Every election is consequential – but has there been any like this?
On the ballot yesterday were two distinct visions of America, with implications for the US and for the rest of the world: a protectionist, isolationist America; or the continuation of free trade and the United States back on the world stage.
The polls were right that it was going to be tight, but predictions that it would take days to finalise the result were way off: Trump has won, even though we are still waiting on a few results. America has voted for a second term of Maga.
There has been no “Portillo moment” – an event that marks the moment when a symbolic defenestration marks the emblematic event of the night; the extinguishing of Democratic hopes. But there was a moment a few hours ago when my eyebrow arched.
It was early on, and the polls were still open. It was an urgent message put out by Donald Trump’s right-hand man Stephen Miller, and it read: “If you know any men who haven’t voted yet, get them to the polls.”
It didn’t read “any Trump supporters” or “any men and women”. It was a naked move to get men out for Trump. And this may turn out to be the story of this strange election.
We don’t yet have final numbers, but all the indications and exit polls confirm that the Trump strategy to go after the “bro” vote has worked. Young Black and Latino men have flocked to the former president who loves to come on stage at his rallies to Village People’s “Macho Man”.
This strategy, it should be said, pre-dated Kamala Harris’s entry into the race. Six months ago when I was in Washington, I spent an evening with Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign chief and director of strategy in the White House. He sketched this out in precise terms.
The overturning of Roe v Wade would result in a loss of female voters, so the best way to counter that was to lean into young men who wanted a bit more Hulk Hogan and less political correctness. Donald Trump was the perfect carrier of that message. It may not be toxic, but it’s definitely masculinity.
And, fortuitously maybe, that message was easier to deliver with Kamala Harris as the Democratic standard bearer than it was with Biden. Britain may have had its first female prime minister 45 years ago, but America still seems a long way off having its first woman president.
As I write this, Kamala Harris has not yet conceded. And in an ugly echo of 2016, she has left it to an aide to tell her supporters that the vice-president will not be making an appearance at her watch party. Just as Hillary Clinton failed to show up at the Javits Center in New York, and it was left to her chief of staff to tell her disconsolate supporters to go home. In the key districts that decided this election, she has underperformed on Biden four years ago, with Trump doing better.
If this plays out as everyone expects then Donald Trump will become only the second US president to serve two non-contiguous terms. (The only other person to do that was the 22nd and 24th president, Grover Cleveland in the 1880s.)
And if Trump does, it will represent the most extraordinary political comeback ever. After two impeachments, an insurrection to overthrow the 2020 election result, found guilty of 34 criminal offences, facing a slew of other charges, and now a convicted felon, who’d have written the script of him as a comeback king?
Once again, he has defied the laws of political gravity. That which makes all conventional politicians weaker only seems to make Trump stronger: aggression, having only the most casual relationship with the truth, saying whatever comes into your head.
Just to put a cherry on the cake, the Republicans have flipped the Senate and are likely to retain control of the House, the holy trinity of political power in the US. In fact, to use a phrase that the one-time casino owner would recognise, it’s not just a cherry on the cake for Trump, the three cherries on the fruit machine of life have come up for him.
Let us, though, not take anything away from what he seems to have achieved. The Democrats as the party of minorities has gone. Trump has built a formidable coalition, winning in places, winning among demographics that Republicans just don’t normally stand a chance with. And yet that is what he appears to have done.
This is a brutal defeat for the Democratic Party. Democrats have spent an evening where their prospects have gone from cautious dreaming to dodgy to dismal to disastrous.
It’s not officially over yet, but the Trump train is moving and steaming to a remarkable victory. And he has already delivered his victory speech, in Florida – one in which he said that “the greatest political movement in history” had got him re-elected, that “God spared my life for a reason”, and that his priorities were to “help the country heal […]to save our country and restore America to greatness”.
As for Harris, could she have campaigned differently? Did she make mistakes? Was she the author of her own downfall? I don’t think so. She fought a good campaign, bested Trump in their only debate, had a good ground game. You couldn’t say the same for Hillary Clinton in 2016 when there were disastrous missteps. And that makes the defeat even worse for the Democrats.
Far from vanquishing Trump, the Maga movement has never looked more buoyant, ebullient, more powerful.
Buckle up, if the next four years is anything close to what Donald Trump has campaigned on: tariffs on goods from Europe; an end to the Ukraine conflict in 24 hours (poor President Zelensky); promised vengeance against his political foes.
When Joe Biden won in 2020, his message to allies in Europe was that “America is back”; that American leadership on the world stage would resume. And European leaders whispered to each other: “For how long?”
They were right to be concerned.
Jon Sopel is the former BBC North America editor and now presents Global’s ‘The News Agents’ podcast. His new book, ‘Strangeland: How Britain Stopped Making Sense’, is out now
