Donald Trump gives a speech during election night at the New York Hilton Midtown in New York. PHOTO: AFP
A wealthy real estate developer and former reality TV host, Trump rode a wave of anger toward Washington insiders to win Tuesday’s White House race against Clinton, the Democratic candidate whose gold-plated establishment résumé included stints as a first lady, US senator and secretary of state.
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Trump’s victory marked a crushing end to Clinton’s second quest to become the first woman president. She also failed in a White House bid in 2008.
“Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead,” Clinton, 69, said in a concession speech in New York on Wednesday morning, joined by her husband, former president Bill Clinton, and daughter Chelsea. Speaking in front of a row of American flags, she told supporters her loss was painful “and it will be for a long time,” and that she had offered to work with Trump on behalf of the nation.
President Barack Obama, who campaigned hard against Trump, invited him to the White House for a meeting on Thursday. “We are now all rooting for his success in uniting and leading the country,” Obama said at the White House, saying he and his staff would work with Trump to ensure a successful transition. “We are not Democrats first, we are not Republicans first, we are Americans first.”
Trailing in public opinion polls for months, Trump pulled off a major surprise and amassed at least 290 state-by-state electoral votes to 218 for Clinton, taking battleground states – from Florida to Ohio – where presidential elections are traditionally decided, US television networks projected.
His four-year term begins on January 20 and he will enjoy Republican majorities in both chambers of the US Congress. Television networks projected the party would retain control of the 100-seat Senate and the House of Representatives, where all 435 seats were up for grabs.
Trump appeared with his family early on Wednesday before cheering supporters in a New York hotel ballroom, saying it was time to heal the divisions caused by the campaign and find common ground after a campaign that exposed deep differences among Americans.
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“It is time for us to come together as one united people,” said Trump, who at 70 will be the oldest first-term US president. “I will be president for all Americans.”
He said he had received a call from Clinton to congratulate him on the win and praised her for her service and for a hard-fought campaign. His comments were an abrupt departure from his campaign trail rhetoric in which he repeatedly slammed Clinton as “crooked” amid supporters’ chants of ‘lock her up’.
Despite losing the state-by-state electoral battle that determines the US presidency, Clinton narrowly led Trump in the nationwide popular vote, according to US media tallies.
Prevailing in a race that opinion polls had clearly forecast as favoring Clinton, Trump won avid support among white non-college educated workers with his promise to be the “greatest jobs president that God ever created.”
“Such a beautiful and important evening! The forgotten man and woman will never be forgotten again. We will all come together as never before,” Trump wrote on Twitter early on Wednesday. In his victory speech, he said he had a great economic plan, would embark on a project to rebuild American infrastructure and would double US economic growth.
A Reuters/Ipsos national Election Day poll offered some clues to the outcome. It found Clinton badly underperformed expectations with women, winning their vote by only about 2 percentage points.
And while she won Hispanics, black and young voters, Clinton did not win those groups by greater margins than Obama did in 2012. Younger blacks did not support Clinton like they did Obama, as she won eight of 10 black voters between the ages of 35 and 54. Obama won almost 100 percent of those voters in 2012.
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On the other hand, Trump survived a series of blows on the campaign, many of them self-inflicted, including the emergence in October of a 2005 video in which he boasted about making unwanted sexual advances on women. He was the target of sharp disapproval, not just from Democrats but from many in his own party.
Trump wants to rewrite international trade deals to reduce trade deficits and has taken positions that raise the possibility of damaging relations with America’s most trusted allies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. He campaigned on a pledge to take the country on a more isolationist, protectionist ‘America First’ path. During the campaign, Trump also proposed refusing entry to the United States of people from war-torn Middle Eastern countries, a modified version of an earlier proposed ban on Muslims.
A largely anti-Trump crowd of about 400 to 500 people gathered outside the White House after his victory, many shocked or in tears. Protests against Trump also broke out overnight in downtown Oakland, California, where demonstrators set ablaze a likeness of him, smashed store front windows and set garbage and tires on fire.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 10th, 2016.
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