[0762]

Lets place that end comment into perspective - SOME of the American people amazingly voted for a divisive 'nut job' named Donald Trump and, like the UK and Brexit, it was not a massive majority vote! Both countries populations have been polarised beyond belief and millions n millions of Americans will never unify and accept this vote either as intimated in Trump's inaugural 'script'/speech (to unify the nation after his poisonous campaign - crap!) and also many will question the timing of that recent FBI investigation during a presidential electioneering campaign - that move was highly suspicious and questionable and I don't think we've seen the end of that story! Who benefited from that flawed FBI move? None other than this unelectable president elect who many people within the US populous regarded as electable and Trump himself has personally described as 'the stupid vote' on a previous tv documentary called 'Hyper Normalisation' - watch it, be enlightened and wonder how shameless disreputable people can get away with duping a huge number of voters and 'pull' a significant vote of discontent as well as unscrupulously not pay taxes like most of the folk who voted for the b#####

[St Charles Owl]

59m+ people is more than "SOME" as you put it!!! As regards the outcome, with the way the electoral collage works here is was a very decisive victory that once all the results are in will be even more decisive!! He effectively trounced her across the middle of the country, the manufacturing heartland or Rust Belt all went his way and multiple states changed color from the last election to this one. People in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan have seen their jobs disappear to Mexico over the last 20 years and while I accept those jobs will never come back, the rhetoric you heard from Trump totally appealed to this blue collar demographic. They have seen successive presidents from both parties basically ignore them and watch this collapse in the job markets, and finally along comes someone who is saying what they are thinking, and hey presto we have President Donald J Trump!!! I actually think he may be able to do some good with the economy and trade but for me its the generational stuff like abortion rights, LBGT rights, gun control and immigration policies that if he now chooses could be put back decades by first his Supreme Court appointments and the fact the Republicans now hold the party in all three political arms!!

Of course like always its not all bad news, I live in California and the people here have now voted to legalize marijuana, so maybe I can just spend the next 4 years getting high and hoping it all works out!!!

[0762]

Ha ha ha! Now that's a philosophical way of treating such a crisis! Also move away from the 59M American voters and reel off the massive number of Americans who didn't vote Trump and many others who were disgusted with both candidates and didn't vote at all! These people are relevant to the debate! Also no surprise to see Clinton win the populist vote but it was not enough! Good to read all the caveats attached to your thread, most of them hitting the moral ground and highly questionable comments that Trump kept uttering month after month in the lead up to this astonishing result. Also worth mentioning the Republican party has been fractured and divided by Trump himself - time to build bridges after offending many so called allies within the Republican Party? We'll see how it unfolds after the 1st 100 days of Trump rule! I don't share your economic optimism either but I wonder how much will be made by Trump's business and property empire - surely an unhealthy vested interest anyway!!  I see him lowering corporate taxes and ultimately increasing US debt but that doesn't automatically kick start an ailing manufacturing industry and other related industries that are in need of help - it doesn't work as easily as that. I also tend to take a step back and look at the significant link to all the 'Political Black Swan' (read the book, which is enlightening) unforeseeable events that we've witnessed in our life time. That link is the global financial crash of 2011(?) that globally affected millions n millions of people. Now I detect a similarity to the events in the 1930s that followed the famous Wall Street crash (Black Tuesday)of 1929. These events were a prelude to the outbreak of World War II in 1939. I pray that I will not be watching a similar catastrophic scenario unfold again because lotsa people in certain dominant countries could not vote wisely and see beyond the end of their noses that such a vote is potentially fraught with danger particularly if this erratic man moves away from the political domestic scene of the USA! I listened to two different American citizens on bbc radio and both of them sounded like ordinary down to earth Americans who commented, 'They were not proud of their country today'. They were gutted, devastated by this awful result and what was evident was the revulsion that the people had been 'landed' with two of the most horrible political candidates in US political history!! It should never have happened in a country with a population of >135M people!!

[St Charles Owl]

There isn't a politician on the planet that would have stayed in this race having said the things he said week after week. He benefited from the fact he was not beholden to the Party or the Party line, that he didn't have wealthy backers dictating what he said, that he took little or no lobbyist money and we have a media and population who almost became sanitized to everything he said and dismissed it as "its just Trump" instead of holding him accountable for what he said. He was able to completely trash his opponents with innuendo and half truths whereas everyone else was held to a different standard. Most politicians want a job after an election, so have to temper what they say or do with that in mind, he doesn't need anyone to give him a job and therefore is not bound by the same rules!!

I find it astonishing that he got 45% of the female vote and even 29% of the Latino/Hispanic vote - talk about turkeys voting for Xmas!!!! But the number that really bugs me is the Latino turnout in Florida, where although about 1% more of them actually voted compared to the last election, less than 20% of this key demographic actually voted at all!!!!! Thats a case of Turkeys choosing not to vote for a candidate who plans to abolish Xmas!!! They will bitch and moan about what he now tries to do but as a group they decided not to try to prevent him in the first place, and when you consider how close FL was and how many of them there are, those 29 electoral college votes would have made the whole difference!!!

My optimism for his economic plan is weak at best but you have to hold onto something!!!! He is right about some of the trade deals that have been signed, they have caused (or allowed) companies to move manufacturing jobs overseas without any penalty or recourse and they can now sell the same good over here with little or no tariffs to dissuade them from moving in the first place. Not convinced he can change that but he may actually be the only candidate in decades who has a chance to do so.

[ritchiebaby]

0762 - I know what you're saying, but the fact that Trump won is not a divisive event on it's own. If Clinton had won, the USA would have been divided. If the UK had voted to remain in the EU, the UK would still have been divided. If Scotland had voted to leave the UK, Scotland would still have been divided. We've got to accept things as they are and move forward with a modicum of positivity, unlike some defeated politicians.

I'm fairly confident that the French and German elections next year will be equally divisive.

[hibeejim21]

His economic plan is clear...the 1% will see their income go up by two digits under Trump's tax plans. It's the elites that will benefit from this further enhancing of their power, and hold over the prevailing ideology. The idea that this was a shock to the establishment, or in some way a blow to their interests is just daft.

Look at the class nature of the vote - the lower income vote for Clinton held up. It was the $50000 plus class that voted Trump. I don't think this is a protest vote either. A protest vote only makes sense if there's an actual point to it, when you vote against something for something that's going to materially make things worse it's lunacy.

This is a return to the 1940's if this guy achieves even half of what he says he is going to do, it's a 'revolt' against modernity, progress, education and diversity... and if you don't believe me look at the breakdowns of the vote on the basis of age, education and ethnic background. it couldn't be clearer.

With the house,presidency and senate in the bag there is pretty much no limits on the madness this fascist prick could unleash at this point in time.

[St Charles Owl]

Jim, be very careful what numbers you read as regards who voted for who!!! Remember all these numbers are done via polls of likely voters before an election and actual voters after but when you consider virtually all polls go this result completely wrong in almost every state, then I am not sure they have any credibility left!!

Not sure how the income lines were split, but I would be amazed if the $50k plus crowd voted for Trump in any landslide form. The higher the income, the more educated and most polls suggest that educated people predominantly voted for Hillary. There was the usual southeast v the rest divide that you always see, the red states as they are called but it seems the Latino vote just didn't get out and some polls suggest that Latino men voted strongly for Trump, something no one predicted.

You are right about the Republican party controlling all three chambers, that could be bad news but hopefully the moderates will prevail and actually have the balls to oppose bad laws and decisions, something we have seen in the past plus a lot of the Republican party don't like trump either so lets hope they stand up to him. The House and Senate are both sufficiently close to only require one or two to make a difference and they are close enough for a filibuster to be an effective tool for the opposition.

[hibeejim21]

The lowest paid voted for clinton,and the lowest paid whites without college education voted for trump. The exit polls back that up,and that those earning under 50k voted for hilary. Make of that what you will.

I reckon trumps first task will be to purge the party,he has many enemies already within its ranks. Secondly his first two major appointments will be a multi millionaire oil baron and a goldman sachs banker. Why these working class people think a billionaire, the very epitome of the Establishment they all claim to be voting against, will make their lives better is anyones guess? Its the same kind of stunt the tories are trying to pull now with being anti austerity,anti tax dodging and high immigration. Whilst being the root cause of all 3.

vive la revolution indeed.

[0762]

Well put Jim and also note re the voting details that Clinton actually polled more votes but it's the way they are distributed that is key to winning a US election - if you ask me, that is absolutely bizarre!  Also I agree 100% re your previous opinion about Trump - he is nothing more than an actor and will come nowhere close to being anything other than an average president if he's even fortunate to attain that level but he will be a dangerous president and there could well be lotsa victims as a consequence! What is more worrying is when Trump re-tweets the likes of a neo xxxx tweet and other politically questionable activities - a great worry is will he try to push even further into far right authoritarianism in a politically weak USA???? IMO if so, it must be challenged and the Democratic Party must quickly recover from it's dazed and subdued state to present a strong opposition and a new pragmatic vision, a proper global friendly one, for a once great country.

[St Charles Owl]

I am not sure how else you could do the system over here withoput completely over complicating it, something that as we saw from this result would task the average redneck!! In the UK we have constituencies, over here its states and both are first past the post methods. The fact that the popular vote has gone to Clinton is not unusual and it has also happened in the UK as well. On four previous Presidential elections the loser has held an absolute majority of the popular vote.