US Republican Donald Trump yesterday was elected as the 45th President of the United States of America over Democrat opponent Mrs Hillary Clinton, the first woman to have been nominated to stand for such office.
Yesterday Press Service International New Zealand young writer Tim Newman wrote a very insightful piece on this 2016 election campaign and today as the voting results came in he sent this:
"Whatever you make of Trump's politics or personality, it has to be recognised that he has just pulled off possibly the greatest political upset in living memory - in a year of improbable upsets.
"Who would have thought at the beginning of 2016 that Leicester City would win the English Premiership, the Cleveland Cavaliers would win the NBA, the Chicago Cubs would win the World Series for the first time in 108 years, the All Blacks would lose to Ireland for the first time in 111 years, the Western Bulldogs the AFL title, Cronulla Sharks the NRL title, and that Britain would exit the EU?"
Quite a list
Whatever anyone of us might say about such an astonishing list, Donald Trump's electoral victory in an electoral system puzzling to most Australians, revealed that the surprise rounded on a number of unexpected contingencies.
The pollsters got it wrong, horribly wrong.
One key issue centred not around policy as against the US political establishment
Another was the rural and poor middle class 'white vote' came out and voted in their millions as they had suffered most under leftie elitist policies, political correctness and the fear of terrorism. In a sense they saw Russia's Putin as a compatriot against such liberal excesses.
Trump offered them hope and a clean political slate (clean out the swamp).
On the whole, the minorities didn't turn up in their droves to vote, they swallowed the media coverage that it was a foregone conclusion - Hillary Clinton would walk it in.
Many of the nation's top military people supported Trump wholeheartedly - majority of Americans fear for their future – family, jobs, nation.
Very few, it seemed, cared about his private life as other issues for the majority of voters, were of far greater weight.
Religious
Some have claimed that it was the white evangelical vote won the day, but this is unsubstantiated, and the reality is that there are just not many to make such a difference as there once was.
Rather other fears drove the religious vote – and this included the evangelicals, the Lutherans, the Roman Catholics, the Pentecostals, the Methodlists, the Presbyterians, the Jewish vote (and other religious groups) ...... the major fear of these by far was the appointment of the next Supreme Court judges – there could be up to 3 or may be 4 during the Trump Presidency (certainly if 8 years).
The fear of a Clinton Presidency was that the Supreme Court's vacancies would be filled with liberal leaning justices and the America of today would be changed forever – political correctness would be legislated, freedom of speech curtailed, social issues misguided, minorities taking over social and legal values, religious freedoms reviewed and restricted, Sharia Law permitted to function in parallel with US law, and the rest of it.
This it seems was the underlying concern, and a real one it was. The religious voters recognised it as such, as did civil libertarians and millions of concerned US citizens.
Donald Trump
On 20 January 2017 Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States of America.
In years to come people may well remember where they were when Donald Trump was elected to his nation's top office. May we pray for the President and his administration for wise, faithful and courageous decisions.
Dr Mark Tronson is a Baptist minister (retired) who served as the Australian cricket team chaplain for 17 years (2000 ret) and established Life After Cricket in 2001. He was recognised by the Olympic Ministry Medal in 2009 presented by Carl Lewis Olympian of the Century. He mentors young writers and has written 24 books, and enjoys writing. He is married to Delma, with four adult children and grand-children. Dr Tronson writes a daily article for Christian Today Australia (since 2008) and in November 2016 established Christian Today New Zealand.
Mark Tronson's archive of articles can be viewed at http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/mark-tronson.html