Ugly campaign gives way to uncertainty of governance

The difference in how Trump’s triumph was received by both sides could not have been more starkm, writes Caroline O’Doherty in New York

AS DONALD Trump began his victory speech noting the major debt of gratitude owed to Hillary Clinton for her services to the United States, his supporters were on the streets shouting: “Lock her up.”

When he pledged to reach out to his opponents for their guidance and help, his voters demanded: “Drain the swamp.”

While he talked of building relations with other countries, they bellowed: “Build the wall.”

Catchcries of a campaign characterised by belligerence echoed in the streets around the New York home and headquarters of president-elect Trump as he addressed the nation on his historic win.

Supporters had come filing into the overwhelmingly Democrat city from early evening, watching on the fringes of public gatherings as the first results rolled in on open air screens.

By midnight, they felt the prize was theirs and as silence struck the thinning Clinton crowds, they made their voices heard. They weren’t just victors, they were vanquishers — of Clinton, of Obama, of Democrats, of liberals, of the establishment, the system, the media, and the rest of the world.

Some stood reciting their delight, hands clasped and thanking God for his backing. Others drove victory laps around the block, honking horns and waving Trump banners and national flags out the windows.

Several groups led chants with increasing aggression. A cry of “burn the bitch, she’s a witch” went up.

Clinton supporters passing by challenged the vitriol and were repaid with more. Tensions rose and some four dozen armed members of the NYPD strategic response group moved in, bunches of cable ties hanging from their belts and a warning to desist inherent in every step.

The difference in how Trump’s triumph was received by both sides could not have been more stark.

“This means everything,” said an almost disbelieving David Ryan, an air conditioning and refrigeration worker from New Jersey. “Donald Trump’s going to make America safe, going to make America prosperous, going to put America first.”

“This is like the Twin Towers,” said a distressed Hany Alexander, an immigrant for whom Manhattan has been home for 35 years. “This is the same feeling, silence like someone died, like the end of the world.”

If those words reflect the differences nationwide, then Trump’s 2am talk of binding the wounds of division will have as much success as stitching the sides of a canyon together with cotton thread.

The catchcries from his rallies across the country and from the streets of Manhattan early yesterday will follow him to the White House where his supporters’ expectations for action will be high.

He has promised to appoint a special investigator to probe Hillary Clinton, to build a wall along the southern states, to deport all illegals, to ban all Muslims, to scrap Obamacare, to erect trade barriers, to keep guns in circulation, to put the press out of circulation, to increase military spending, and throw climate change on the backburner.

He can not declare it “a time to come together as one united people” when those policies alienate many.

He can not claim to be a “president of all Americans” when he lost the popular vote.

He can not rejoice in taking charge of a “great country” when he convinced a majority of states their once proud nation was a disaster which only he could make great again.

Hillary Clinton in an emotional concession speech from a New York hotel yesterday afternoon told her voters she had pledged to work with Trump. “We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead,” she said.

President Obama in an address from the Rose Garden reminded the nation that: “We’re actually all on one team...we’re not Democrats first, we’re not Republicans first, we are Americans first.”

Both, in tacit recognition of the incendiary nature of the campaign, stressed the importance of a peaceful transfer of power.

Conciliatory as those words were, they came from a failed presidential candidate and a president exiting power.

Who Donald Trump will be when he enters the White House in just over two months and who he will really represent in a country whose divisions he exploited to devastating effect were not sufficiently fleshed out in his own brief, trite 2am address.

Throughout his campaign he repeatedly spoke of, and claimed to speak for, the silent majority of disaffected Americans who suffered most in the recession that plagued Obama’s reign and who feel left furthest behind in the tentative recovery.

He returned to the theme in his victory speech. “The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer,” he declared.

Whether he can genuinely govern for all, or will create a new group of disenfranchised to favour the forgotten, probably not even he knows.

“It’s going to be a beautiful thing,” he said. That would be a mercy because it has been ugly so far.