Wednesday
November 9, 2016
- The US voters have
decided. Business tycoon and property magnate, one
Donald Trump is the 45th President of the United States
after a campaign that was as nasty and dirty as could be
with personal insults flowing freely.  In the end after what looked like a hard fought and nasty campaign in which no holds were barred, US voters early this morning made it clear that the new person they wanted to see at the White House is the Republican candidate Donald Trump, a man who has never held elected office nor been in governance. Former Secretary of State and one-time First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was rejected by voters who are thought to be white middle class and who felt let down by Washington. And true to form as the results rang out and the Democrats lost out in crucial states, it became obvious that the Hillary Clinton campaign team would have a task of asking the obvious question - what went wrong as she is reported to have phoned Donald Trump conceding defeat. Thus do we have now a real greenhorn in politics taking the reins of arguably the world's most powerful country and the winner Donald Trump in his victory speech made it clear that he would be the President of all of America, just as Hillary had promised. Baffled election watchers are still scratching their heads, not knowing how it happened, but this was a protest vote against the Establishment, against people with close and long links to the White House. Donald Trump made the right noises that galvanised US voters as he trumpeted his mantra of making America Great Again, never mind the fact that he would not deliver on all his promises. He said what the people wanted to hear. The UK-based Guardian gives a pointer as to why Donald Trump won in this analysis, a part of which states - "Trump copied and recast Ronald Reagan’s promise to make America great again. In four words it captured both pessimism and optimism, both fear and hope. The slogan harks back to a supposed golden age of greatness – the 1950s, perhaps, or the 1980s – and implies that it has been lost but then promises to restore it. It went straight to the gut, unlike rival Hillary Clinton’s website manifesto and more nuanced proposals. It was an appeal to the heart, not the head, in a country where patriotism should never be underestimated. Chris Matthews, a host on MSNBC, said in September: “A lot of this support for Trump, with all his flaws which he displays regularly, is about the country – patriotic feelings people have, they feel like the country has been let down. Our elite leaders on issues like immigration, they don’t regulate any immigration it seems. They don’t regulate trade to our advantage, to the working man or working woman’s advantage. They take us into stupid wars. Their kids don’t fight but our kids do. “It’s patriotic. They believe in their
country. .... [There is a] deep sense that the country
is being taken away and betrayed. I think that is so
deep with people that they’re looking at a guy who’s
flawed as hell like Trump and at least it’s a way of
saying I am really angry about the way the elite has
treated my country. And it’s so deep that it overwhelms
all the bad stuff from Trump. It’s that strong. It’s a
strong force wind.” On the Clinton loss this is what the BBC's Nick Bryant wrote - "This election, surely the most extraordinary in American history, was a revolt against the political establishment. And few people personify the political establishment more than Hillary Clinton. During this campaign, for millions of angry voters, she became the face of America's broken politics. Donald Trump managed to persuade enough voters in enough states that he offered a fix. The billionaire cast himself successfully as the ultimate outsider against the ultimate insider. He was the protest candidate. She represented the status quo. Constantly, Hillary Clinton claimed that she was the most qualified candidate. Constantly, she recited her curriculum vitae - her experience as first lady, a US senator for New York, a secretary of state. But in this mad-as-hell election, where there was so much rage and discontent, Donald Trump's supporters saw experience and qualifications as huge negatives. So many people I spoke to during this campaign - especially in the old steel towns of the Rust Belt - wanted a businessman in the White House rather than a career politician. Their hatred of Washington was palpable. So, too, was their hatred of her. It was visceral. I vividly remember talking to a middle-aged woman in Tennessee, who oozed southern charm, who could not have been more polite. But when the subject of Hillary Clinton came up her whole demeanour changed. Hillary Clinton has long had a trust problem, which is why the email scandal loomed so large. She had an authenticity problem. She was seen as the high priestess of an east coast elite that looked down, sneeringly, on working people. The vast riches that the Clintons accumulated since leaving the White House did not help. The former first couple were seen not just as limousine liberals but Lear Jet liberals. Again, their wealth exacerbated her problems with working class voters, even though they happily voted for a property tycoon. In a country where millions more women vote than men, it was thought that her gender would give her a major advantage. But what became clear in the primaries against her rival Bernie Sanders was how hard she found it to enthuse young women voters especially about electing the country's first female president, and shattering the most resilient glass ceiling in global politics. Many women never warmed to her. Some remembered what were interpreted as disparaging remarks made when she was first lady about not wanting to stay at home making cookies. When Donald Trump accused her of enabling her husband's affairs, and of attacking the women who accused Bill Clinton of molesting them, many women nodded in agreement. Hillary Clinton is not a natural campaigner. Her speeches are often flat and somewhat robotic. Her sound-bites sound like sound-bites - prefabricated and, to some ears, insincere. The re-emergence of the email scandal was a huge distraction, and meant that she ended her campaign on a negative message. She struggled always to neatly encapsulate her vision of America again. "Stronger together" was never as snappy as "Make America great again." Indeed, the Clinton campaign went through dozens of possible slogans, which spoke of her difficulties in crafting a message. Her campaign also made tactical errors. It focused resources and time on states she didn't need to win, such as North Carolina and Ohio, rather than spending time shoring up the famed blue wall, those 18 states that have voted Democrat for the past six elections. Mr Trump, with the help of white working class voters, partly demolished that wall by taking Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, a state that hasn't gone Republican since 1984. This was not just a rejection of Hillary Clinton but also a rejection by half of the country of Barack Obama's America, but that is a piece for another day." As the results came in showing a leaning towards Donald Trump, the markets steeped downwards, a sign that the utterances of the property tycoon during his campaign did not inspire confidence in the way he had promised to handle the money market. However in his speech while accepting his new role as the President-elect who would be sworn in on January 20, Donald Trump sounded reconciliatory, a far cry from his hate-filled and vitriolic speeches. This bit we got from the CNN page - "I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be President for all of Americans, and this is so important to me. For those who have chosen not to support me in the past, of which there were a few people, I'm reaching out to you for your guidance and your help so that we can work together and unify our great country. As I've said from the beginning, ours
was not a campaign but rather an incredible and great
movement, made up of millions of hard-working men and
women who love their country and want a better, brighter
future for themselves and for their family. I've spent my entire life in business, looking at the untapped potential in projects and in people all over the world. That is now what I want to do for our country. Tremendous potential. I've gotten to know our country so well. Tremendous potential. It is going to be a beautiful thing. Every single American will have the opportunity to realize his or her fullest potential. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals. We're going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none. And we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it...We will embark upon a project of national growth and renewal. I will harness the creative talents of our people, and we will call upon the best and brightest to leverage their tremendous talent for the benefit of all. It is going to happen...No dream is too big, no challenge is too great. Nothing we want for our future is beyond our reach." Just a reminder. Back then in history one Adolf Hitler, after the defeat of Germany in the First Great War campaigned on a platform of making Germany great again. Congratulations United States of America. Congratulations to the loser who would have become the US' first female President and congratulations to Donald Trump who started off with no chance at all but ended occupying the top seat in the United States of America. This is democracy at work.
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