The Tribune

SEVERAL couples had gathered on Election Night outside Washington, DC. Most of them were committed Democrats; a few described themselves as independent, and one still identified as Republican. They had maintained long friendships with each other over many presidential elections, through kids’ school and parents getting sick and dying. Through a couple of divorces and remarriages.

A now lengthy tradition had grown among this group over many years: One couple, with a large basement family room and a big screen television, would host an Election Night party. The others would bring sandwiches and beer and wine.

In 2016, the prevailing sentiment in the group strongly favored Hillary Clinton, and her downfall that night was a genuine shock. Several of the couples had heard that Clinton was in trouble in the weeks before the election, but had scoffed at the idea of Donald Trump somehow winning the presidency.

Four years later, two couples simply couldn’t stand the notion of gathering as usual; they could not face the prospect of another dispiriting evening, even with good friends. But the rest endured another nervy several hours of watching TV hosts trying to recycle the same news for hours and hours, finally giving up around midnight with the prospect of another wrenching defeat.

In 2020, the group had become unanimous in supporting Joe Biden over Trump. Each couple had its own reasons, but everyone left the party with a feeling of dread. Then by the following morning, the tide had turned and Biden was headed for victory.

On the night before last, most of the group had reassembled, once again united in their opposition to Trump and in their confident feeling that the US would elect its first-ever female president.

The major TV and cable networks all now have their own “numbers nerds” who breathlessly analyse the election returns from around the country. These statistics experts are called upon to carry much of the election coverage, and since election news is often revealed at pre-set intervals with little information available between the intervals, the experts often repeat themselves.

On Tuesday, Kamala Harris raced out to a good start in several of the eastern states where everyone agreed the election would be decided. 8:00 came and went. 9:00, then 10:00. The tide was turning. Analysts at liberal-leaning media outlets slowed down. There were fewer cutaways to Democratic gatherings. Trump supporters sensed their candidate might be on the verge of a stunning victory.

Shortly after midnight, the last stragglers had left the neighbourhood party, with long faces and a palpable sense of dread. The New York Times election tracker at 12.25am handicapped Trump’s chances of victory at 91 percent. He seemed to be on track to win a majority if not all of the seven “swing states” that almost everyone had predicted would determine the winner.

As the friends hugged and shook hands, a few reminded the group that a similar scenario had played out four years ago. The picture also looked bleak then as midnight approached, but by dawn the next day, Biden had somehow caught and was passing Trump. No one felt that was likely Tuesday, though, as they departed for their now solemn, quiet homes. Lightning would not strike twice.

What looked after midnight like certain defeat for Harris was somehow less surprising than Clinton’s shocking loss in 2016. It was profoundly discouraging.

Meanwhile, would Wednesday morning bring a miraculous turnabout, or simply confirm what seemed at midnight to be inevitable? At 1.21am, Fox News called the election for Trump. Perhaps still smarting for their disloyalty four years ago when the network was the first to correctly call Arizona for Biden, essentially closing the door on Trump’s re-election bid, Fox was right out front for Trump this time.

In fact, when Trump appeared before his ebullient supporters around 2:25 a.m. claiming victory, neither NBC nor CNN had called the election for him, though both networks admitted that Harris had no practical path to election after she lost Pennsylvania.

With Trump on stage were his many family members, senior members of his campaign party apparatus, Vice President-elect JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson, whose future as lower house leader still hung in the balance in the middle of this consequential night even as Republicans rather emphatically recaptured control of the US Senate.

Analysts at the major networks worked on through the night to make their points about why the election had gone the way it did. But by 4.00, after Trump had declared victory and no one really argued with him on the networks, those same networks still had not declared that he actually won this election.

It’s quite unlikely that Trump won’t remember this in his new term.

Trump lavished praise on eccentric billionaire Elon Musk and campaign manager Susie Wiles. The new president-elect seemed at times almost subdued as he basked in the glow of yet another widely unexpected electoral victory. He vowed to seal off America’s southern border, and somehow, watching him, this commitment seemed very likely to be realised.

The American economy is now recovering pretty well from the ravages of the COVID pandemic and associated inflation, so Trump won’t necessarily have to wade right into that issue.

It will quickly emerge as a major irony that this nativist, isolationist, tradition-smashing re-elected president will need, perhaps most urgently of all the tasks that await him, to deal with wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Will he make a deal with Vladimir Putin to end the Ukraine war on terms he and Vance have occasionally outlined during and even before this campaign? Will he be able to rein in Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu, who just fired his defence minister who was perhaps his greatest domestic political rival and who seems determined to once and for all eliminate the security threats posed by Hamas and Hezbollah by whatever means necessary.

As events unfolded on this momentous Election Night in America, a parallel came to mind. In January 1981, at the end of Jimmy Carter’s first and only term in office, Iran’s theocratic leaders still held hostage members of the American Embassy in Tehran after overrunning the embassy in the previous year.

A rescue attempt authorised by Carter fizzled embarrassingly. The US, to itself perhaps more than to most others around the world, looked weak and powerless to do anything to get back its hostages. As if to repudiate and ridicule the American president, the Iranians pointedly waited until Ronald Reagan had defeated Carter and taken the oath of office before releasing the hostages.

Reagan was thus launched on an eight-year run in the White House that is still widely regarded as successful because he directed the US to victory over the former Soviet Union and was able to end a Cold War with Moscow that had lasted for nearly two generations.

Now, with Joe Biden consigned to perhaps the greatest irrelevance and fundamental fecklessness of any president since Carter, America is once again seemingly powerless to persuade Middle Eastern leaders to take the steps necessary to return hostages, both to the US and to Israel.

As experts pore over what happened on Tuesday and try to make sense of it all Trump, like Reagan, will have an opportunity to break the two major international impasses that have hamstrung Biden’s foreign policy.

If Trump can indeed persuade Netanyahu to declare victory in his bloody feuds with Hezbollah and Hamas and negotiate for a durable cease fire, he will be seen, not undeservedly, as a hero.

He’ll need to be much more careful with Putin and Ukraine. Abandoning Ukraine or appearing to do so will not be a good look for a president for whom it is unusually important to project personal power.

But if Trump can take whatever situation in Eastern Europe that is bequeathed to him by Biden and negotiate a truce that America’s European allies, Putin and Congress can all accept, he will deserve all the credit he will have earned.

Back at home again in Washington and the White House, Trump will be carefully scrutinised as he sorts through his personnel and policy options. The bet (and hope) here is that in his zeal to ensure a Reagan-like legacy, he will reflect more thoughtfulness than is presently expected of him.