In the light of all the polls and comments in the newspapers I do not think anyone had great confidence in advance of Trump’s victory. I gather from some of the coverage on the night that even Donald Trump himself was talking about the election campaign as having been a tremendous waste of time and money as he didn’t think he had won it.
Nevertheless on the night we really did have another Brexit night with, on ITV, Tom Bradby looking quietly pleased and confident at the beginning along with nearly all ITV’s contributors, the majority of whom were Clinton supporters. But gradually over the course of the night the partying on the Clinton side turned to tears and the reaction of Clinton supporting commentators and journalists turned to despair.
That night I had made the mistake of sitting down to start watching the TV coverage! Then, of course, found it addictive to watch the slow drip drip of good news for Trump, made more dramatic by the moments when Hilary went into the lead and the developing despair of the British and American Establishment commentators especially on the BBC.
It almost made it worth it to pay the BBC’s licence fee!
We now have quite a potentially radical situation in the United States where both Houses of Congress and the Presidency are all Republican badged office holders. If they can behave cooperatively in the way that we would expect of a political party they can make a huge difference to American politics. The third branch of the constitutional “Separation of Powers” is the judiciary. If it can also be transformed as Democrat nominated supreme Court Justices come up for replacement, the Republicans will be able to replace them with Republican nominees and potentially change the constitutional legal basis of the United States.
From the English perspective I think Trump offers more hope of a foreign policy based on “real politique” and old fashioned national interest as against neo-colonialist NeoCon/Liberal interventionist agenda, which has brought catastrophe to so much of the Middle East and undermined the world-wide power and standing of the West. In short there is much to hope for. Also over the course of the next 18 months we have several other very exciting elections to complete the transformation of Western politics!
Exciting times for us all!
Having had to put up with all the nonsense and downright lies from Remoaners over the last few weeks it was a particular low point to hear the BBC Radio 4 item on Woman’s Hour as I was driving on Saturday. On this item we had the classic BBC idea of “balance” with a Californian Black feminist woman Professor of something like Transgender Studies, a Harvard feminist Human Rights Law Professor, a Professor of International” Relations from Sussex University and a Guardian Journalist!
The BBC presenter kept me highly entertained with her increasingly desperate attempts to find a silver lining in the US election outcomes. One of the few of which was apparently the election of a first openly lesbian Governor of the State of Oregan! Even the idea of some women being appointed by Donald Trump in his cabinet failed to sate the BBC’s panels’ despair and fury!