Two years ago, as we set out to cover the long run-up to this election and the prospect of Donald Trump's third run for the White House, we actually started with an autopsy from 2013, and the set of political assumptions that led to Donald Trump's first win.

Back then, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden

had just been overwhelmingly re-elected.

The Republican Party was in disarray,

and the Republican National Committee had ordered a kind of investigation,

an autopsy, into what had happened.

And what you can see in the conclusions are the political assumptions at that time.

Mainly, this idea of demographic destiny. The belief that the country's increased racial diversity

was transforming the political landscape.

That diversity, both parties thought,

would largely benefit Democrats.

And to survive, the Republicans concluded

they would need to become more racially inclusive

and less anti-immigration.

Of course, what we know now was that this was only half-right.

America's increased diversity has transformed a political landscape,

just not in the way people expected.

Now, it's Democrats, not Republicans, who are the ones in disarray,

and have been left reeling by the emergence of an increasingly multiracial coalition,

which rejected the argument that Trump was a threat to the country,

and chose to elect him again.

Already, the unexpected result has inspired Democrats to conduct an autopsy of their own, with elected officials, activists, pollsters, and donors, all weighing in.

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