The writer is in Australia.
People of class and good breeding learn early on that gloating is unseemly and unbecoming. I suppose that makes me unseemly. And unbecoming. Because nothing was better than staying home Wednesday to watch the U.S. election returns. Yep, watching them call the election for Trump. Then for the first time in four or so years actually tuning into ‘our’ ABC national broadcaster to revel in the angst and incredulity of this monolithic, Lefty institution – thereby almost making worthwhile the taxes I am forced to pay to support this incestuous, “we cover the whole gamut of opinions from A almost to B, Greens almost to Labour” outfit. Then turning off the TV and going out with pro-Trump friends for wines and a few finishing glasses of Scotch. And then waking up this morning, slightly sore-headed, but “unburdened by what has been”. The grass seemed greener. The air cleaner. I was able to take subtle joy from the various Aussie celebrities who had uniformly come out to support Kamala and were now melting down. “Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive. But to be young was very heaven.” Okay, I’m not young. But bliss more or less captures how I’m feeling.
I say I’m going to gloat because readers of the Spectator Australia will know that I have been predicting for near on two years, in print and very publicly, that Donald Trump was going to win this election and that it could be a landslide. No equivocating. No backsliding. I also have predicted for the last two months that it would be the trifecta – Presidency, Senate and House. So let me apologise right away for not seeing that it would in fact be the quadfecta (is that a word?) – Trump would also win the popular vote. I didn’t think that was possible. Oh ye of little faith!
Want to know how unusual this Trump win is? For a Republican, Trump’s Electoral College landslide is the biggest since Reagan in 1984. His popular vote win is the first for a Republican candidate since 2004 and the after-effects of 9/11. Trump’s coattails look to be delivering a Republican Senate of at least 53 but possibly up to 55 Senators. (If the last of those comes to pass it would be the most Republicans in the Senate since 1928.) Trump will also be much better off than in 2016. You see he has almost single-handedly reshaped the Republican party. The chamber-of-commerce, open-borders types (who did much to block the funding of his wall) are near-on gone from the party. Almost as gone are the Neo-Con pro-war types. Many people still just assume that the Republicans are the party of the rich. Not so. Democrats are. In this election they outspent the Republicans nearly three to one and it came from big donations much more than Trump’s campaign chest. Think back to our Voice referendum or Brexit in the U.K. and you’ll spot the similarities because Trump was massively outspent. Harris had the legacy media overwhelmingly in her corner. (Some studies showed she was getting virtually 100% positive coverage on the three main free-to-air networks and on CNN and MSNBC, though not Fox of course. The same studies showed Trump getting over 90% negative coverage.) Media aside, Kamala also had basically all of Hollywood lined up to endorse her. Big Tech was on side save for the remarkable Elon Musk. (Isn’t it an odd world where we have had to rely on a renegade, non-conformist billionaire to do the most to protect free speech – not least by being willing to overpay for Twitter and then, after firing 75% of employees with no discernible impact on operations, make it a vehicle that does not bow down before censorious government? If you support free speech you really owe Musk a debt of gratitude.) Who else? Well, the corporate world and its chequebooks clearly supported Harris. Be clear, rich people as a generalisation now vote Left. Hillary Clinton took virtually all of the hundred wealthiest counties. Boris did not win the rich constituencies in 2019. Trump won in the poor and working-class parts of the U.S., not in the über wealthy or even just wealthy parts of town. Well-off, rich whites voted for Kamala, not Trump. So the entire establishment and its media minions were all on one side, with three times more money to spend, and Trump beat them all.
Be clear. This is the greatest U.S. political comeback ever. Maybe you can put Andrew Jackson in the same league. Grover Cleveland and Richard Nixon if you want to stretch things even more. But Trump was hit with the Russia collusion scam. He was impeached twice for nothing. They tried to bankrupt him and put him in jail. Four dozen odd intelligence agents (past and present) signed a letter just before the 2020 election saying that the Hunter Biden laptop had “all the hallmarks of Russian collusion”. They did that knowing that claim was false and the laptop real. In fact, the FBI had known since 2019 that it was real and that the data on it, that compromised Hunter and his dad, were real too. Then there was the lawfare. The changing the law to allow a New York civil suit against him that had long passed the statute of limitations and then to impose an unheard of, massive amount of damages. The four criminal charges, two at the state level and two federal, were worse. The New York one on which he was convicted, the so-called ‘hush money’ or non-disclosure case, was a flat out disgrace and amounted to a patent targeting of a political opponent, Third World style. You bring in the third highest Department of Justice lawyer to work for a city District Attorney. You have the NY DA, Alvin Bragg, turn a Mickey Mouse misdemeanour into an indictable offence. (And Bragg till then had only ever done the opposite, turned indictable offences into misdemeanours, in his attempts to go as softly on crime as you’d expect of any good George Soros-funded District Attorney.) To transmogrify a misdemeanour into an indictable offence you need to point some indictable offence. Bragg opted for federal campaign finance laws. But the Biden Department of Justice had laughed the idea of such charges out of court and not brought them. And so what was a New York DA doing invoking such charges in his wholly novel legal theory that attempted to make what Trump had done – i.e., pay a woman to keep quiet about past sexual liaisons in a way that three-quarters of Hollywood and many, many rich men have done – into something indictable and supposedly serious? Then you bring the charge in Manhattan, a place that votes Democrat nine to one. You find a judge who won’t recuse himself though his daughter was a big fundraiser for the Dems – and he’d contributed modest amounts to the Dems as well. It was stitch up all the way up. And the other three cases were no better. Sure, you can call someone a felon if you are prepared to weaponise the justice system against your main political opponent. But that reeks of tinpot Third World regimes.
Anyway, Trump overcame that. He overcame attempts to take him off the ballot. There were two assassination attempts on his life, in part due to Harris, many other Democrats and a big chunk of the legacy media all describing him as a “fascist”, as “Hitler”, as a “Nazi”. (Enjoyable sidenote: after Wednesday’s win by Trump someone posted the joke meme that “Over 40% of U.S. Jews just voted for Hitler”.) Let me be clear. This was the most remarkable political comeback in U.S. history. Perhaps in the entire Anglosphere’s history.
Let me finish by pointing out the fact of supposedly conservative politicians and ex-politicians (all ‘wets’) from around the Anglosphere who went public before the election to support Kamala. They embarrassed themselves. Australia’s own George Brandis wrote one of the most embarrassing columns of the lot in the Sydney Morning Herald. He hinted that Trump might be a fascist, but was certainly a demagogue. This showed no understanding of what a fascist actually is. And as for demagoguery, recall that during Covid Trump had the perfect chance to centralise all decision-making to himself. And yet more than Trudeau in Canada and more than Morrison here (and in the de facto sort of federation in Britain, more than Boris there) he left all calls to the states. Not much of a fascist or demagogue then, was he? Worse, this is the Brandis who played a pivotal role in bringing down Tony Abbott. This is the Brandis who has appointed the worst High Court judges of any Liberal (i.e., centre-Right) Attorney General ever. (I won’t talk about the recent judgment that is activism on steroids and will make it near impossible to deal with some pretty dangerous types, brought to you by a majority Coalition-appointed top court.) This is the Brandis who overlooks everything the Democrats have done in the way of lawfare, bogus Russian collusion charges, trying to jail and bankrupt their main opponent and resorting to ridiculous name-calling just so he can do some name calling of his own. Or look at William Hague in Britain. Former Conservative Party leader. He writes a virtue-signalling column saying Harris just has to win. It oozed self-righteousness and a willingness to prefer the most Left-wing socialist, open borders proponent, identity politics pushing, big spending, big government candidate in U.S. history. Over a man with Trump’s first term record.
I don’t want to vote for a party with people like Brandis and Hague in it. Trump’s most enduring achievement is to have removed these types from today’s Republican party. That’s what these types really don’t like.
James Allan is the Garrick Professor of Law at Queensland University. This article first appeared in Spectator Australia.
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I enjoyed it almost as much as Brexit Referendum night and the following day/s.
The fact that his best English buddy is Nigel Farage, now safely ensconced in Parliament and socking it to both Labour and the Treacherous Tories, is the icing on the cake.
For pulling all the information in this article together my thanks to; James Allan, Garrick Professor of Law at Queensland University.
An excellent eye-opening summary. It is one thing to have lived and read about the events discussed taking place over the past twelve years. It is entirely another to pull it all together and explain it in context.
My grateful thanks for doing what I would never have a hope of doing for myself.
Hear hear.
If you really want to smile and see a contrast to the Dreary Droopy Democrats please click this link posted 6:31 am · 6 Nov 2024.
7.4M Views.
Hilarious. Superb. Full marks to whoever had the imagination to set that up and record it.
It is a massive achievement and the silent majority have been heard and will no longer be crushed.
Where America leads then others will have to follow and bring freedom and democracy and peace to our troubled world.
“Where America leads then others will have to follow”
Not fast enough sadly and not with the crop of politicians we [in western democracies] have currently [with some exceptions].
Trump broke the political mold and is an enigma.
His main appeal arriving on the political scene via Twitter a decade or so ago was not being a politician at all.
He says some crazy stuff and did some things personally for which due fair criticism has been given but he also did good things in office as President and made some good decisions for America and the world.
But in office he promised but failed to do anything to ‘drain the swamp’. He needs to do that now because corruption in government has historically been a main driver of the decline and fall of empires and dynasties. And if there is one thing western democracies have in quantity is corruption in all aspects of governments and their agencies.
The UK Conservatives are trying to reinvent themselves and succeeding to a small degree with MPs in Parliament who, with continuing exceptions, look and sound like and relate more to average people than predecessors.
Badenoch’s election as leader is a further good thing. Kemi B is BadEnough to be Prime Minister and shows great promise if she can ensure her ‘six’ is covered as our US cousins are wont to say.
The problem is that Reform UK does not have the baggage of being an ageing party. They do not have the problem of needing to reinvent themselves. And they are Far From Far Right. Large numbers of straight down the line well educated professionals of all kinds and ages can be found in their ranks. They are not weighed down by dogmas of left or right. The adopted summary of the Reform UK’s initial political philosophy is ‘Family, Community, Country’ which has a resonance for many particularly those tired of hearing of woke Far Left ideologies which 14 years of Conservative government and Whitehall promoted far and wide.
“I don’t want to vote for a party with people like Brandis and Hague in it.”
Most of the Not-a-Conservative-Party’s Grandees and many of their MPs agree with Hague. Which is precisely why they’ll never get my vote …. regardless of what their latest Puppet says she’ll do ….. because when/if it comes to it, they won’t let her.
I think you’re correct. I expect Kemi will say the right things and win back some of the disillusioned Tories, but the moment she gains power (if she does), she will be prevented from fulfilling her promises. It will be business as usual, and the betrayal complete.
I also have predicted for the last two months that it would be the trifecta – Presidency, Senate and House.
Have Republicans won a majority in the House yet, or inevitably going to, or is there still a possibility that they won’t?
What’s taking them so long to count the votes?
A useful web site for results: https://www.270towin.com/2024-house-election/
The remaining states have rules allowing postal votes for a few days after election day, so count can only be completed by then. It won’t affect the overall outcome, but could conceivably affect the balance of Congress.
As long as it’s not a bait-and-switch on RFK Jr, I’m happy. If RFK is not set loose on Pharma, then I will attack Trump relentlessly for the next 4 years.
To think, if the Dems had not prevented RFK from standing for them, he could now be president. Maybe they’ll figure that out eventually.
No that was never gonna happen.
But I’m glad he’s on Trump’s team.
Ditto Tulsi. Fantastic.
Maybe he will be a choice in next election, who knows.
“if the Dems had not prevented RFK from standing for them, he could now be president. Maybe they’ll figure that out eventually”
Not in a million.
Anyone who could bring themselves to vote for a dodgy countlessly-humped Camel [Camel la Harris that is] could never vote for someone as sound as RFK Jnr.
Anyone “unburdened by what has been” is ignorant of the lessons of history and so is incapable of avoiding the mistakes of the past and thus is destined to repeat them.
I am surprised that was not used to challenge the Camel.
Democrats have got the hump? They seem to have more “humps” than all the camels in the world.
For Camel La Harris, dating the Mayor of San Francisco, in this context, the unfortunately named Willie Brown, ‘countlessly humped’ may it seems have another meaning.
Thank the gods he won otherwise it’d surely be us lot in a state of mourning right now because all would be lost, and a USA with the dreadful Kamala Harris at the helm doesn’t bear thinking about. Meanwhile, the demented women are onto the phase of shaving their heads now, on social media, which does indicate to me a type of mass psychosis which would certainly have seen these people being acquainted with the ducking stool or the inside of a mental asylum in centuries gone by. But anyway, hooray for Trump, but I think doing a Geert Wilders and making a bulletproof vest part of your attire when you’re at big outdoor events might be an idea;
”Make no mistake—behind their forced congratulations, most European leaders are in a state of shock and horror about Donald Trump’s historic election as the 47th president of the United States of America.
In private, many probably share the lunatic view of Britain’s Labour foreign secretary, David Lammy, who once called President Trump “a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath.”
The current mood at the top of the European Union was captured by Politico, bible of the Brussels oligarchy, whose pre-election headline warned that the return of the populist ex-president would be “Europe’s Trumpian Nightmare.”
Yet the very fact that the EU’s left-liberal political and media elites are so horrified by Trump’s win should surely fill the rest of us with hope. Whatever those unrepresentative EU oligarchs think, Trump’s triumph is no nightmare for the peoples of Europe.
Indeed, outside the Brussels ‘bubble,’ there seem good reasons for millions of Europeans to share the genuine enthusiasm expressed by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who hailed Trump’s “beautiful” comeback victory over Democratic Party candidate Kamala Harris.
First and foremost, Trump’s election marked a victory for popular democracy against the anti-democratic forces of the U.S. establishment.
They demanded the courts bar Trump from even standing for election, to deny Americans the democratic choice to vote for him. They removed the doddery President Joe Biden from the Democratic Party ticket, in defiance of the 14 million Democrats who selected him in the primaries, and replaced him with Harris, who precisely nobody had voted for.
Throughout the campaign, they slandered Trump as a “fascist,” a “Nazi,” an “authoritarian populist” and a “threat to democracy itself.” All of these insults were really aimed at deriding and disciplining the disobedient voters who were threatening to support Trump.
Everybody from the Obamas downwards demanded that American minorities and women must all automatically vote for the mixed-race female Harris, regardless of her qualities as a politically vacuous technocrat. Instead, the surge of support for Trump among minority groups and young people demonstrated how a popular democratic movement—far wider than the old Republican Party—can unite people across such artificial sectional lines.”
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/democracy-watch/no-trumps-win-is-not-a-nightmare-for-europeans/
Perhaps, just perhaps, we are seeing not the surge of populism (the Establishments’ pet phrase) but the ‘drying out of the Wets’? Drying out takes some time but the results are far more satisfying than just voting for the colour of the mould on the walls.
A good piece of advice I came across on X:
“Don’t vote for the candidate/policy/party you like, vote against the candidate/policy/party you hate”.
It guards against a brain-fogging emotional attachment to the candidate/policy/party you vote for, none of which are ever ‘perfect’.
Good point but I also think we (the people) also have to stop being politically passive and do something. The only way we’ll get real change is to join a political movement, whether it’s at a community, regional or national level, and get involved.
What if you hate them all?
Then vote for the Monster Raving Loony Party (or similar alternative) – shows that you care enough to vote but that you don’t care for what is offered by the main parties.
I did find someone who seemed decent to vote for. I guess my point was that there should be limits to choosing the “least bad” – they are always going to be “least bad”, but you should not vote for parties so terrible that they have crossed red lines – for you. Such as any party that went along with lockdowns etc.
It’s always a compromise and difficult to know where to draw the red line. There’s a good discussion on this topic by Tom Woods and a couple of other libertarian commentators reflecting on their support for Trump
https://tomwoods.com/ep-2566-trump-defeats-everything/
Thanks for this – it was indeed a good discussion. Libertarianism doesn’t really seem to be much of a thing in the UK, unfortunately.
“People of class and good breeding learn early on that gloating is unseemly and unbecoming.”
But immensely enjoyable and uplifting.
The problem with gloating is perhaps the risk that it can reflect a position that is unsustainable, i.e. “pride comes before a fall”. In this case us sceptics are fully justified in taking pleasure in the discomfort of the tyrannical US Democrat machine.
To gloat or not to gloat… that is the question?
Fortunately there is only one answer.
Gloat!
“I’m lovin’ it.”
When people won’t learn, you have to repeat the lesson.
I quietly placed a bottle of champagne in the fridge at 0400, UK time. Votes still being counted. I am still on a high from this win, but sadly there is no one here in Exmouth, Devon to share my joy with. Guess I will have to drink the champage all by myself. There are worse things.
“There are worse things.”
Which fortunately do not include celebrating this historic victory by sharing your champers with a Democrat.
However, the US Democrats deserve undying thanks and they will be remembered forever for going to extreme lengths to help make this victory possible.
Those include staging a coup d’état to remove Biden from the presidential race and so prevent his re-election [which would not of course have happened].
And then for imposing the countlessly-humped Camel on the Democrats and the US electors.
And who is the countlessly-humped Camel?
Why of course that is Camel la Harris. Famed for dating the Mayor of San Francisco the unfortunately named, in this context, Willie Brown, ‘countlessly humped’ may mean more than someone who moans about life’s ills and may extend to someone who engages in horizontal moans.
As delighted as I am by Trump’s decisive unadulterated victory, I can’t help feeling the deep state is playing both sides of the aisle. We’ll know sooner or later.
‘Aisle’?
An aisle is a linear space for walking with rows of non-walking spaces on both sides. Aisles with seating on both sides can be seen in airplanes, in buildings such as churches, … Wikipedia
Unfortunately we’ll never know because you can’t prove the counterfactual. The deep state will do all they can to hold on to their power and influence. Perhaps all we can hope for is that their greater excesses are curtailed. There’s so much to do and the pushback from vested interests will be huge. Trump will have to muster all his persuasive power to keep the people on side and not lured back into big state “solutions”. I’m preparing myself for a lot of disappointment along the way despite my current optimism that the tide has turned against all the greed and madness of the last few decades.
This may interest you. https://open.substack.com/pub/miri/p/truth-in-temper?r=egcno&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&comments=true
Trump’s first term in office was basically Obama bleached – lots of high-falutin’ talk, no action. He may be targetting a different audience and hence, his talking will be more enjoyable to one set of people and less to another set. But talking it remains. In any case, he’s president of the USA and to the global majority of people who neither live there nor have a right to vote US elections, his presidency will make little, if at all, of a difference.
Nah that’s bollocks. He was far better.
Three main policy areas – the middle east Abraham accord was a real step forward plus he kept the pressure on the mullah. On the economy he delivered jobs and growth especially to blacks and Hispanics (hence their votes this time) us energy.
And of course he achieved progress on illegal immigration, immediately reversed by biden-Harris.
His victory may give hope and encouragement to all of those in other countries who do not feel represented by the “acceptable” mainstream parties that it’s possibly to make a difference.
Trump was candidate for a absolutely mainstream US party and the only the hysterical howling of the woke hordes ever made it appear otherwise. He’s even more cozy with the government of Israel as US presidents usually are and for Germany and Germans, this can – at best – remain latent ill tidings.
That there is still a mainstream party which hasn’t yet been subverted by said woke hordes in the USA is of little help to people living in countries where this political choice is no longer on the menu (woke hordes howling hysterically nevertheless, cf Tory scum or extreme right of the Tory party or the regular accusations by German Red-Greeners that the CDU is full of closet Nazis and enacting Nazi policies). In the grander scheme of things, however, that’s rather the norm and West European countries afflicted by this are the exception.
His political views are what used to be considered moderate
Not any more
To the hysterically howling woke hordes, there are exactly two political positions on anything:
Trumps’ political views, eg, about enforcing existing immigration laws, don’t become less moderate just because his political opponents became more hysterical in their dealings with people whose opinions differ from theirs. That people who refer to themselve as politically left-wing became progressively more extremist doesn’t turn all others into extremists.
It’s important to keep in mind (and talk about) who moved in which direction here.
Totally agree – all part of the trick being played on people to try and make them feel ashamed of perfectly normal, moderate views
We don’t have a “conservative” Tory party in the UK James, that’s why we all support Reform.
i’m happy to say i got to vote for trump in a swing state. noticed cnn says she lost to trump, fox and news maxx tell the whole truth the democrats lost to trump in a landslide !
They ,the elites, look upon the Donald as grubby, in older days he would be considered “trade”, supported only by the unmentionables. Despite his lack of experience in mainstream politics his success ,at their game,has become an unfathomable embarrassment to those who’s life it is.
Thankfully he has taken their pain out of our lives.
James – this is a brilliant article and captures everything I feel about the election. Whilst I’ve always had clear views of my political beliefs I’ve generally remained quiet in public – it’s what Libertarians do. No longer. With the catastrophic Labour Party here in the UK I now regularly call them out to my “middle class Socialist hypocrits” which laughably keeps them quiet because even they find them indefensible. And now I can throw in the most fantastic comeback ever and watch them melt down. It was and will be dark here in the UK for the next 4 yrs but Trump has brightened up my world massively. Fair play to Elon as well – he’s one bloke who knows a winner.
Wow! I think you covered it! Thank you. Just wish I lived nearby to buy you a drink and toast our next President of the USA. I am ever grateful Donald Trump took on the impossible. Thank god. An American, stuck in the UK.
Nice one Dr Allan!