One man has made this year's US presidential
election the most extraordinary ever.
It has been an electric slugfest, democracy at
its most vibrant and shameful.
More mud has been flung around than is
churned up in that quintessential American
sport of big trucks with big tyres screeching
through the Georgia mud pits.
This was Donald Trump's election, even if he
loses. Particularly if he loses.
The forces he has unleashed and validated
won't go away. He is an incarnation of a
mood, which has become a movement.
The really startling thing about Donald Trump
is not how exceptional he is, but how much he
is part of an American mainstream.
Those who made headlines a few days ago,
threatening bloody revolution and a march on
Washington if Hillary Clinton wins, can be
ignored.
But what they shout tells you something about
the mood of their milder fellow Trumpists.
The adage that a win by a single vote is a win,
is only partly true.
Battles are won and lost. Wars rage for years.
In the UK, "Brexit means Brexit" has been used
to encourage defeated Remainers to slink
away and shut up.
Vanquished Americans, overflowing with a
sense of injustice and anger, won't go so
quietly.
If Mr Trump loses, he may stick around
complaining, issuing legal challenges and dire
warnings.
He might set up Trump clubs across America
to further his cause, or fund a TV station.
But even if he disappears with
uncharacteristic humility, he would leave a
legacy that could transform American politics.
However, his fundamental attack against an
elite doing down the common folk isn't new.
Back in 1891, the People's Party argued for
the "plain people" against the "controlling
influences" dominating the political
mainstream, and demanded the expulsion of
Chinese workers.
If you read no other political book this year,
read The Populist Explosion by John B Judis ,
which brilliantly sets out the connection to
present circumstances.
The 1964 Republican presidential candidate
Barry Goldwater campaigned against civil
rights, opposed his party's liberal elite and
argued that "extremism in the defence of
liberty is no vice". He lost, but helped
transform his party.
But more modern right-wing populism in
America may have begun with ex-Democrat
George Wallace, who campaigned as an
independent in 1968.
His case was based on a ferocious defence of
the continued segregation of black and white,
combined with an economic appeal to white
blue-collar workers.
"There's a backlash in this country against big
government," he said. "If the politicians get in
the way, a lot of them are going to get run
over by this average man in the street: this
man in the textile mill, the man in the steel
mill."
He lost, but his supporters didn't go away.
And those workers in the textile and steel
mills saw their standard of living and social
position decline.
For years, Pat Buchanan - who tried to get on
the Republican ticket a couple of times but
ended up running for president for the Reform
Party in 2000 - attacked not only
transnational corporations and global
competition, but also trade deals that
benefited Mexican workers.
Sound familiar? By then, those steel and
textile mills were closing down and many of
those workers worked no longer. Mr Buchanan
lost, but many listened.
Supporters and movements morphed and
overlapped. The evangelical Christian right
waxed and waned.
After Barack Obama's election, the Tea Party
built a movement that combined several
different resentments about bank bailouts,
taxation and big government.
Mr Trump has put these concerns centre stage
for the Republican Party, linking opposition to
global free trade and widespread immigration
to white unease at a black president and
minorities' growing status and power.
Textiles and steel still resonate in the
imagination and the children of those workers
who lost their jobs struggle. But that's not all.
Many middle-class Americans on fair wages
are burdened with huge college fees, face big
medical bills all their life, and risk an insecure
old age.
Life doesn't feel like it's getting better and
better for many.
Add to the brew fears of a changing America,
and the belief their taxes go only to help the
feckless and illegal immigrants.
Mr Trump's appeal is directly to these people.
The sharp intake of breath at the vulgarian on
the high wire disguises the strength and
breadth of this feeling.
Donald Trump is an American archetype, the
huckster, the booster, the snake oil salesman.
What many forget in their liberal disgust is
that in the old Wild West many bought the
snake oil off the side of the wagon. When
you've tried every other remedy, why not give
it a shot? What's the risk? Similarly in
politics.
This is not just the territory of the right.
President Clinton II would face similar
rumblings to her left.
The sort of people who support Occupy and
Bernie Sanders may hate Mr Trump, but they
agree with his excoriation of the
establishment, and his assault on the
arrogance of the rich and powerful.
They will agree that the US risks a third world
war if Mrs Clinton steps up military action in
the Middle East and confronts Russia.
This may not daunt her. But if she wins, her
legitimacy will already have been undermined
by the accusation that she succeeded only
because she was the candidate who was not
Donald Trump.
The Republican Party would find itself with a
heightened dilemma that so far it has ducked
and ducked again.
In the UK, the day after the election, the
losing party has a stark choice - to ditch or
support its defeated leader.
There are not just debates, but votes about
where they went wrong. Too left or too right -
too much of this policy, too little of that?
In the US, it isn't quite so frantic.
The Republicans won't be choosing a new
presidential candidate until 2020, and no-one
can guess now who it will be.
Before I became the BBC's North America
editor, I asked a host of diplomats, politicians
and journalists who would face Mr Obama in
2012. No-one said: "Mitt Romney".
Not a
single commentator dreamt it would be Mr
Trump in 2016.
So the Republicans have time. But eventually
they will have to make a decision. It is not
just about embracing a populist rhetoric.
Many do that already.
Trump was just better
at it.
They have to decide whether to adopt the
policies that go with a conservative rejection
of globalism and economic liberalism, which
would horrify their remaining supporters in
Wall Street and big business.
But if they don't, although the two-party
system in America is immensely durable, it is
possible that an inchoate angry movement
could spill outside its boundaries, flowing who
knows where.
The pitfalls are plain. The conservative
political establishment's approach to the Tea
Party was an idiot's guide on how not to do
it.
Partly because of the system of primary
elections - which allowed the "deselection" of
moderate candidates - the party was all but
taken over by radicals who then became the
mainstream.
There was a seemingly endless contest of
candidates pushed into a Dutch auction,
outbidding each other in outrage, moving
further to the right.
There seemed to be no thought given to
building an electoral strategy beyond the
activist base, or to forming an alliance with
the less militant, let alone figuring out how to
turn ideologically driven anger into a coherent
policy platform.
Mr Trump has made this problem more acute
by making it appear like a sustainable
strategy.
It may not matter for a good while - simply
saying: "No, no, no," to the Clinton White
House would do for a bit.
But there is little glory in becoming the eternal
outraged opposition, shorn of serious ideas
about how to exercise power.
Source: BBC
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