Wednesday, 9 November 2016

US Election Results 2016: Trump victory writes new chapter in US history

Donald Trump is a hugely effective communicator.

Sir Elton John apparently said of him he's the best live performer who doesn't sing and doesn't play a musical instrument. He communicates brilliantly clearly.

But one thing that might have been lost on some of his audience was his promise to deliver "Brexit plus, plus, plus".

The reasons why Britain pulled out of the EU have not been a central concern to many Americans, but what it signified to Donald Trump was something important.

If a country as boring, sensible, "small c" conservative was going to vote for Brexit - with all the uncertainty it would bring - he was sure that the American people could also be persuaded to make their own leap.

I went with Donald Trump to the re-opening of his Turnberry golf course on Scotland's west coast, the day after the Brexit vote.

He gave a news conference on the ninth tee, just alongside the Atlantic Ocean. That day the 3,000-mile stretch of water between Britain and America never seemed shorter. It was when he became convinced that the American people would rally to his message of MAGA - Make American Great Again.
Donald Trump recognised the fury of blue collar America that felt the country was heading in the wrong direction; the concern of people who felt that immigration had got out of control, that trade deals had left American workers at a disadvantage, that Democrats would try to take away their guns, and skew the Supreme Court in a more liberal direction.

And he recognised maybe an overriding narrative that the country was changing too fast and in ways that the politicians in Washington didn't recognise or care about.

So his message as the political outsider, that he would tear down the walls of the establishment and use the left over bricks and masonry to build a wall along the southern border, resonated.

The campaign in the final weeks was turbulent in all directions.

He came through the Access Hollywood tape scandal. Women came forward to say that he had made unwanted advances to them. There were Twitter storms of varying intensity.
Hillary Clinton would have problems of her own with the intervention of the FBI in this campaign. Who knows what impact that had?

One thing that never wavered throughout all this was the huge crowds turning up at Mr Trump's rallies, believing that he was the answer to their prayers.

That gave the billionaire businessman an unshakable confidence that the pollsters and analysts and the media were not seeing what he was seeing: many more people would turn out to vote for him than the conventional instruments of political measurement would acknowledge.

Mr Trump was right again. His support was consistently understated.

And so in the pages of American history, a new and astonishing chapter has been written. A man with no experience of government in any shape or form, and who's never held elected office, is the next President of the United States. He's confounded his critics and detractors.

And Mr Trump will go to the White House with a clean sweep, and huge power - the presidency, a Republican Senate and Republican control of the House of Representatives.

He's got the means to deliver. He'll be able to get his appointee to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. He won't have the deadlock that Barack Obama had to contend with.

He's promised to make America great again. Now he's got to deliver.

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