Five moments in 2016 that reshaped American politics

In a year when nary a moment felt calm and people felt pitted against one another in some of the starkest terms of “black and white” we’ve seen since the turbulent 1960s, the top story in the news was undoubtedly businessman Donald Trump’s victory over career politician Hilary Clinton to capture the U.S. presidency.

He delivered the victory to forgotten Middle Americans while promising to Make America Great Again and a Contract with the American Voter that he’d “drain the swamp” and fix a broken political system that picks winners and losers while standing aside as jobs get outsourced overseas.

Meanwhile, Black Lives Matter gained momentum and pitted the Fraternal Order of Police against African-Americans whose frustration over the justice system had boiled over. Britain decided to pull out of the U.K. in a so-called “Brexit,” and then this happened:

Indeed, 2016 was one for the history books. Here are the top moments of the election taking a look back at our year in review:

Donald Trump defeats Hillary Clinton on Nov. 8

AP Photo/John Locher

As an incredibly divided country pointed fingers at “the other” over the nominations of two historically unpopular presidential candidates, America prepared to cast ballots for President Obama’s successor and the 45th president.

We were all assured Hillary Clinton was the “most-qualified” candidate ever, as her campaign targeted a coalition of young and minority voters without any real economic message to relay toward working-class white voters disaffected by the digital revolution and Great Recession of Obama’s tenure. Media elites and pollsters scoffed at the idea of a Donald Trump presidency, while a “silent majority” of blue-collar Middle Americans prepared to shock left-leaning groups and coastal urbanites by helping the anti-politician businessman secure the White House.

AP Photo/Frank Franklin II

The stunning election became the biggest story of 2016 – and perhaps the biggest of the decade thus far. Cry-ins were held at academic institutions for millennial voters shocked by the outcome, while editorialists lashed out at both voters and the system itself as comedians struggled to re-assure us everything will be alright.

“For better and worse,” wrote one leftist commentator, “Democrats are stuck with the core they nurtured: non-whites and liberal, college-educated whites. It’s not clear how they build on that base at the moment; instead they will have to rally it.”

Bernie Sanders leads ‘Our Revolution’ throughout the nation

AP Photo/John Minchillo

Party superdelegates helped push Clinton over the finish line to win the nomination and “break the glass ceiling” as the nation’s first female nominee for president, but not before a dogged fight against a self-styled democratic socialist that stole the hearts of millennials – #FeelTheBern, they said – and a push toward the final weeks of the primaries with huge rallies and record-setting political donations.

Bernie Sanders (AP Photo)

Fighting for everyday Americans against corporate interests, Sen. Bernie Sanders harnessed the anger felt by much of the country and channeled that into votes that amounted to 1,865 delegates. “Injustice is rampant,” he said while campaigning. “We live in the wealthiest country in the history of the world. But most Americans don’t know that. Because almost all of that wealth and income is going to the top 1 percent.”

Even today, his efforts last in the form of grassroots political organization Our Revolution, a progressive coalition that intends to fight on the state and local levels to help reshape the priorities of Democratic politics.

The epidemic of so-called ‘fake news’

Flickr/Tamaki Sono

As the nation continued coming to terms with the outcome of our election results, Facebook (and other social media empires) came under fire over the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories said to have potentially influenced election results.

“The utopian dream of the Internet as a place to connect the world and share ideas appears to have found its nemesis not in censorship, as some early Web pioneers feared, but in the proliferation of fake news, an even more pernicious form of misinformation, perfectly designed to take advantage of the viral nature of the open Web,” wrote Vanity Fair tech columnist Maya Kosoff.

Indeed, 62 percent of U.S. adults are said to get their news from social media, and effectively tailor their feed toward their own inclinations in what might be dubbed an echo chamber. News directors across the country have worked to combat the epidemic of fake news as independent, fact-based publications struggle to maintain their audience amid sinking ad revenue, fewer reporters on site at state and federal capitols and a digital-first strategy that emphasizes clever headlines and memetic engineering.

Hillary Clinton, the FBI and those ‘damn emails’

While her primary opponent Sanders was able to shrug off the saga of email exchanges in which Clinton partook with a private server as secretary of state, the rest of the country was unable to do so. It grabbed headlines time after time after time, and played into the portrayal of Clinton as “crooked” and untrustworthy.

Even since the election results were finalized, her husband and 42nd President of the United States Bill Clinton has pointed toward the FBI’s response over the issue as one of the biggest reasons his wife lost the election — and tanked their political dynasty.

The ‘Access Hollywood’ tape and a post-gaffe election

When a tape surfaced of then-candidate Trump speaking in womanizing terms alongside Billy Bush during a 2004 interview for “Access Hollywood,” it was again assumed that – Russian hacking aside – Hillary had this one in the bag.

Except that she didn’t.

Chants of “lock her up!” swirled at Trump’s arena-sized rallies, after he promised to do just that in one of a series of presidential debates lowering the bar of candidate decorum to unforeseen levels.

And after speaking against knowable facts throughout the campaign while stumbling through speeches with off-the-cuff rants, the anti-political-correctness candidate couldn’t have had a more attention grabbing moment than when a tape bearing his voice suggested his fame would allow him to “grab [women] by the p—y.”

Trump won the election by 74 electoral votes.