So, it looks as though he’s done it. Whatever you think of him as a person and a candidate, you have to credit him with taking on the entire Republican establishment, beating them hands down, and then taking on the entire Democrat party as well as half the Republicans (again), the media, the liberal establishment, big business, and pretty much the whole of world opinion – and winning, fair and square. Most other people would have bottled it half-way, but Trump carried himself over the line almost single-handedly. Whatever else, you have to congratulate him for that, and this blog does.
As for what happens next? Who the hell knows?! Here are my thoughts.
I was right on a few points: Trump’s win (obviously) and Trump winning decisively, albeit I thought he’d win the popular vote. I was also right about the polling methodology being utter bollocks, but I don’t think that makes me anything more than a casual observer with a functioning brain. Brexit served as the warning, and now this has cemented it. Pollsters will either have to make major adjustments to their methodology or go the way of the village blacksmith.
According to some, Trump’s win was down to racism. Uh-huh. A lot of regions which voted for Obama voted for Trump, and I read somewhere that 31% of Latino men voted for Trump. The idea that Trump’s support was restricted to racist white folk was always bullshit, but it suited the narrative of how the left wanted America to be. They’re almost disappointed that the majority of Americans aren’t racist hicks.
With the Republicans winning big in the Presidency, Senate, House, and Governors races this is as much a repudiation of Obama’s “legacy” than a judgement on Trump and Clinton. The entire media made it out to be about those two and gave Obama a free pass on everything, but many people will view Obama as having been a disaster. Chief among his failed policies must be Obamacare, and it would be interesting to see how many people voted Trump after seeing their premiums triple weeks before the election. I think the coming year will see the critical analysis of Obama’s Presidency which has been missing during his time in office.
Those Republicans who refused to back Trump must be looking a bit foolish now, eh?
Wailing Lefties can’t seem to make up their minds if Trump is going to launch nuclear weapons on his first day in office or if he’s a puppet of Putin. I doubt either is true, but I do believe Trump has no interest in confronting Russia over Syria. Personally I think not going to war against Russia over Syria is a good thing for everyone.
I don’t think Trump will make America great again. I think the best that can be hoped for is he slows the decline and throws enough light on the appalling state of American politics for people to wake up and start electing proper politicians with sensible policies again. As others have said, Trump was merely a brick through the window. Sensible Republicans should now be looking at this as an opportunity, assuming any exist. Democrats might want to be looking in McDonald’s for job vacancies.
I’ll add others as I think of them.
UPDATES
1) A lot of people have been, and still are, drawing parallels between Trump and Hitler. Was Hitler really a household name in Germany for three decades leading up to 1934? I kinda think we all know a lot more about Trump than what we’re letting on.
2) Most of the reaction from Clinton supporters or anti-Trumpers I have seen on social media is basically virtue-signalling. Which is ironic given their favoured candidate just lost a campaign that was largely based on virtue-signalling.
3) I won a 100 Euro bet, placed two months ago with a work colleague, that Trump would win. Heh.
4) Obama’s use of Executive Orders and his African-style Presidency – “I’m President and the people voted for me so I shall do as I like” – isn’t looking so smart now, is it Democrats? There are reasons why limitations are put on Presidential power, and one of them is it might not just be the good guys that wield it.
Here’s my prediction from here; Trump will be a perfectly reasonable president. His mouth is oversized, but his actions will be small.
An enemy of my enemy is my friend and today Donald is my friend as life under the Clinton’s on the back of Obama would have been painful even down here in Australia. Maybe the pain will now start being applied to those very large Australian donators to the Clinton Foundation.
Trump has said some intelligent things about family, marriage and nations recently and lets hope he develops this further. The cynic in me says that we have seen all this before and Presidents are selected not elected. Right now the US political scene is exciting, another Clinton would have been the death knell, maybe as you say the best possible outcome would be that he restores some reality into the political scene in Washington. If global warming is cancelled in the first 100 days then we will know that he is the real deal.
https://www.clintonfoundation.org/contributors?category=%2410%2C000%2C001+to+%2425%2C000%2C000
Spot on as usual, Tim.
My take on Trump is, given the chance to be president, he will opt for reason and caution. Whether he can be statesmanlike remains to be seen, but he artfully grabbed people’s attention initially by saying what they were thinking when no one else would even remotely touch the subjects, but wisely began to dial it back as the election approached. Comparing him to Hitler is so ludicrous it is barely worth commenting on, though the day Trump invades Russia, sends people to concentration camps as well as claiming he is Socialist and capitalism must be destroyed (yes, Hitler did all those things, which may surprise many lefties) then I might believe he is more like the Fuhrer than I thought. (On this one can only assume that precious few on the left have read history books and actually learned what Hitler did; merely latching on to name calling remains unconvincing.)
I agree Trump overcame huge odds to succeed: he was more of an independent than a Republican. Hopefully he has set the bar for future Republicans to not pussyfoot around as ersatz Democrats and take the message to the people. What he does in office after January — and not forgetting Obama still has time remaining in office to do a lot of damage to the west’s institutions, as he so loves — is going to matter a lot even if, because of the vast amount of deadwood to be cleared before Trump drains the Swamp, it takes time. I anticipate the new President will move more slowly than his detractors think he will. After all, he has been in business a long time and he probably hasn’t thrown his all into projects, developments and investments without a lot of thought.
Hillary I believe would have carried on the Obama legacy (and very destructive it was too for the social structure of America) while currying favour with all those middle-eastern despots who plied her with cash. But, she is gone and what a bad choice she was on reflection. Despite being painted over, spruced up and propped up (literally) she had little to offer other than offering open doors on borders and the treasury. Normally the latter is infallible in winning the votes of the peasants but this time it was a clumsy miscalculation. Not very good for a politician who claimed to be far more experienced than her opponent.
We shall see, but after this incredibly thoughtful analysis by me — and I rank among the world’s least thoughtful people — can I just say with as much maturity and dignity as I can muster…
Fucking hell! Yes! What a day!
Until you mentioned it I had not thought to compare Trump with Hitler but now I have there are indeed some similarities. Particularly in the area of state control over the private sector to rebuild the health of the nation. Not through nationalisation but crony capitalism. However the similarities disappear as the reasons for doing so are quite different. Hitler wanted to do so for aggressive reasons Trump for defence and prosperity. Racism is not there as Hitler viewed it more in the vain of a means of protectionism and to sort out racial problems that Obama has exacerbated.
America! Fuck Yeah!
That is all.
Bank stocks up. Footsie is up – 1 point so far.
I don’t understand, wasn’t voting in that buffoon Trump going to cause financial markets to crash?
Hitler seems to have had two main motives (in addition to his general lust for power).
(i) Acquire lebensraum for the Master Race at the expense of those subhumans, the Slavs.
(ii) Persecute the Jews: he did consider expulsion, but in the end opted for mass murder.
Since Trump has clearly no interest in (i) or (ii), and presumably has only a moderate interest in political power, since he didn’t seek any until he was seventy, the comparison with Hitler is loopy. Or a sign of such ignorance of history and literature that they can’t find any plausible comparison. I blame state schools.
On similarities with Hitler and the persecution of Jews. Trump is not antisemite, he does business with Jews, is pro-Israel and has Jewish members of his family. It is quite refreshing that many of the senior figures that he has attacked just happen to be American Jews. It will be a good thing if he ends this Jewish conspiracy thing, yes Jews have been considerably successful and unsurprisingly some of them are “bad guys”. He has identified some of these bad American guys and it has nothing to do with them being Jews, power corrupts regardless of identity. As for Hitler I think he was more anti-Bolshevik than antisemite.
So which authoritarian leader can we relate him to at this very early President elect point in time:
Lenin, no
Hitler, no
Mussolini, yes
Peron, yes
Stalin, no
Mao, no
Blair, yes
Obama, yes
@Steve
What else would you expect he is a property developer by trade after all.
Point (4) on your update is hugely important; the Constitution is relatively silent about foreign policy as there was a consensus that the USA would stay the hell out of the world’s business. This began to change around the time of the Spanish/American war when they went on an expansionist binge (grabbing Hawaii and The Philippines, for example).
The checks and balances have recently been diluted even more. Now everybody is concerned that Trump has the nuclear codes when, really, it’s the ability of a president to undertake war without seeking permission from the legislator that is the key problem. Conventional weaponry has killed far more than nukes…..
Re: point 4 – without wishing to denigrate our gracious host’s analytical skills, let’s be real: a child could figure that one out. I mean that: “What would I do if the shoe was on the other foot?” is a question that occurs to children; what was truly astounding is that it didn’t seem to occur to the Democratic party. (And it wasn’t just the president making that mistake.)
Of course, the Democrats could be forgiven for assuming that, if the shoe were on the other foot, it would never be wedged firmly into their backsides; the Republican party has been bringing a fart to a shitfight for 30 years, so what’s to fear?
But beyond that, and beyond their own hubris, there was a reason the Democrats didn’t worry that they might be on the receiving end of their own bullshit, and that reason is that, between vote fraud, media supremacy, demographic change and soft fascism, they never expected to lose another election again. How glorious it is to see them get thoroughly fucked.
As for the comparisons to Hitler and the associated lamentations from the world’s many morons, I think it’s important to keep two things in mind:
1. It’s fucking hilarious;
2. Whoever the Republican nominee had been, he would have been compared to Hitler; if he had won, then the lamentations would be just as loud; and, crucially, the bleating and crying of the left today is much the same as the bleating and crying of the right in 2012 and 2008. It’s just not being amplified by the media. And while I think the woe was considerably more justified in ’08 and ’12, in all cases I recall something I saw Peter Hitchens say recently on youtube. (I mean I watched it recently; I don’t remember when he said it.) He said that politics had become a form of idolatry, supplanting religion in a godless age, and he might be right. People react as if they are changing gods rather than presidents. Did they used to react that way? I’m far too ignorant to know, but it definitely seems like a bad thing that they do it at all. We would all benefit from a general lowering of the temperature around politics.
Just let me get in a few more days of schadenfreude first.
Whoops, I meant “It just wasn’t being amplified by the media.
Also “a child could figure that one out” wasn’t meant to sound so insulting
I wonder if a better comparison is to de Gaulle? If so, the Pieds-Noirs de nos jours are in for quite a disappointment.
dearieme,
Or a sign of such ignorance of history and literature that they can’t find any plausible comparison. I blame state schools.
Ding ding! We have a winner!
Dr Chinstrap,
Also “a child could figure that one out” wasn’t meant to sound so insulting
We’re thick skinned around here. Thanks for your comment.
and, crucially, the bleating and crying of the left today is much the same as the bleating and crying of the right in 2012 and 2008.
Yeah, I’ve just written a post which touches on that.
This is a bit old, but for an anti-semite, Donald J. Trump sure married off a 2/3 of his current married children to Jews. Hell, even Ivanka have converted to Orthodox Judaism in accordance to her husband Jared Kushner’s religion.
“Maybe the pain will now start being applied to those very large Australian donators to the Clinton Foundation.”
AUSTRALIA has finally ceased pouring millions of dollars into accounts linked to Hillary Clinton’s charities. Which begs the question: Why were we donating to them in the first place?
http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/australia-ceases-multimilliondollar-donations-to-controversial-clinton-family-charities/news-story/219577919ed8dfbd79cf808321234eba