The triumph of Trump
Trump
stuns world; Obama invites him to White House to begin transition; how
he won by making appeal to hearts not heads; why liberals are at fault
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 Carolyn
Supinka, resident of Washington, looks towards the White House
Wednesday after Trump’s victory. Photograph: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
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Edward Helmore in New York
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The triumph of Donald Trump
In
a stunning turnaround at the end of a bitter and polarizing election
campaign, Republican Donald Trump was declared president-elect at 2.30
am this morning. The result, delivered with a clear electoral majority,
was immediately declared one of the greatest presidential election
upsets. “Sorry to keep you waiting, complicated business, complicated
business,” the billionaire businessman and former Apprentice host told
supporters gathered to hear his victory speech at a New York hotel. “I
will be a president for all Americans,” he said. “I say it is time for
us to come together as one united people. For those who have chosen not
to support me in the past, of which there were a few people, I’m
reaching out to you for your guidance and your help so we can work
together and unify our great country.”
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Trump
won 279 electoral delegates, with three states yet to be called,
winning the crucial battleground states of Florida, North Carolina and
Ohio. The Democrats’ “blue wall” in the midwest, including Wisconsin and
Pennsylvania, crumbled against all poll predictions. But the
Republicans didn’t just take the White House, they kept control of the
House and Senate. Trump’s opponent Hillary Clinton, defeated in her
quest to make history as the first female president, conceded the race
in a phone call on Wednesday morning but didnot address her hundreds of
dumbstruck supporters who had gathered at the Javits Convention Center
in New York. Barack Obama invited president-elect Trump to visit the
White House Thursday to begin the process of transition.
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How Trump won
Trump
is the first reality television star and the first non-politician since
Dwight Eisenhower to win the nomination for president of a major
political party. He was the first to spend part of his campaign denying
sexual assault allegations and clashing with the family of a fallen
soldier and a Miss Universe winner. At 70, he is the oldest person in
history to be elected US president. His winning formula was to copy
Ronald Reagan’s simple promise to make America great again and,
according to exit polling data, focusing on fears around terrorism,
immigration and trade. It was an appeal to the heart, not the head, and
his supporters overlooked his obvious flaws.
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Why Clinton lost
How
Hillary Clinton managed to lose an election to a candidate as divisive
and unpopular as Donald Trump will baffle observers and agonize
Democrats for years to come. Some glimpses of rational explanation may
become visible. Incumbent parties rarely hold on to power after eight
years in office. Clinton failed to enunciate a clear economic vision or
address stagnant wage levels and soaring inequality many voters felt
were symptoms of a rigged system. Nor did they trust her. A murky web of
business connections to her family’s charity left many Americans
doubting Clinton’s sincerity. Then there were the emails – percolating
since before she announced her candidacy – which played into the notion
that the Clintons behaved as if the law did not apply to them.
Democrats fail to retake Senate
The
Democratic party failed to retake the US Senate on Tuesday night,
following losses in Florida, Pennsylvania and Indiana, as Republicans
delivered Donald Trump a Congress firmly in conservative control.
Democratic morale was buoyed slightly by a Senate victory in Illinois,
where congresswoman Tammy Duckworth beat the Republican incumbent, Mark
Kirk. Even before election night, the Democrats had given up on hopes of
recapturing the House of Representatives. Trump’s first order of
business will be to select a conservative judge for the supreme court.
The polls were wrong – again
Trump
captured 48% of the popular vote – or 58,909,579 votes to Clinton’s
58,864,093, according to current tallies. Blame the pollsters, sure, but
a hunger for certainty sets expectations that are impossible to meet.
The polls were wrong. And because we are obsessed with predicting
opinions rather than listening to them, we didn’t see it coming. So, the
world woke up believing that Republican candidate Donald Trump had a
15% chance of winning based on polling predictions. People change their
minds, they can decide to not share their opinions or they can flat out
lie. And that’s before you even get to some of the statistical issues
that make polling inaccurate. Nine percent of voters 18-29 voted for
third parties.
World leaders react
Trump’s
surprise victory led to applause in the Russian parliament and a swift
call from President Vladimir Putin, for a new era of
“fully fledged relations” between
his country and the US. Top officials at the European Union have
invited Donald Trump to Europe for an urgent US-EU summit. Donald Tusk,
president of the European council and Jean-Claude Juncker, president of
the European commission, congratulated Trump and urged him to come to
Europe for talks “at your earliest convenience”. Meanwhile UK’s prime
minister Theresa May congratulated Trump, saying Britain and the US have
“an enduring and special relationship based on the values of freedom,
democracy and enterprise”.
Markets drop, stabilize
The
futures market says the Dow will fall by around 300 points, or nearly
2% – a significant drop at its opening, but not the 800-point plunge
anticipated when the shock results rolled in last night. The
UK’s FTSE 100index
slumped 130 points as London markets opened – a fall that was projected
to be considerably greater before Trump took the stage. “It’s because
he sounded more presidential, there was no mention of ‘lock her up” or
‘build a wall’,” said Jeremy Cook, chief economist at money brokers
World First.
Liberals at fault
The woman we were constantly assured was the
best qualified candidateof all time has lost to the least qualified candidate of all time, writes Thomas Frank. Everyone who was anyone
rallied around her,
and it didn’t make any difference. The man too incompetent to insult is
now going to sit in the Oval Office, where he will hand down his
beauty-contest verdicts on the grandees and sages of the old order.
The US has elected its most dangerous leader
Today
the United States – the country that had, from its birth, seen itself
as a beacon that would inspire the world, a society that praised itself
as “the last best hope of earth”, the nation that had seemed to be
bending the arc of history towards justice, as Barack Obama so memorably
put it on this same morning eight years ago – has stepped into the
abyss, writes Jonathan Freedland.
Our columnists react
This is a terrifying moment for America. Hold your loved ones close, says
Steven Thrasher. Meanwhile, Patricia Williams
writes that race and sex stoked deep autonomic responses in the American psyche and
Kate Harding insists that her country hates women, which is bad enough, and pretends it doesn’t, which is worse.
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