Daily Times

In my article “Brace for Trump Presidency” (Daily Times) back in March I predicted that Donald Trump would easily win the White House. A number of readers wrote to me telling me I was wrong. One reader even wrote a scathing letter predicting that instead the US would join the ranks of an increasing number of countries that have had women leaders. I had hoped I was wrong and they were right but alas it was not to be.

Hubris is what cost Hillary Clinton and the Democrats this election. As I had predicted, the rust belt was where the election was going to be decided. I wonder why then if I a non-American could see it were the Democrats so blind to what was going on. They focused instead on issues that were at best incidental to the main one: economy and the failure of US elites to adequately allow the spoils to be shared with the blue collar working Americans. Instead they paraded out Khizr Khan, a Pakistani American Muslim, to give lectures on the importance of reading the US Constitution. That moment, moving and emotional as it was, probably had the opposite effect on those who were undecided. Here was an immigrant lawyer with a foreign accent and an ethnically dressed wife lecturing Americans on the constitution. Diversity is a virtue, but in societies where there is an increasing gap between the rich and poor, and where economy is in transition, it can become a curse. This is where things were, unfortunately. Those blue collar workers losing their manufacturing jobs could not be bothered by high-minded ideals of equality and inclusiveness.

This was before Michelle Obama gave her “when they go low we go high” speech. Mrs Obama is a star but she is a star to those people who had already made up their mind about which way they were going to go. For the rest it must have sounded like quite an arrogant statement. Then came the ‘deplorables’. All of these added up and had a snowball effect. Add to that President Barack Obama’s attacks on Donald Trump, justified as these were but unprecedented for an incumbent US president. It must also be remembered that it was President Obama who probably had set Trump on the road to White House unwittingly with his remarks at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2011. That night he had mocked Trump by imagining scenarios where Trump would be president. Trump who was in attendance may have made up his mind then to run for president.

Yet none of these were in of themselves reasons for Trump’s victory. A few days after I landed in the US two weeks ago, FBI director Comey had attempted to upend the apple cart by reviving the email server issue. That was a defining moment in this campaign. Hillary Clinton’s past indiscretions, piddling compared to what we are used to in Pakistan, were catching up with her. Ultimately, the FBI cleared her of any wrongdoing once again but the damage was done. The people saw Clinton as untrustworthy. In Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania her voters preferred to stay home. In the end Clinton lost these three states by a cumulative margin of less than 200,000 votes. It was a number that could have been easily overcome had the Democrats concentrated their firepower in those states that they mistakenly assumed were part of the much-touted blue wall. Trump breached that wall and broke it down, getting the ultimate prize as a result. He did not win this election as much as Democrats lost it.

So where to from here now? Trump had to deploy the worst possible nativist rhetoric — much worse than his counterparts in the Brexit campaign — to win the Republican Party. But is he going to make good on his more radical proposals such as a ban on Muslims? Is he going to undo the Affordable Care Act? Is he going to build the wall? Somehow I feel that for Trump getting the White House was an end in itself. He is, therefore, bound to mellow down on his election rhetoric, or at least one hopes so. Yet there are some things that will happen. Do not expect the new administration to put much capital in political correctness. Terrorist attacks will be called Islamic terrorism. It would not be business as usual with Saudi Arabia and the GCC countries. Trump is going to closely partner with Russia on Syria and ISIS. This would be another positive.

The problem ultimately with Trump’s administration will not be that it would an uncompromising enemy of Islamic extremism, but that many of his voters belong to the same kind of narrow minded thinking borne out of misogyny and religious bigotry that fuels Islamist extremists. Indeed, there is a very real danger that Trump armed with a Republican majority in the house, and soon to take control of the Supreme Court as well, may undo some of those cherished American values of freedom and equality. A lot rides on what kind of cabinet he would choose. Early indications do not look promising. Dr Ben Carson, a creationist and a religious fundamentalist, is being forwarded as the new secretary of education. We in Pakistan are well aware of the dangers that dogmatists like Carson pose to education systems. It happened in Pakistan under General Zia-ul-Haq, and is happening in India under Narendra Modi. Let us hope that the self-professed strongest and greatest country in the world does not follow suit.

How would Trump deal with Pakistan? I think things are going to drastically change on this front. Now more than ever Pakistan needs to get its act together and bring the civilian and military leadership on the same page viz. terrorism. Secondly, Pakistan’s government is going to have to address the issues the liberals have been pointing out. The Trump administration will have zero tolerance for some of our key obsessions. Now imagine if the Supreme Court were to uphold the Aasia bibi’s verdict, Trump and his Christian base in the US are going to see red.

One hopes that Donald Trump may somehow turn out to be different than our worst fears of him and his administration. Let us hope that the bombastic businessman now finds time to turn into a statesman. This requires a leap of faith. Will Donald Trump the rabble-rouser be able to govern without moderating some of those jagged edges of his election promises? One hopes that Trump seizes his moment in history and turns it into something positive.

The writer is a lawyer based in Lahore and the author of the book Mr Jinnah: Myth and Reality. He can be contacted via twitter @therealylh and through his email address yasser.hamdani@gmail.com