Trump is history
Trump is history!
Five minutes to two pm on Friday 6th November. Pennsylvania goes BLUE. Trump is toast!
I have been watching the US Election results with a consuming interest in seeing the American voting public getting rid of President Trump. But, "Wow!", it has been a stressful week.
Some early results during the night on Tuesday/Wednesday gave some positive indications that Joe Biden was doing well in some areas. But, then there were more indications yet that Trump had made a really strong finish to his campaign and had picked up more votes than the pollsters were predicting. The first big hope that Biden was doing well enough to take Florida and block Trump`s route to the White House was crushed during the night and it was becoming clear we`d be in it for the long haul. It was also thought to be quite possible that Trump was doing well enough actually to retain the presidency. So depressing!
Then during the day yesterday, the CNN channel was meticulous in updating the counts in the five states still in play as potential swing states. Some large early leads where the live voting on election day had favoured Trump have been getting squeezed narrower and narrower as various counties reported on their latest counts of the "mail-in" votes.
It has become absolutely clear that Trump had got his message across to his supporters that they should vote on election day and not use the mail-in option. Contrarily Biden advised his supporters to avoid the coronavirus danger and said democrats should use the postal votes for safety. In the states that are still counting, the reason they are still counting is that there was a Republican push not to allow postal votes to be counted before election day. Now those chickens are coming home to roost - so 80% of the postal votes are democratic.
Conclusion - Trump is toast.
How does this change our future?
How the next few hours and days will play out is unpredictable. How the next weeks and months will play out may yet prove to be turbulent, given Trump`s lies about being "cheated" and the dog-whistle effect that may have upon his most avid, yet most stupid, supporters.
However, what I would like to do briefly here is to look further ahead and see what impact President Biden will have for us as he settles in to the presidency.
It looks as though he may have quite a decisive result (perhaps 306 electoral College votes to Trump`s 232!) He will have a Democratic Congress and there is even a chance he will have a balanced Senate, as there are likely to be two run-off elections because two Senate races may prove to fall below the 50% requirement for candidates to automatically assume their seats.
Whilst Joe Biden is not a natural born environmentalist and has supported fracking until very recently, there has been a strong green movement building within the Democrats. It is also likely that Biden will move quickly to replace the Climate Change Deniers in sensitive environmental positions.
Overall, I believe the environmental agenda in the US is going to get a huge boost from the post-Trump changes. And that means that the international green agenda will receive a huge shot in the arm as well. We need to be ready for this, not least because the UK is going to be host to COP26 and, with positive US involvement, great things COULD happen.
Green Liberal Democrats now have an opportunity to punch well above our weight by impacting the Lib Dem contribution to the environmental debate here in the UK and, in turn the Liberal Democrat contribution can have a disproportionate impact upon the national environmental debate. I do not want to raise everyone`s blood pressure too much, but I FEEL 2021 is going to prove to be a REALLY good year for us. So, please watch this space for initiatives you can get stuck into to push the green agenda forward.
Let us celebrate the Donald`s Demise and prepare for a greener future than I was able to imagine as little as a week ago.
TRUMP IS TOAST!
See: BBC Radio 4 - Costing the Earth on the American election at
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000p6wx