Donald Trump was elected US president on November 8 but nearly three weeks later, people do not seem to have gotten over it.
The cries of woe and anguish continue to be heard in the American media and elsewhere, many of them from the same pundits who never saw it coming.
About the only two prominent Americans who genuinely canvassed a Trump win were the filmmaker Michael Moore and the cartoonist Scott Adams. They made their predictions long before the polls, and stuck true to them right to the end.
Moore tried his best to alert people to the dangers of the poll going to Trump, even putting out an uncharacteristic piece of hagiography titled Michael Moore in Trumpland a few weeks before the election.
But he failed to convince an electorate that had made up its mind a long time before the date.
So why did Trump win?
There are numerous factors that are possible causes. For one, the voting public in the US (and many other countries too) have long ceased to be convinced by facts and figures. There is a simple reason for this: given that most of this data comes from people in authority (politicians, civic leaders, the media, so-called pundits) who lie and lie and lie again, the public have ceased to give anything they say any credence.
So if people are now complaining that the masses are unwilling to deal with facts, you know whom to blame. They will believe anything else, and you really cannot take issue with that. They pick and choose what they will believe.
A second factor that came into play was the opposition candidate herself. Hillary Clinton (and when you say that, Bill is part of the baggage) has loads of baggage and much of it is not very commendatory. During the campaign, there were leaks that showed the Democrats had tilted the balance so that Bernie Sanders, who was a much better candidate and one who would probably have defeated Trump, would not become their nominee. Did that anger probable Democrat voters? Take a guess.
Then there was the strange pattern of campaigning where Clinton did not bother to visit many states which, it was taken for granted, would vote Democrat as they have done so in the past. If there is one thing voters hate, it is to be taken for granted. They gave Clinton the finger. The middle finger.
And why would the Democrats put Barack Obama and his wife out to campaign for Clinton? Obama split the nation right down the colour divide when he won. The second time, he just managed to squeeze through past Mitt Romney. He is not the unifying figure many leftists and intellectuals see him to be; if anything, his election only made race more of an issue in a country where it was already a massive factor in just about everything.
Trump won just by not being a politician. He did not treat the whole thing as a popularity contest, just as an exercise that needed to be won. All those who keep whinging now that Clinton has won the popular vote – it is a waste of time. Winning the election was the name of the game, not winning the popular vote.