Donald Trump loves suprlatives, after beating now former Vice-President, Kamala Harris, he can also accurately declare himself, only the second former president in American history, to win the presidency, following a previous failure to win re-election, for a second term.
All the confident declarations, that the race to the White House, between the incumbent Vice-President, and the former President, was “neck and neck” too close to call, the actual results were not all that close.
With both candidates competing for the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win, Donald Trump secured 277 of them, to Kamala Harris’s 244. Trump’s Republican party also won the majority in the United States Senate. The House of Representatives may also go their way, because unlike the presidency, Congress remains too close to call.
In characteristic, bombastic form, the former, now President-elect, declared his so-called Make America Great Again (MAGA) base that got him elected, a movement “like nobody is ever seen before.”
“This is I believe the greatest political movement of all time. There’s never been anything like this in this country and now it’s going to reach a new level of importance, because we’re going to help our country heal. We’re going to fix our borders. We’re going to fix everything about our country…this will truly be the golden age of America” he proclaimed, somewhat grandiosely.
His oppenents would of course, retort that if America needs healing, it is because of him. To say that he is arguably the most controversial figure to ever win the American presidency, and and his re-election a shock not only to his compatriots, but to many around the world, would be a gross understatement.
A dubious distinction he may not like, is that among many firsts, is that as well being the oldest person to ever be elected to the White House, he is also the first person to shrug off a string of convictions, including for sexual abuse, and still win. Trump once boasted that he could go out in New York’s Time Square, shoot someone, and his base would still elect him. That claim does not look so outlandish now.
Trump’s victory will send progressives not only in America, but in the Western world, into virtual despair. British historian, Robert Saunders, expressed such feelings succinctly, in his tweet: “If Lincoln spoke to the ‘better angels of our nature’” he suggests, “Trump calls to our demons. His return is a moral as well as a political tragedy…”
Saunders, is not the only progressive voice to suggest that their loss, and populism’s win is in large measure due to Western liberals’ failure to appeal to the disadvantaged, who in the case of America, erroneously imagine Trump, as their champion against a political establishment that keeps them marginalised.
Trump’s first presidential win, came as a surprise to many, most likely himself included. After four years of what he believed, to use his favourite word, to have been the greatest first term ever, and which many believe to have been little short of disastrous, his political career was deemed to have been all be dead and buried, when he lost to Joe Biden, at the end of that term.
Should his second term be anything like his first, no one will be able to claim to have been taken unawares. The possibility was foretold, much heralded, or as perhaps he might prefer, much trumpeted. Now the rest of the world too, must learn to live and navigate another Trump presidency. There will not be a dull moment.
