Clinton conceded to Trump in a private phone call
Added on November 9, 2016 at 20:09 Swiss time: The Republicans have not only won the presidency. They have also managed to defend their majorities in both the House and the Senate.
Article added on November 9, 2016 at 08:46 Swiss time: Roughly 220 million American voters could chose the new American president. The result: Hillary Clinton has NOT been elected president as expected, but Donald Trump managed to keep the upper hand.
This is a kind of Brexit XXL.
270 out of 538 electoral votes were needed to be elected. After Florida, Ohio and surprises such as Wisconsin, Clinton conceded in a private call to Trump before Trump got officially over 270 electoral votes.
Before this night, I thought like most observers that Trump had only a 10% chance to win.
This win was NOT predictable because Donald Trump was only leading in the polls in 2 of the 12 most contested races of the 2016 presidential election. The Republican needed to win most of the swing states to have a path to the White House.
The last Republican president, George W. Bush, together with his wife, voted neither for Donald Trump nor for Clinton, but left the presidential line empty (a blank or protest vote). The former Republican president not voting for the Republican candidate, that’s unprecedented.
In the Senate, it looked as if the Democrats could retake the majority. In the House, the Republicans will retain their majority. With different parties in power in the White House and in Congress, a bipartisan approach would be needed to solve Americas main problems. However, it looks as if the GOP could come up with the president, the House AND the Senate in their hands.
Of the two most unfavorably rated presidential candidates in history, the second worst rated, Hillary Clinton, lost to the worst rated, Donald Trump.
The angry GOP party base chose the one and (almost) only candidate who could lose against Hillary. Common sense would suggest that you cannot insult women (50% of the electorate), Latinos (14%), Blacks (12%) and Muslims (less than 1%) and think you can win a majority. But apparently you can, especially if a strong majority of men does not want to look at another Clinton in the White House.
Incidentally, Florida Senator Marco Rubio aka “Little Marco”, as Donald Trump used to call him when they were rivals in the Republican primary, won another term. Rand Paul, another former Republican primary candidate, won his Kentucky Senate seat once again. Ron Paul was the only presidential candidate to address the problem of internet privacy, notoriously violated not only by government agencies but also by leading private companies such as Facebook, Google and Microsoft.
President Trump will have to calm markets and try to implement some of the things he advocated during his campaign. Building a wall? Deporting 11 million illegal immigrants? Repeal and replace Obamacare? Start a trade war to obtain better deals? If he cannot deliver anything major, voter anger might get even stronger. As a businessman, despite some failures and bankruptcies, he has proven from time to time that he can deliver. Let’s hope that something positive comes out of this.
[Photo on top added on January 21, 2020: President Donald Trump poses for his official portrait at The White House, in Washington, D.C., on Friday, October 6, 2017. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead). The image is in the public domain. Photo: Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons].
[Older books about Trump added on January 21, 2020:
Wayne Barrett: Trump: The Deals and the Downfall. 1992, 492 pages. Order this book from Amazon.com. An early book critical of Donald Trump.
Gwenda Blair: Donald Trump: The Candidate. Simon & Schuster, 2015, 324 pages. Order the ebook / Kindle edition from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
Gwenda Blair: The Trumps. Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate. Simon & Schuster, December 2001, 592 pages. Order the paperback edition from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
Donald Trump: Think Like A Champion. 2010, 192 pages. Order the book from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk].
