THE NIGHT OF THE DONALD

Generally, the 24 hour news business does not like slam dunks. Competitive tension drives public interest and advertising spend. It gives an opportunity to myriads of "experts" to get a profile where otherwise they would be totally anonymous. This is particularly true of the the political commentariat and somewhat true of the sports one. So the "too-close-to-call" US presidential election of 2024 should have been catnip for the pundits. In the UK, almost more so than in the USA, the mainstream media nonetheless decided there was only ever going to be one worthy winner and that wasn't Donald J Trump. So it was just a joy to watch egg exploding all over preening faces as the scale of the MAGA victory unfolded over the course of the early hours of Tuesday morning GMT. 

Channel 4 went for the jugular early: if they couldn't burn The Donald in effigy because of safety regulations, they would bury him under bucket-loads of ordure instead. Anchoring with Emily Maitlis and Krishnan Guru Murthy in Washington was Stormy Daniels, erstwhile "adult" actress and as comely a nemesis who has ever hovered over the 45th (now 47th) President. As a way of introducing a little bit of studio tension of its own, Channel 4 lined her up to debate the merits, amorous and otherwise, of the Orange Lothario with Boris Johnson. Stormy gallantly affected not to know of Bojo's own idiosyncratic behaviour with women and sweeping back her dark extensions, she became almost coquettish as she sized up the portly ex-PM. Alas, Johnson was just too determined to appear even handed and he was very swiftly returned to the pavilion. Various other experts were then deployed as the night wore on, including the son of Martin Luther King Jnr. A polite, softly spoken man, he looked increasingly uncomfortable as Emily and Krishnan went through the various phases of grief as the results built up remorselessly. 

Recalling the utter Horlicks it had made of the contests in 2016 and 2020, BBC 1 went for the straight - bat approach resulting in a very dull show indeed. Once again, Clive Myrie contrived to sound as if it was way past his bed-time and was not much helped by an equally lethargic crew who reacted far too slowly to what was happening on the ground. Given the "threat to democracy" (the Beeb's big angle), the viewer was treated to endless shots of empty voting stations that were set up like Fort Knox and footage of gigantically fat security guards with names like Sheniqua and Tyson, who did not look as if they could outrun a toddler, still less an adult crawling away on all fours. 

Beeb 2 was given a little more leeway; Newsnight's Victoria Derbyshire's focus was the likelihood of violence following an equally likely defeat of Trump, who was, we were sternly reminded (about forty times), a convicted felon who had twice been impeached. No one of sound mind was going to vote for that mountebank, right? In Beeb land however, there was perceptible anxiety the US electorate would fail to hand Harris the landslide she so richly deserved and trouble on the streets would be the result. Amazingly, pretty well all of her guests, regardless of affiliation, bristled at this presumption: the former Republican senator for Pennsylvania Rick Santorum plainly thought the BBC questions were ridiculous and gave Victoria the sort of smile we normally reserve for the deranged. But the Democrat lady too reassured the viewers the USA was no banana republic. 

The approach of the independents like ITV and Sky was to affect worldly scepticism, but  there too faces started to register bemusement as the hours passed. Tom Bradby anchoring for ITV had to ask several times "what was going on", a somewhat odd attitude for someone supposed to have the answers. As various pundits pondered the rapid evaporation of the Blue collar, 18-29, Latino and Black vote from the Harris column and tried to make their spreadsheets conform with previously complacent expectations by crossly punching their keypads, the distinct sound of a balloon losing air could be heard. By the end of the count, it was clear Harris had not improved on the Biden vote of 2020 in any state, county or district of the continental United States. Not one.

As for the focus of all their disappointment, the President - elect seemed to be taking it all pretty calmly. Up on the stage at the celebration back at Palm Beach, he identified the salient points of his astonishing victory as if they were base metals. There then followed an extended ramble which recalled the quieter moments of King Lear. As usual, his ambitions for America were delivered in the trademark whisper which Trump always uses for emphasis or repetition. The faces of the family group around him were however, a complete picture: his six-foot-six son stared with the glum realisation that he had got another four years of this uniquely tiring brand of circus. The others looked as if they had just been told Tiffany's had burnt down. Only his running mate JD Vance looked unambiguously delighted, as well he might: he is probably at most only four years away from the presidency himself.

You will be able, if you have the energy, to read the miles of column inches that will inevitably be written in the wake of one of the most astounding reversals in US political history. Pretty well every poll prediction which preceded the vote was confounded and commentators and bien-pensants everywhere have a lot of humble pie which it would be wise for them to eat and digest. For there seem to be two pretty clear cultural conclusions which can be drawn from the Night of the Donald.

The first is the English speaking mainstream media has a major credibility problem. The level of partisanship directed against Trump and his supporters amounted, at times, almost to a form of sectarianism. By November 5th, the thesaurus had been emptied of epithets; the words fascist or Nazi were so routinely deployed that their potency for damnation was lost. The "progressive" message to the electorate became simply preposterous. It was, for example, perfectly obvious that a vote in favour of the rights to abortion would be consistent with a vote for Trump. 

Secondly, the rot in the pulpit of the mainstream media has been part of the generation of another trend. The admiration and respect which has traditionally been given to learning, education and expertise is undergoing something of a transformation. By any measure, the financial crisis of 2007/08 and the official reaction to the Covid pandemic have cumulatively eroded confidence in the competence and expertise of educated elites across the West. As doubts grow about the omniscience of the rational mind it should be no surprise belief in the transcendental should revive. Yet "progressives" everywhere have doubled down on secular nonsense of their own. Mainstream Christian religion belief is denounced as obviously "right-wing" and fringe belief is only tolerated in so-far as it furnishes another minority grouping which "liberals" can patronise and exploit. Even worse, the nonsense intrinsic to the debates about gender, race, history, the environment and even the "meaning" of the word meaning, has been generated almost exclusively from within an educational establishment which was previously revered.

Against such a background, the mode of The Donald has gradually assumed the appeal of the avant-garde. His proposals might have been delivered in the cadences of a rough school playground, but at least they sounded rational. While his manner mostly (and quite naturally) upsets aesthetes, the considerate and the polite, his political popularity has moved "progressives" to the point of derangement everywhere. Yet the "progressives" lost because they have also lost touch. The elite to whom Harris appealed do not generally mix with the air-conditioning mechanics, burger-flippers, spare part salesmen, cable TV engineers and railroad workers who voted for Trump. In that sense too the traditional relationships with which the major parties have been associated, have been further inverted.

Trumpism is now very much the cultural mainstream and "progressives" have only themselves to blame.