Cheers and dismay mark Trump’s win

The triumph of Donald Trump in getting elected as the 47th president of the United States will be greeted with cheers and dismay – both across America and here at home.

The election was a close-run thing… but a lot closer than the clever anti-Trump pundits called it.

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The reality is that the majority of Americans want to buy what Trump is selling.

But a lot of what he was touting on the campaign trail – considered extreme by his opponents and welcomed by his supporters – will probably not come to pass, at least in the form he was punting it on public platforms.

Trump, like any other politician, is pragmatic. And one of the things he has realised is that this election campaign was the most divisive in American history.

In his first speech, as he was being recognised the winner, he spoke in reconciliatory tones, of healing the country, which he acknowledged was “divided”.

It seems likely some of his promises will be watered down in their implementation, although there can be no doubt he will, by what he does, drag the US to the right.

While it would be easy to characterise the Trump victory as something of a white, conservative fightback against the likes of wokeness and cancel culture, that would be too simplistic an explanation, given the campaign’s success in winning over women, black men and Hispanics to the Republican cause.

The Democrats didn’t help their cause by realising too late in the day that the doddery and declining President Joe Biden was never going to make it as a candidate and that they should have been casting further afield for a challenger, rather than having to rush in Vice-President Kamala Harris as a last-minute stopgap.

Though she improved her ratings as the race progressed and the final result showed how close the fight was, she was still always on the back foot when it came to the power of her rhetoric, which always came up short against Trump’s inflammatory, xenophobic and patriotic messages.

The good news for the Democrats is that Trump’s second term will be his last and they may fare better against his Republican Party successor

By the same token, the Republicans should not take too long in readying Trump’s successor.

The new White House could mean tougher abortion and birth control laws, rolling back decades of freedom of choice for women, but could institute lower taxes and higher tariffs, which will stimulate the domestic economy.

Whether Trump will bring peace to Ukraine and the Middle East, as some of his zealots believe, remains to be seen.

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Elon Musk, perhaps Trump’s new technology czar and his acolytes, has also been celebrating… and perhaps the born South African can inject entrepreneurial energy into his adopted country.

There are still plenty of perhaps and maybe moments in the wake of the results.

What is certain is that the red wave which swept over America will boost conservative movements across the world and parallels a marked upsurge in support across Europe for right-wing parties.

And, in turn, will this make the globe a safer, more settled place, or will it become more unstable?