Daily News Editorial

Tr(i)ump

10 November 2016

So, America did not get its first woman President, after all, with a maverick real estate mogul, Reality Show star and a complete stranger to politics ending the white house dreams of Hillary Clinton in a mind boggling reversal of electoral fortunes that has stunned the world.

Donald Trump had to brave severe odds to achieve the feat, with the entire Washington establishment and the media ranged against him. Even Republican senators and stalwarts such as Paul Ryan abandoned him in the face of widespread criticism of his brash and abrasive manner and a string of scandals that did not resonate with conservative values.

Trump’s was an uphill task from the beginning of his nomination with commentators backed by a highly partisan media declaiming that the tycoon lost the White House race the day he won the nomination on the Republican ticket. Their assessments were not far-fetched, with the Republican White House hopeful turning out to be a loose cannon, pledging to deport immigrants en masse and calling Mexicans, who formed a sizable Latino vote, rapists and murderers.

He also did not endear himself to the women voters, or so it seemed, with the outbreak of the ‘groping’ scandal and the vituperative jibes he made at his Democratic rival that was thought to have outraged the female voters that comprised 53 per cent of the American electorate. Above all, his non-conformist posturing was seen to have alienated the conservatives that formed the core of the Republican support base. All these factors cumulatively taken gave Trump no chance from the word go - or so it was portrayed by the media pundits and commentators.

However, what these critics failed to reckon with was the anger and disillusionment of a large swathe of the American electorate with the political establishment and Wall Street shenanigans. These segments felt left out in the scheme of things and wanted to break away with the system.

In Donald Trump they saw an “outsider” untainted by establishment politics. He represented the chance for a clean break and a whole new order. What he said or did mattered little.

The US election also laid bare the peculiarities of the American electorate. It was taken for granted that the black American and the Hispanic vote would go overwhelmingly to Clinton together with the female vote, which alone it was thought, would fell Trump. However the polls showed a different picture. Hitherto traditional “Blue” states such as Pensylvania, and North Carolina with a huge non-white population and white collar workers who vote Domocrat, went “Red” this time around which demonstrated that a large subterranean vote had gone Trump’s way.

The frustration of the blue collar workers, who saw their jobs taken away from them by China and others, an issue which was drummed up stridently by Trump, also turned the tide against the Democratic candidate notwithstanding her pledges to empower the middle class Americans. The surfacing once again of the private E-mail issue of Hillary Clinton, although thought to have died down after the FBI dropped its investigations, also had its impact on the chances of Clinton.

But the biggest casualty in the November 8 American Presidential Election, apart from Hillary Clinton of course, is the polls industry in the US whose credibility now lie in tatters after, from the very inception projecting a runaway victory for Clinton. This is reminiscent of the Brexit polls forecasts which stated that the UK would remain in the EU. All exit polls in the early voting gave Clinton a victory and even on the eve of the election the Democratic candidate was supposed to be leading by a clear margin.

With the rancour and bitterness of a “dirty” election campaign now behind the contenders, Trump was magnanimous in victory, receiving the congratulations of his vanquished opponent warmly and with appropriate words of his own. There is therefore no chance of Hillary Clinton being “locked up” as he threatened to do during the second Presidential debate. Trump blamed the whole system as crooked and hinted at one point that he might not be accepting the results of an election under a “rigged” system.

Be that as it may, what will Trump’s victory mean for the world, for there is plenty on his plate at present? How will he tackle the IS menace and the Syrian catastrophe? He is already on record saying that he will work closely with Putin of Russia, the latter himself wishing for a Trump victory. Clinton in her Presidential debate stated that she intends setting up a No Fly zone in Syria which critics said was fraught with danger with Russian planes bombarding Syrian territory occupied by IS fighters. Will Trump, jointly with Putin, come up with a solution that would put a halt to the human tragedy in that part of the world? What will be the Asian policy of the new President elect? Will there be a deviation from the Asia “Pivot” of Barack Obama? How will the election of the new President affect Sri Lanka’s relations with the US?