Saturday 12 November 2016

Why Aren't I 50 Points Ahead You Might Ask?

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"Reality is not always probable, or likely." - Jorge Luis Borges

I was more or less neutral  before the result but influenced by Rod Liddle, who told me on Tuesday evening that Trump was probably the lesser evil by a whisker. Watching in the early hours of Wednesday, I found myself delighted when he won so many states he wasn't supposed to have a chance in. I now think he will be good. After all, he has defied expectations all along.
He has proved to be a remarkably good politician and a salesman of genius who likes to win. He has achieved something huge by both both the two parties, the Clinton machine, the Bush machine, the religious right and the bipartisan establishment. Now he may get sideline the climate change industry and institute a rational immigration policy.
I think he'll choose good people and astonish the world by his reasonableness, though I fear he may be too reasonable.
This is the first time an obviously unpleasant man has won a presidential election since ...when?
Johnson maybe (before my time) but he got in because of Kennedy's murder. Nixon though crooked was not so repellent as Trump. Before that, the 19th century I suppose.
Hillary of course was even more unlikable.
People who have had business dealings with Trump testify to how unpleasant he is though he is said to be charming at dinner parties.But the coarseness he displayed throughout he campaign was I suddenly see a brilliant act to appeal to the voters he wanted and to provide endless free advertising.
And he addressed a sassy feminist journalist at a press conference as 'beautiful'. This might be the end of PC. And only someone as uninhibited and unafraid of causing offence as he (can't think of such a person offhand) could end PC.
What I like is that he won despite a chaotic and amateur campaign and hopeless organisation. This meant his movement was a people's revolt.
And he is the nearest to a Pat Buchanan that we can hope for.
It was a remarkable victory and a landslide even though he lost narrowly the popular vote. Had the electoral college not existed the campaign would have been fought in another way, Never trump voters who lived in safe blue states would have voted for him and he would still have won.
The big question - have the Northern non-graduates left the Democrats for good as the Southerners had by 1980?
It's interesting that the Republican candidates for the nomination had to make a pledge to support the nominee (devised because it was feared Trump might run as a third party candidate. Bush and for some time Cruz refused to honour this. People said that trump would refuse to accept the result and now some Democrats are asking the Electoral College to vote in Hillary. The wheel of fortune turns.
What clinched victory? The FBI reopening the email case, Obamacare subs going up 25%, Black Lives Matter, Hillary's 'deplorables' remark, her pantsuits? I suspect that the two reasons, even though America is inward looking, may have been Angela Merkel's decision to enable an invasion of Europe by asylum seekers and the ISIS atrocities.

Brexit and Trump are very different, but both show that the left's and centre left's irrational attachment to open borders may keep them out of power for the foreseeable future. However, I am not sure they are capable of changing.



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