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COMING so soon after Brexit, the Trump victory felt like the killer second punch in a one-two combination. But while Brexit was reviewed by the High Court (and referred to parliament), Trump’s stunning victory cannot be challenged. Although thousands have gone the streets to protest against the result, the American people have clearly spoken.
This is not the first time in recent times that the multi-billion polling industry has got it disastrously wrong: right until the last day before the Brexit referendum, all leading polls showed the Remain camp as being comfortably ahead. Last year, these same pollsters had consistently predicted another hung parliament. In the event, the Conservatives won a small but clear majority.
And yet, despite their less than perfect track record, media pundits across the spectrum accept opinion surveys, and base their analyses on them. Small wonder, then, that they have ended up with so much egg on their faces after the votes were counted in the US election. While I claim no great clairvoyance, I did have a niggling suspicion that the liberal media were discounting not just Hillary Clinton’s unpopularity, but also the passion of Trump’s supporters. And that’s the story of Nov 8: many Democrats simply did not turn up to vote, while Republicans came to the party in unprecedented numbers. Being a pessimist, I placed a small bet on Trump, and won a single malt.
I have no doubt the reasons for the totally unexpected outcome will be analysed ad infinitum by statisticians and pundits. But while politicians and the public will probably be more sceptical about forecasts, the one lesson to emerge is that many voters don’t necessarily declare their intentions to pollsters. The other lesson is that, contrary to received wisdom, minorities are not monolithic blocs that vote as one. Thus, Trump received some support from Hispanics and Afro-Americans, even though all these votes were supposed to go to Clinton.
So what does a Trump presidency mean for America? Bad news, clearly. He has promised to erase the Obama legacy, chief among them being Obamacare, the health insurance scheme that was the jewel in this administration’s crown. Won at huge political cost, it gave millions of Americans health cover for the first time. And while Trump has promised to replace it with some other system, he hasn’t spelled it out yet.
The environment will be a big loser, too. The Paris agreement over carbon emissions, reached after long and bitter discussions, is now at risk. Trump has said many times that global warming is a Chinese ploy to put American industry at a disadvantage. He has also said he would slap high tariffs on Chinese goods, but this would be punishing American consumers without reviving local industries that no longer exist.
After the Brexit referendum, there was a spike in racist attacks in the UK, and many Leave supporters continue to view foreigners with open suspicion and dislike. It remains to be seen if Trump’s win will be followed by similar attacks against minority groups and LGBT people. The election opened up a huge rift between liberal Americans who tend to vote Democrat and angry white working class voters who swept Trump to victory. It will take a leader with a healing touch to bring all Americans together. Thus far, Trump has shown little talent or inclination to achieve reconciliation.
One factor that has been consistently underplayed by the liberal media is the anger that has been building up among ordinary people against bankers and corporate types over the last couple of decades. This one per cent now controls the vast majority of assets. The same rage was on display at the Brexit referendum. As income disparities have soared, together with the obscene salaries and bonuses the rich reward themselves with, establishment politicians like Clinton have curried favour with them instead of curbing these excesses.
It is clear now that Bernie Sanders would have done far better against Trump than Clinton did. As revealed by Wikileaks, the Democratic leadership did everything in their power to defeat Sanders. When Clinton shifted to the left to match her opponent’s progressive agenda, she had little credibility as she was seen as being the Wall Street candidate. Having seen off the Sanders challenge after a series of bruising primary elections, Clinton discovered that the enthusiastic young millions supporting Sanders simply drifted away, deeply disillusioned by a party and a process that had no place for the candidate who promised to fight for them.
Another thing we learned is that ultimately, name and money mean little in the US election. At the start of the process all those months ago, we thought that Jeb Bush and Clinton would breeze through the primaries against little known rivals. In the event, Bush fell by the roadside early on in the campaign, savaged by the repeated Trump insult that he was “low energy”.
Clinton was forced to endure a tough and bitter race to the nomination. Trump ran his campaign mostly with his own cash, with many small donations. Clinton received large amounts of corporate contributions and ran a large and well-funded campaign. But despite all her many advantages, she still failed in her second attempt. Clearly, her long political career is now over.
For the rest of the world, the implications of a Trump presidency are unclear. He has indicated that he will pull American troops out of the Middle East, and tear up the nuclear agreement with Iran. But candidates tend to make a lot of promises on the campaign trail, only to be brought back to earth by policy wonks and bureaucrats who point to US interests. Change on the scale Trump would like to see is difficult to implement.
Trump has sprung two major surprises: first by winning the Republican nomination, and then by beating Clinton. Let us see if he can surprise us a third time by turning out to be a better president than we currently expect.
Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2016
