Melinda Henneberger : Hillary Clinton didn’t so much play the woman card as a whole darn deck of them, and given the historic nature of the night, that was as it should be.  

But who was that delivering Donald Trump’s victory speech for him? Haven’t seen that guy before, though the real @RealDonaldTrump did show up just long enough to make a pee pee joke and promise that as president, he’d take the best possible care of “our African Americans.” And among other pressing questions, why did Melania and Ivanka look so grief-stricken? Somebody had a serious Come To Jesus, and it seems to have inspired fear.  

Matt Lewis : It feels like Trump is on the ropes, and Hillary clinched the nomination before the voting even began. We may look back at this as this week as the moment the General Election began, and the moment when all the stars aligned for Hillary to make history.   

The underrated story was that Renee Ellmers, R-N.C., who was heavily backed by Trump, got destroyed. This should send a chill down every Republican spine.  

Jon Allen : Hillary Clinton has had difficulty convincing some voters that this campaign is about something other than her own ambition for the presidency. Trump’s aggressive attempts to fracture the American community have given her the gift of contrast. He has helped make her the champion of a common struggle that spans lines of race, ethnicity, gender, class, party, decency and dignity.   

Patricia Murphy :  When my little girl was two, she asked, “Mommy, can a girl be a fireman?” because she had never seen a female firefighter in her books or in real life. My heart sank to think she might already see limits for herself, even at two years old, based on the limits she saw on women around her. Along those lines, when I was a girl growing up in Georgia, I always assumed the only way a girl could get to the White House was as a first lady.
It never occurred to me a woman could ever be president because I had never seen a woman compete for the White House. Hillary Clinton initially got to the White House as first lady, but because of her victory Tuesday, little girls’ outlook for their own futures will be different from that of their mothers and grandmothers before them. There will be plenty of time to talk about the politics of the race ahead, but Tuesday night belonged to history.

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