American voters believed their eyes, not Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris told voters that Donald Trump’s policies would increase the prices they pay for all sorts of goods. Their eyes spotted stickers in supermarkets telling them prices were much higher now than they were when Trump occupied the White House.
Harris told voters that Trump would replace our republic with a fascist state. Shoppers’ eyes told them that the Biden-Harris team was interfering with their freedom of choice by promulgating regulations that raise the cost of gas ranges and heaters that rely on the natural gas, or barring their use completely, forcing consumers to use less desirable electricity. Trump would free them of such intrusions on their freedoms.
Voters, believing their eyes and experience rather than Harris, handed Trump a landslide victory. He captured majorities in all seven swing states, and in the nation, the first Republican majority of the popular vote in 20 years. Republicans control the Senate and seem likely to control the House of Representatives.
Pollsters are developing reasons for their lack of foresight, while hundreds of lawyers hoping to litigate every vote are cancelling their orders for Porsches. The governor of California is calling on the state legislature to shore up defences against Trump’s attacks on civil liberties. The New York Times says US democracy is now “under stress” — never mind that more than 140 million Americans were able to trek unimpeded to their mailboxes and polling places to register their choices.
Harris — in a concession speech that was more “we shall fight them on the beaches” than a graceful acknowledgement of defeat — announced that this lady, and presumably her party, is not for turning. Few Democrats concede it was the leftward lunge of their party, rather than a rightward drift of voters, that contributed to their defeat.
For some, the future is uncertain. Government employees were not delighted when Elon Musk, who fired 80 per cent of the workforce when he bought Twitter, announced that as Trump’s efficiency tsar he would cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. That exceeds the combined budgets of the departments of defence, education and homeland security. Federal Reserve Board monetary policy gurus know Trump has promised deep cuts in interest rates that his fiscal profligacy would make impossible for them to deliver while containing inflation, and that he has little regard for their “independence”.
In Britain, the foreign secretary cannot be certain he will ever see the Oval Office. David Lammy has called the famously retributive president-elect a “deluded, dishonest, xenophobic, narcissistic, racist Nazi sympathiser”. Perhaps a Lammy offer to make Nigel Farage or Boris Johnson UK ambassador would be considered sufficient atonement. His congratulatory telegram surely was not.
And more than a few insufficiently healthy Americans worry they might face life-changing mandates if Robert Kennedy Jr is given complete control of healthcare policy, as he says Trump has promised. Whether such authority will survive Kennedy’s attempts to bar the delivery of Trump’s 2,400-calorie Big Mac combo meals, we can only guess.
Naturally, a victory of Trump’s magnitude produces many winners:
• Trump family members need no longer fear the unpleasant chore of visiting him in some high-security jail. Executives of oil companies can now “drill, baby, drill” for the oil to fuel the growth of the Trump economy. • Holders of cryptocurrencies are studying the catalogues of their local yacht builders. • Residents of cities and towns afflicted by a flood of illegal immigrants are looking forward to the deportation of the criminal elements. • Female athletes who have been losing matches to biological males are making space for new trophies. • Inefficient producers of various consumer products are looking forward to a wall of protective tariffs behind which to hide their inefficiencies. • The rich are having sweet dreams of tax cuts to replace their nightmares of rumbling tumbrils and tax increases. • Veterans, first responders, waiters and oldies are contemplating the improved lifestyles that will result from promised tax relief. • Deal-makers are estimating the fees to be generated by mergers once forbidden by the Federal Trade Commission.
Elections matter, and American elections matter beyond our nation’s borders. Volodymyr Zelensky has reason to fear being forced into a peace deal that dismembers Ukraine and bars membership of Nato. Binyamin Netanyahu, who has already spoken with the president-elect about Israel’s security needs, will be dealing with a president who named Jerusalem the capital of Israel and saddled the ayatollahs with the crushing sanctions that President Biden removed, rather than one who refused to join his meeting with Biden. Xi Jinping will now confront a president who cannot be counted on to run for cover to avoid a confrontation. Germany, fearing a US leader hostile to it for failing to meet its Nato commitments, has announced a review of its defence budget.
The world now faces a challenge to the existing order not only from the new anti-democratic axis of Russia, North Korea, Iran and China, but from a proudly self-described unpredictable American president who believes the status quo no longer serves the interests of his nation. Peace of mind in our time is not on offer.
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Irwin Stelzer is a business adviser