Donald Trump and his historic victory are American democracy.
Kamala Harris and Joe Biden claimed Trump was a mortal threat to democracy.
The American people emphatically disagreed. It looks like Trump will be the first Republican presidential candidate to win the national popular vote since George W Bush in 2004.
Whether you like him or not, that’s an extraordinary achievement, a nearly unbelievable comeback, a triumph of one man’s will, and of democracy itself.
The Democrats claimed Trump was a Nazi, the new Adolf Hitler. That was surely the most ridiculous rhetorical overreach in modern democracy.
Trump increased his support among blacks, increased by double digits among Hispanics, won a majority of Catholics, more women than anyone imagined, and over half the electorate in a high-turnout election.
Although Trump’s campaign avoided policy substance, it is still a magnificent demonstration of American democracy.
Whether you like Trump or not, the result is an enormous personal vindication for him – assassination attempts, felony convictions, the near hysterical opposition of almost all the media, almost all of Hollywood, an even higher proportion of academia, and with a huge financial advantage for the Harris campaign, Trump overcame all obstacles.
It’s not Trump but the Democrats who’ve had the problem with democracy. Everything Trump has achieved he’s achieved democratically. His appalling behaviour on January 6, 2021, involved encouraging a violent riot, not a military coup.
He was a pariah then. His comeback testifies to his astonishing will, energy and persistence.
At the beginning of the Republican primaries, Trump was well behind Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis. But he decisively won the primaries.
The Democrats for the past eight years have been scared of democracy. Hillary Clinton in 2016 was the party establishment candidate and there was hardly a primary process. Covid in 2020 enabled Biden to campaign from his basement in a disembodied and highly artificial fashion. Biden governed in an equally isolated fashion, avoiding any spontaneous press interactions.
Biden’s selfish decision to hang on as long as possible constricted the possibility of a Democratic primary process. Instead, the party imposed Vice-President Harris without primaries. Harris was a weak candidate who, like Biden, tried to avoid the normal give and take of democratic politics – press conferences, unsympathetic interviews, unscripted interactions with voters.
Harris has never won a Democratic primary. A democratic process would have yielded a candidate like Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, or Pennsylvania Governor, Josh Shaprio. But the Democratic Party was scared of democracy. Ultimately, it out smarted itself, a victim of its own cynical tactics.
It was scared of any democracy involving Trump, too. So the Democrat establishment, quite improperly using every organ of state it could lay its hands on, tried to criminalise Trump’s politics with some of the most ridiculous criminal prosecutions in American history. The American people just didn’t buy it.
Nonetheless, most voters probably aren’t in love with Trump, in the way they once were with Ronald Reagan, or before him Jack Kennedy, or before him Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Rather, they voted for Trump in spite of his failings, while admiring his strength and purpose.
The most telling figures were these. Going into election day, some 72 per cent of Americans thought their country was on the wrong track. Barely 40 per cent approved of the job Biden was doing. No incumbent party candidate has ever won the presidency with figures like that.
This was an election which any professional politician should have won against Harris. It’s tempting to think that De Santis, or Nikki Haley, might have had a bigger victory. But these coulda beens, woulda beens, aren’t worth a hill o’ beans.
Trump is the guy who actually did it, won the Republican primaries, survived the assassin’s bullet, and won an unprecedented vote.
While the polls told us broadly the truth, that the election would be fairly close, they did once more underestimate Trump’s vote nationally and in several battleground states.
How is it that the polls keep under estimating Trump in this way?
When Trump spoke after his victory the first thing he said was that he wanted now to heal the nation.
Trump seemed almost benign in this moment.
It’s worth recalling that the Democrats never accepted the legitimacy of Trump’s first victory, dishonestly constructing a Russian collusion conspiracy which had no basis in fact, and mobilising every part of the government that thought Trump beyond the pale, especially, to their everlasting shame, many former intelligence chiefs.
The good thing is this time Trump’s victory is clear cut. Everyone should accept the legitimacy of his presidency, including everyone overseas, including allies such as Australia.
These are bound to be pretty turbulent times. A calm temperament, a positive outlook, a steady approach, strong message discipline and a positive attitude would serve all interlocutors well.
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