It is (almost) over.

Hillary Clinton, the most qualified person ever to run for the office of President of the United States of America, is about to lose to a person who called Mexicans ‘rapists’, demeaned women and not published his tax returns, and has had six bankruptcies.

With their voting choices, Americans are about to elect a man who mocked war heroes, the disabled, a man with no coherent plan for anything substantive, a man who has harassed several women.

Despite all the signs, all the scandal, any single one of which would have killed a campaign in earlier times, Donald Trump had them all, and is now so close to becoming President.

This is America in 2016.

Just like with Brexit, the polls from talking heads were wrong. Hillary Clinton was never behind at any stage, but now stares down the barrel of defeat at the electoral college, the same fate that befell Al Gore, her husband’s Vice President, back in 2000. Only that this time, she may not have the consolation of a close race in Florida decided by ‘hanging chads’. This message is clear. Donald Trump has promised to ‘Make America Great Again’, and all indications point to the fact that he will get the chance to make good on that promise.

But whose America?

Donald Trump is the crystallization of all the things that White America has felt since Barack Obama became President in 2008. Back then, voting him in made them feel like a ‘post-racial society’. It was a feel-good vote. In 2012, the black vote – and his own excellent persona and campaign strategy – returned him to the White House.

Now, that feel-good factor is gone, and moral licensing has fully taken over. White America has paid its dues by having a black President for eight years, and are now free to indulge all their worst instincts. Donald Trump ran for President at the perfect time, and has relentlessly and successfully played to these instincts, riding the wave to the gates of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

In February, after victory in the Nevada GOP primary, Trump said he loved the poorly educated, and that is with good reason. That white non-college educated voter base has been his key constituency since he announced his candidacy nearly 18 months ago. They are the ones most susceptible to his racial dog whistles and his rhetoric to ‘Make America Great Again’.

They are likely to find, however, that a President Trump is just as elitist, if not more so, than a President Hillary Clinton.

After twice running for President and being perceived as the favourite both times, Hillary Clinton must now confront a second, and perhaps final, disappointment. In 2008, she could not get past a once-in-a-generation campaigner called Barack Obama, and even though she eventually brushed aside Bernie Sanders through a hefty dose of elite support, it has now met a brick wall with Trump. A wall she might not be able to scale.

Despite strong organization, dozens of surrogates and newspaper endorsements from coast-to-coast, her chances at the White House appear to be diminishing by the hour. What many expected to be a solid, comfortable victory has turned into a nail biter. A cliff-hanger. It is like a football team being 3-0 up at half time, conceding three goals in the second half, and resorting to extra-time and perhaps a penalty shoot-out to decide the winner.

How did she get here? Racism is the biggest factor, and White America are making themselves perfectly clear: ‘Making America Great Again’ is synonymous with electing someone who plays to their whiteness.

There are other consequential factors. Hillary Clinton’s long career in the public eye has brought with it one scandal after another, the controversy about her private email being the most newsworthy. Combined with the sexism on display by Donald Trump – that he has suffered no ill effects for – and being viewed as part of the establishment in a year where establishment viewpoints have been rejected in Britain and elsewhere, means that 2016 was probably the worst year for her to contest the Presidency.

It is not yet over, but the mood is darkening among those who thought America would be able to reject the racism, sexism, protectionism and authoritarianism that Donald Trump represents.

Instead, he stands closer to the White House than ever.