US Diary: Donald Trump is one who you would not normally associate with fairytales. Yet, it was a political comeback of fairytale-like proportions that he scripted as results from various corners of the United States kept streaming well into the early morning hours of Wednesday.

The people of America have decided. No, the time is not ripe yet to usher in the first woman President ever. But yes, the country has deemed it fit to bestow upon Trump the honor of becoming only the second President ever to hold two non-consecutive Presidential terms.

Therefore, when Trump, the 45th President, gets sworn in as the 47th President, he would be following the path taken by Stephen Grover Cleveland, who became the 22nd President of the US from 1885 to 1889 and then again from 1893 to 1897, as the 24th President of the US.

Even as the vote count enters the last phase, it is clear that Kamala Harris has no realistic chance of changing the script. Trump broke the Blue wall and not Harris, the Red barrier. Even in the states she retained, her margins often were lesser than what Biden had four years ago. Crucially, every swing state was either flipped or retained by Trump, thus taking the battle to its inevitable end.

In his victory speech in Mar-a-Lago, West Palm Beach, Miami, Trump said he would not rest till he had delivered the strong, safe and prosperous America he had promised. “This will truly be the golden age of America. This victory will enable us to Make America Great Again.” Now the time had come for healing, which he said would be the next task following the unparalleled victory scripted by his political movement MAGA.

“America had given an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” he said. Quite a contrast to what he had proclaimed repeatedly would be a period of depression that would befall the US if he had lost the election. Trump made it amply clear that he would deliver on every election promise he had made, prominent among them being securing the country’s border and taking America to the forefront in all aspects once again.

He said he was going to the election rallies, over 900 of those that he attended, giving an inkling of how much effort he had put in to pull off the victory. He mentioned the battleground states, underlining how he was sure to win each one of them, in the bargain taking the electoral votes, in his words, to 315.

Not one to abandon those who stood by him in the past four years, he waxed eloquent about Elon Musk and gave notice about bringing on board Robert F Kennedy Jr to oversee the country’s health portfolio. Trump was all praise for his Vice President-elect, JD Vance, who he said was a feisty guy who he would send to the enemy camps, which he explained were the many TV network stations. Vance was toasted by Trump for his uncanny ability to obliterate hostile television network anchors.

The Democrats and the major TV networks will now begin to come to terms with Trump 2.0. The political pundits and the TV anchors, who mostly backed Kamala Harris to win have already got busy splitting hair and putting under the microscope where the Vice President went wrong. Yet, the fact is this election was almost entirely about anti-incumbency, from day one.

The mid-course manoeuver of replacing Joe Biden with Harris was the last throw of the dice. One which Harris tried gamely to pull off, aided and abetted by a string of former Presidents and celebrities. But it was an election that was Trump’s to lose, not Kamala's to win. There were many occasions when Trump seemed to be trying to do exactly that, the classic cases being insensitive comments about demographic groups.

It worked both ways. He also managed to connect with a few demographic clusters, the Hispanics and the young male voters being two such. It was no surprise when he touched briefly upon his campaign strategy. “We built the biggest, broadest of coalitions. We had the young and old, men and women, rural and urban working with us. I analyzed the people who voted for us. There were African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, Arab Americans, and Muslim Americans. It was a historic realignment. The common core was common sense.”

Trump said he wanted a strong military force, not to start wars, but to stop them from happening. There was also a clear mention of the future of America’s economy being closely intertwined with `liquid gold’ of which reserves the US had more than what Saudi Arabia, Russia or China did.

Alluding to the attempt made on his life during one of his many campaign rallies, Trump openly declared as if giving a testimony – “Many told me that God had spared my life for a reason. To save our country and restore America to greatness. Now, we are going to fulfil that mission.” Finally, he said the credo of his second term would be the same as it was during his first term - promises made, to you... make America safe, strong, prosperous, powerful and free again.”

He signed off his speech with words of unification to the people of America. “We need to put the divisions of the past four years behind us. It is time to unite. We have to try. Success will bring us together. We have to put our county first, at least for some time. We have to fix it, to make America great again, for all Americans.”

Healing would be easier said than done. Trump and his MAGA followers were not exactly visible proponents of unifying the country, as showcased by the storming of the Capitol. Neither was the Biden administration as they got antsy with using the judiciary to put the brakes on Trump.

In hindsight, that strategy seems to have backfired as Trump got to turn the tables on Biden first and then Kamala, for taking a political battle to the courts. He also was seen by a section of the voters as the victim, relentlessly persecuted by the Biden/ Harris administration. To put things in immediate perspective, unlike during the time Biden took charge, or at least tried to, the transition of power will be much smoother. It will also give a chance for the people of the land to see how graceful the Democrats are in their hour defeat, even as the Trump government tries to get the show going.

Meanwhile, the ease of doing business for the next government in Washington DC will depend to a large extent on which party wrests control of the House of Representatives, given that the Senate has been taken by the Republicans. If that too goes the Republicans, Trump will have an easy sailing, as far as getting bills passed and fund allocation done are concerned.

How he gets to deliver on cutting down on the average American’s cost of living will depend on a whole lot of other factors. One of the major reasons for the anti-incumbency sentiment that paved the way for Trump’s second coming to the White House was dissatisfaction among the voters about their quality of life. That has to change soon. The first 100 days of Trump 2.0 will be critical for the entire country.
 

- Vinod Mathew is a senior journalist and author; views expressed are his own.