The silver lining: some positives from the election of Donald Trump.
This is the third in a series of three articles.
Although Donald Trump isn’t exactly my favourite person, it does provide us with
some opportunities. Here are my top reasons for being positive about what the
future holds with Trump in the White House. Whether you like or dislike the
result, here are my Top Ten Reasons to try to be optimistic…
1) Hillary Clinton didn’t win. She had all the hallmarks of being
continuity-Obama with extra political baggage, the continuation of a political
dynasty.
2) The Left hate the result. Those who are currently yelling, screaming
and throwing temper tantrums, those who are suggesting the world’s about to end
and proposing murder – why, if Clinton had won, these people would have got what
they deserved.
3) A UK-USA trade deal becomes easier to negotiate. Donald Trump is an
Anglophile. He might even put the bust of Winston Churchill back in the Oval
Office. We won’t be at the back of the queue for a trade deal under any
circumstances. It’s not in America’s best interests to put us at the back of the
queue anyway, and even under Clinton that wouldn’t have actually happened. It
was just an Obama-electioneering threat. But you get the impression that this
will actually be a priority for the White House now.
4) Nigel Farage has good connections with Donald Trump. This can’t be a
bad thing, one way or another. It’s likely to keep UKIP relevant and in the
news; even if the Trump association is something of a double-edged sword
electorally in the UK, at least it’s free publicity!
5) The European Union is reacting badly to it. With the EU seemingly
prepared to cut off its nose to spite its face over America, they’re not going
to be negotiating their own trade deal quite so quickly any more. This way, we
might actually get in there first – and gain a competitive advantage.
6) The Supreme Court won’t get worse. The Supreme Court seems to have
lost its way in recent years. Judicial activism has become a problem; with a
Democrat in the White House things could have got very bad over the next four
years, democracy being bypassed by ever-more creative interpretations of the US
Constitution. At least Donald Trump won’t appoint any left-wing activist
judges. Gay marriage in Ireland was decided by a referendum, and in the UK by
650 MPs. But it was decided in the USA by five unelected judges. Ireland’s
decision was democratic; the UK’s arguably so (though a Manifesto commitment or
referendum would have been preferable),but the USA’s wasn’t at all. I’m a
(small-d, I promise!) democrat; I put the power of the people above such moral
issues. If you support the US decision, the way they made it was
wrong.
7) Trump may well change. In the primaries, aiming for a small percentage
of Republicans, he took a hard-line approach. In the General Election, aiming
for just over 50% of the vote, he softened it slightly. He’s shown himself to be
prepared to adapt, and now that he’s representing all Americans he may adapt to
that too. It’s possible.
8) The American system has constitutional checks and balances on the
President’s power. If Trump proposes economic policies that are too left-wing,
then he may not get them through a Republican-controlled House and
Senate.
9) The Republicans won down-ticket too, often by bigger margins than
Trump. Trump was facing the incredibly-unpopular Clinton; up against
less-unpopular Democrats there was a danger that the Republicans might lose
control of the Senate. But actually, in many cases the Republican Party proved
to be more popular than Trump. In Florida, for example, Trump won by 1.3% – but
down-ticket, Rubio beat his less-unpopular-than-Clinton Democrat opponent by
7.7%.
10) The future looks bleak for Senate Democrats. Not only is there a
solidly Republican House and barely-Republican Senate, but also when you look at
the seats up for grabs in 2018, it’s hard to see the Democrats taking control
then either. Arizona, Wyoming, Tennessee, Utah, Texas, Nevada, Nebraska and
Mississippi are the only States with Republican defences in the Senate in 2018.
President Trump will means that there’ll be a Republican vice-President, so even
a 50-50 tie would keep Republican control of the Senate. The Democrats would
have to win three of the States on that list and not lose any, which would be a
really tough ask – especially as the Democrats will be defending the solidly-red
State of Indiana.
Whether we individually like or dislike Donald Trump is no longer the
issue. I’m not going to suddenly like him, and others aren’t going to suddenly
stop their hero-worship of him, but either way he’s going to be the President of
the United States of America. Britain needs to work to make the best of it
either way, and surely we can all agree on
that.
.jpeg)