doesn’t resonate with them. And the Monica Lewinsky scandal doesn’t either – except that it’s part of a vague unease about the man that has been spread over time by his – and his wife’s opponents.

All they know is that they were really excited about Sanders, the same way they were still excited about President Obama – even though they were too young to vote for him.

And, by the way, very excited about the idea of Michelle Obama running in 2020.

One point I made through the campaign is that people don’t vote against someone for President. They vote for someone.

The 2016 election tested that theory. As of this writing, Hillary Clinton received 233,404 more votes than Trump.

But that doesn’t disprove the theory. Because we elect a President through the Electoral College, through the winning of individual states, not a whole nation.

And because she couldn’t get enough people to want her.

It’s shocking in a way, because I know so many women who were so excited by the prospect of reaching that milestone. The problem is not enough women – especially those who have just crossed the timeline from girl to woman – felt that way about Hillary Rodham Clinton.

(For an interesting take on this, here’s Clinton biographer David Maraniss’ piece for The Washington Post.)

6. As an aside, I’m going to raise this question again, without trying to answer it – sort of a prelim for tomorrow’s 20 Questions Friday:

Did Hillary Rodham Clinton have a better chance at winning the White House if she had run as Hillary Diane Rodham?

7. Finally, a clarification:

In my HARD TO KNOW HOW TO START blog yesterday, I talked about who should lead the Democratic Party going forward. And I mentioned Tammy Duckworth, the senator-elect from Illinois.

I still think it’s accurate to say Duckworth should be a leader among Democrats. She is bright and relatively young, and she is a great person for reaching out to Asian-Americans and military veterans.

But, if there was an implication that she’s a possible 2020 presidential candidate, it’s mistaken. As I should have remembered from a homework assignment I gave one of my students, Duckworth was born in Thailand. That makes her constitutionally ineligible to be President.

Again, it doesn’t preclude her from being a leader among Democrats. In fact, when Trump gives his first State of the Union speech to Congress early next year – that’s going to be something to watch – Duckworth might be a great candidate to give the Democratic rebuttal.