Confession: As late as maybe 1am this morning, I didn’t think he would or could do it.
And then the data from Macomb County, Michigan, started to come in. A 7 point Trump victory in that key county in 2020 had seen him lose the state narrowly, but last night he was winning it by 17%.
The scale of the victory is a historic earthquake. It now looks far more likely than not that Donald Trump will win the national popular vote at the third time of asking. His party at the time of writing seems set to win as many as 54 seats in the Senate. It seems likely to expand its majority in the House of Representatives. Trump will enter office in January with an indisputable mandate to govern, and with the political numbers in Congress to enact most of his agenda should he wish to.
He will have, as the fella said, no excuses. The American people have gifted him a victory so broad in scope and scale that his legitimacy as their President cannot be doubted.
I am not qualified to write about the “why” of this victory because, as readers well know, I never quite got it. But he did it anyway, so here are a couple of thoughts:
First, if you watched any American television over the last few weeks – and as an American Football nut I watch a lot of US television – then you couldn’t have missed Trump’s most relentless television ad, and the topic it was on: Transgenderism and gender identity. “Trump’s for you, Kamala’s for they/them” is how it ended. That ad ran relentlessly during NFL games – a sport that has an audience that is overwhelmingly male and overwhelmingly blue collar. Last night Trump rang up unprecedented votes for a Republican with Hispanic and black men.
I do not think these things are unconnected. There’s a lesson there for the right globally – the transgender issue is toxic for the left and progressives, especially with male voters. The Trump campaign bet big on it and appears to have won big for doing so.
Second, the power of media to influence politics in the United States is entirely broken. In some sense I think the right may take some time to get used to this idea – but none of it mattered. Not the indictments. Not the convictions. Not the chatter about decency and civility. Not January 6th.
There is a separate debate about whether this stuff should have mattered – and I think it should have mattered – but no debate to be had over whether it did matter. The voters decide what the election is about, and it was not about almost any of the things that the media focused on.
Third, an election result changes the captain at the wheel of the ship, but it doesn’t remove the icebergs in the ship’s path. The United States is still on course for a ruinous debt crisis in our lifetimes and that problem is accelerating. Liberals and progressives will be chastened for a few weeks, but they still maintain full control of America’s elite institutions. Donald Trump may prove me wrong on this, but solving the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East in 24 hours might just end up being harder than his campaign rhetoric suggested. Some promises he made in the campaign he may yet live to regret.
This was always my objection: Trump is probably the closest living embodiment of the great man theory of politics – that solving the problems of your nation is as simple as handing the wheel to a modern-day Bismarck or Augustus and watching them transform your destiny. My fear has always been that disillusionment with Trump over the next four years would lead to an electorate that runs back into the arms of progressives hungry and angry to redress the balance.
That fear persists.
Fourth, the best news: The United States Supreme Court has been secured for a generation. Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito can now retire gracefully in the summer. And should.
Fifth, this will not be smooth sailing for us here in Ireland. Assuming Trump means what he says about NATO, defence, Ukraine, foreign policy and trade, then there will be an enormous push in the European Union towards reduced dependence on the United States in all these fields. In turn that will mean more demands made of Ireland. This country has some serious debates ahead.
Sixth, another area of enormous consequence: Climate policy. With a Trump victory in the United States, the pretence that the globe is going to hit climate targets is eliminated entirely. Which poses a big question for Irish voters in the upcoming election: You’re taking enormous pain – for what?
Seventh, Trump is in the process of de-racialising American politics, and this can only be a good thing. It is a very good thing for black and hispanic voters that the Democratic Party can no longer take them for granted. There has been much ink spilt by reporters globally to portray Trump as some kind of white nationalist fuelling white working class resentment. But had he relied only on white votes last night, Kamala Harris would now be President. Trump, ironically, is the man using ideas and patriotism to cross racial and tribal lines. Diversity, how are ya?
Eighth and finally – what a personal achievement. Donald Trump has many personal qualities I dislike, but two that are worthy of absolute admiration. He never quits. And he doesn’t give a damn what people say about him.
It’s often been said that he sets a bad example for children. Those two qualities, though, we should all wish to instill in our children.