In the final scene of The Candidate, probably the finest movie ever made about American politics, the slightly dazed, upset winner of a seat in the United States Senate engages in an earnest conversation with his campaign manager. The senator-elect in the 1972 movie, played by Robert Redford, inquires in genuine puzzlement: “What do we do now?”That simple question will linger for months in the US as journalists, historians and politicians try to make sense of last week’s historic election. As the dust continues to settle, many key lessons have already emerged that help clarify what may lie ahead. Here are some early observations from an election that has sent pundits to their thesauruses in search of superlatives.AdvertisementMoney does not seem to matter as it once did. Republicans easily won the fundraising sweepstakes, but those victories quickly turned pyrrhic. They lost individual contests decisively. Elon Musk invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Republican candidates, especially in Texas. None won. The world’s richest man embarrassed himself.In the money sweepstakes, the biggest winners turned out not to be candidates at all. Local television stations triumphed. Most of the advertising dollars were spent there. But those windfalls to the station owners may be short-lived. It seems that a long-overdue reckoning over the effect of advertising in politics will happen soon. If hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on losing candidates, it stands to reason that a close examination of what actually works in politics is in order.If advertising did not help, it can surely hurt. For the last half century, “October surprise” in politics has meant an unexpected, last-minute event that influences the outcome of the November election. This year’s “surprise” was an especially ugly negative advertisement in Ohio’s gubernatorial race where the Republican candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, ran an attack ad featuring his opponent’s estranged, addled mother who called her daughter, Amy Acton, a “liar”.AdvertisementAlso Read | Why I envy Abdul El-Sayed and his freedom to be himselfActon had not seen her mother since she was 12 years old, and her brother had been taken from their mother’s care after their stepfather was charged with raping Acton. The explosive advertisement became a statewide and national litmus test. Most politicians wisely denounced it. President Donald Trump and Vice President J D Vance supported it. Some analysts are saying that Vance’s endorsement will disqualify him from a chance to run for president in two years.Money and corruptionWhile money may matter less in electing politicians, it still matters a lot when it comes to the personal wealth of candidates. In his first term, Trump promised to moderate his family’s dealmaking, following the time-honoured tradition of not using the nation’s highest office as a way to get rich, at least while in office. All bets were off two years ago when Trump returned to the White House. Smugly, he dismissed concerns about the dangers of conflicts of interest. “Nobody cared,” he argued.That was a serious miscalculation, and potential presidential corruption became a major campaign issue. Trump, his family and their business associates will spend the next two years explaining to investigators how they made so much money so quickly.A changing political mapEighteen years after Barack Obama was elected president, the political map has begun to reflect the actual make-up of the country. The race, religion or gender of a candidate seems not to be much of a factor. In Ohio, Acton breezed to victory, joining 16 other female governors, setting a record. In Georgia, another Democrat, Keisha Lance Bottoms, became the country’s first Black female governor. The first Native American woman, Peggy Flanagan, a Democrat, was elected to the Senate from Minnesota. In another historic first, a Black man, Scott Colom, appeared headed for victory in the Senate race in Mississippi, which Trump carried by more than 23 points two years ago. A Muslim, Abdul El-Sayed, won a Senate seat in Michigan.you may likeYouth on the marchThe country’s two largest cities — New York and Los Angeles — will soon be run by young neophyte politicians. Zohran Mandami, elected in New York a year ago, and Nithya Raman, just elected in Los Angeles, are both affiliated with a leftist movement, the Democratic Socialists of America. Incidentally, both are children of parents born in India. Raman was born in Kerala, moved to Louisiana with her family when she was six, and went on to receive degrees from Harvard and MIT.Almost lost in the blizzard of election news was the story that another Democratic Socialist, Janeese Lewis George, 38, was elected mayor of Washington, DC. That makes three new progressive mayors.And in journalism, three of anything makes a trend!The writer, founding dean of the O.P. Jindal University School of Journalism in Sonipat, was also dean of the graduate journalism schools at Columbia and Berkeley