Pity about Ukraine, pity about Gaza and the Palestinian people (Biden can also take full credit), pity about American women seeking health care (especially in Florida), pity about vaccines, pity about fluoride, pity about crypto, pity about those mass deportations, pity about the sundry and varied persecutions of the others and the different, pity about those epic trade wars, pity about the war with China, pity about that immunity thing for kings and emperors, pity about all the corruption, pity that the United States has embraced an authoritarian con artist and snake oil salesman, pity about delusional states of existence, pity about the racism and the misogyny, pity about uncle Leon slashing and burning, pity about the Justice department, pity about the planet, and a large serve of pity for the pitiful celebration of climate science denialism, and a dollop of pity for those who accept the climate science, or any science at all, because who knows when the next pandemic might turn up ...
Oh there's a lot to pity to go around, and plenty of liberal tears. On the up side the mainstream media have accomplished their mission and will have four more years of impotent moaning and wailing at what they have helped bring into being with their plentiful sanewashing. No pity for them.
Perhaps the orange Jesus will be content with burgers, golf, the telly and getting up at 11am to saunter into office and pose with guests, as kings and emperors are wont to do, never reading his small set of one word briefing notes, and parading around in triumph; it's more the damage that his minions might do in his name. What a weird gallery of rogues they are, too numerous to list here, all grifters in their own way...
They've also made life difficult for the pond.
The pond was well over writing about the Mango Mussolini, if only because he turned up in every second lizard Oz column ... the task will be to find to find a reptile not infatuated by his follies, despite their love of the circus and their excitement at the cavalcade of clowns, the cortège of cabalists, who will actually run things in their own patented chaotic way, serving at the whim of the monarch... buckle up, there might be some turbulence.
For the moment there's no escaping it, with the lizard Oz offering wall to wall coverage, way below what this screen cap captures ...
Over on the extreme far right the lizard Oz's chattering class could talk of nothing else ...
Lord Downer at the top of the pack! Simplistic Simon seeing a chance for the mutton Dutton to do the same. Perhaps put abortion at the top of his policies? Or just behind nuking the country?
Lurking in the alleged news area were the likes of the bromancer, nattering "Ned" and Killer Creighton, celebrating the ecstasy of the deplorables, fancying they might now be given brand new garbage trucks.
The pond can't deal with all of them, and instead held the mic up to old pond favourites, asking if not for a blow job, then for a reaction.
First came the bromancer, mouth moistened to provide pleasure, relief and a happy ending ...
Whether you like Donald Trump or not, it’s an extraordinary achievement, a nearly unbelievable comeback, a triumph of one man’s will, and of democracy itself.
Only the bromancer could see the election of an authoritarian with pronounced fascist tendencies as a triumph of democracy, but then there were good people on both sides in the 1930s ...
As usual there was an image to get things going: Donald Trump speaks during the election night event at the West Palm Beach Convention Centre. Picture: AFP
Then came the bromancer in wildly excited mood ... and according to the reptiles it only took a three minute read to bring him off ...
Kamala Harris and Joe Biden claimed Trump was a mortal threat to democracy.
The American people emphatically disagreed. It looks like Trump will be the first Republican presidential candidate to win the national popular vote since George W Bush in 2004.
Whether you like him or not, that’s an extraordinary achievement, a nearly unbelievable comeback, a triumph of one man’s will, and of democracy itself.
The Democrats claimed Trump was a Nazi, the new Adolf Hitler. That was surely the most ridiculous rhetorical overreach in modern democracy.
Trump increased his support among blacks, increased by double digits among Hispanics, won a majority of Catholics, more women than anyone imagined, and over half the electorate in a high-turnout election.
Although Trump’s campaign avoided policy substance, it is still a magnificent demonstration of American democracy.
Whether you like Trump or not, the result is an enormous personal vindication for him – assassination attempts, felony convictions, the near hysterical opposition of almost all the media, almost all of Hollywood, an even higher proportion of academia, and with a huge financial advantage for the Harris campaign, Trump overcame all obstacles.
It’s not Trump but the Democrats who’ve had the problem with democracy. Everything Trump has achieved he’s achieved democratically. His appalling behaviour on January 6, 2021, involved encouraging a violent riot, not a military coup.
He was a pariah then. His comeback testifies to his astonishing will, energy and persistence.
At the beginning of the Republican primaries, Trump was well behind Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis. But he decisively won the primaries.
The Democrats for the past eight years have been scared of democracy. Hillary Clinton in 2016 was the party establishment candidate and there was hardly a primary process. Covid in 2020 enabled Biden to campaign from his basement in a disembodied and highly artificial fashion. Biden governed in an equally isolated fashion, avoiding any spontaneous press interactions.
Harris has never won a Democratic primary. A democratic process would have yielded a candidate like Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, or Pennsylvania Governor, Josh Shaprio. But the Democratic Party was scared of democracy. Ultimately, it out smarted itself, a victim of its own cynical tactics.
It was scared of any democracy involving Trump, too. So the Democrat establishment, quite improperly using every organ of state it could lay its hands on, tried to criminalise Trump’s politics with some of the most ridiculous criminal prosecutions in American history. The American people just didn’t buy it.
Nonetheless, most voters probably aren’t in love with Trump, in the way they once were with Ronald Reagan, or before him Jack Kennedy, or before him Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Rather, they voted for Trump in spite of his failings, while admiring his strength and purpose.
The most telling figures were these. Going into election day, some 72 per cent of Americans thought their country was on the wrong track. Barely 40 per cent approved of the job Biden was doing. No incumbent party candidate has ever won the presidency with figures like that.
Trump is the guy who actually did it, won the Republican primaries, survived the assassin’s bullet, and won an unprecedented vote.
While the polls told us broadly the truth, that the election would be fairly close, they did once more underestimate Trump’s vote nationally and in several battleground states.
How is it that the polls keep under estimating Trump in this way?
When Trump spoke after his victory the first thing he said was that he wanted now to heal the nation.
Trump seemed almost benign in this moment.
It’s worth recalling that the Democrats never accepted the legitimacy of Trump’s first victory, dishonestly constructing a Russian collusion conspiracy which had no basis in fact, and mobilising every part of the government that thought Trump beyond the pale, especially, to their everlasting shame, many former intelligence chiefs.
The good thing is this time Trump’s victory is clear cut. Everyone should accept the legitimacy of his presidency, including everyone overseas, including allies such as Australia.
These are bound to be pretty turbulent times. A calm temperament, a positive outlook, a steady approach, strong message discipline and a positive attitude would serve all interlocutors well.
So that's the bromancer's message:
The pond would have preferred an evocative cartoon ...
Then the pond put the mic in front of nattering "Ned".
In previous times, "Ned" has had something of a dry mouth when it comes to responses to the MM ...but he did better this time:
America’s progressive march has been halted in its tracks. The Democrats have nobody to blame but themselves. This is a defeat for their economic priorities, climate-change action and identity politics.
Oh be fair, "Ned", possibly blame could be shared with all those malevolent oligarchs with deep pockets, not least the one who runs the baying Faux Noise.
As usual, "Ned" started with an obligatory snap of the winner, Donald Trump points to supporters with former first lady Melania Trump during an election night event at the Palm Beach Convention Center. Picture: AFP
On the upside, the reptiles suggested that "Ned", like the bromancer, was only a three minute wonder, and so it came to pass:
This is Trump’s greatest victory. It is an astonishing personal triumph, a historic turning point that testifies to a changing, yet bitterly divided, America. It is a devastating repudiation of the Democratic Party establishment and progressive politics.
The judgment cannot be sharper: a majority of Americans were more alarmed about the direction of their country than they were about Trump’s character. Kamala Harris could never conquer that bedrock reality. She is where she lost.
On current trends, Trump is probably winning the popular vote, something he didn’t achieve in 2016 or 2020. Trump Mark II will be a more assertive president than before, battle-hardened, unpredictable, vindicated, and surely vindictive.
This was a contest between two deeply flawed candidates. But the American public knew Trump. He was loathed and loved, but perceived as formidable while dangerous and unscrupulous. Harris, by contrast, was largely unknown until the last 100 days. She lacked political authority, relied excessively on the women’s vote, banked on anti-Trump sentiment and never distanced herself from an unpopular Biden Administration.
The wide swathes of Middle America knew Trump wasn’t any saint, but they turned the electoral map red because they endorsed his bedrock positions: that living standards were in retreat, inflation was too high, borders were not secure and elites were too arrogant.
Trump won on two trends – the blunders of the Democrats that opened the door to him and the legions of Republicans voters who insisted on having Trump as their candidate. That story has no precedent, given Trump insisted the 2020 election was stolen from him, encouraged the January 6 storming of the Capitol, became a convicted felon and was ready to claim another fraud if he lost in 2024.
America’s progressive march has been halted in its tracks. The Democrats have nobody to blame but themselves. This is a defeat for their economic priorities, climate-change action and identity politics. When Biden won in 2020 he pledged to govern for all Americans. He didn’t. He ran a radical progressive agenda consumed by hubris. Biden assumed Trump was finished, then assumed he could beat candidate Trump, only to be forced to stand down leaving Harris as the stopgap with little time to prove herself.
This election will provoke a reckoning in America. The country is deeply broken. For every Trump champion there is a Trump opponent. Much will depend upon how Trump conducts himself. The irony of this election is that the Democrats, having warned that Trump was a threat to democracy, now find that the operation of that democracy has returned him to office.
The lesson: democracy is hard. The Democrats must accept the people’s verdict that Trump, four years ago, refused to accept. Another lesson: democracy is not always fair.
Being fair to Harris, she polled better than Biden would have polled. But the fundamentals were against Harris. Polls showed that 70 per cent of Americans felt their nation was heading in the wrong direction. The public wanted to vote out the Biden-Harris Administration.
And Harris, fatally, couldn’t say where she disagreed with Biden. She was tied to an unpopular economy and a failed president.
Her campaign, probably inevitably, focused on the “never Trump” vote-getting strategy but Harris could never grasp that while people mightn’t like Trump, they agreed with the grievances he articulated.
Harris and the Democrats lost much of the working class vote they once owned. The party has been defeated by the candidate they loathed and much of the reason lies within their own priorities and values.
J D Vance called Trump’s win the “greatest political comeback in American history” – and nobody could disagree.
Many questions remain. Might Trump and Vance lay the foundations for a new US centre-right majority? Will Trump trigger a global trade war? Will he sell out Ukraine and Taiwan? How will Trump resolve the conflict between his free-market and government interventionist advisers? And finally, how will Anthony Albanese manage President Trump?
Questions? The pond has always acted on the assumption then when barking mad people howl at the moon, accept that they find the moon somehow disturbing or threatening, and that they will act accordingly, untrammelled by consequences or guard-rails.
Here have a cleansing, optimistic cartoon making that very point:
And so to the looniest response of them all, provided by Lord Downer in
This is the worst day for the left since Vladimir Lenin got off the train in St Petersburg in 1917
It takes a most unique vision of the Lord Downer kind to evoke Lenin and 1917.
Then the reptiles came up with a suitable opening snap, Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during an election night event at the West Palm Beach Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, showing the MM in Christ-like pose, another grifter, perhaps posing as Mary, to one side:
Then it was on with Lord Downer comprehensively missing the point:
If I were Trump, I wouldn’t give that aide a job. As for me, I’m sure he’ll quickly forget my name and my existence.
But there is much we can learn from the American election.
First, there’s the impact of negative campaigning. There’s no doubt it works but it has to be carefully calibrated.
The Democrats and their fellow travellers relentlessly ran the line that Trump was a fascist, a Nazi, a threat to democracy and a friend of Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping. So exaggerated were these claims, so hysterical, that aspect of the Democrats’ campaign was completely disregarded.
After all, it wasn’t as though Trump were an unknown quantity. He already had been the president for four years and he didn’t terminate democracy and become a fascist leader during that time, whatever you might have thought of his policies.
Forgive Lord Downer, he still likes to see himself as a mover and a shaper, and a player, shuffling on to the stage, an attendant lord. Perhaps not Hamlet nor meant to be, but one who could swell a progress or start a scene or two.
At this point the reptiles interrupted Lord Downer's posturing with a snap of the Satanic she woman gossiping on the phone while the Titanic headed towards the iceberg:
Then it was back to Lord Downer's array of astonishing insights:
Kamala Harris may have been the Vice-President for the past four years but she has been very low profile. The challenge for her was to get herself known and to be seen as someone who successfully could address the concerns of the American people. That required her having a suite of relevant policies and being able to argue for those policies against the onslaught of the Republicans.
Instead, Harris refused for quite some weeks to be interviewed at all and her failure to be held to account became a story in and of itself.
What’s more, she did have some policies to address the cost-of-living issue and immigration, yet she spent the latter part of the campaign reverting to endless attacks on Trump.
However imperfect Trump may be, the only compelling case Harris made for her candidacy was that she was not him. That was never going to work with half the population who were already committed to Trump.
For Trump himself, his campaign’s great strength was his capacity to stare down his numerous critics in politics and the media.
His campaign was not perfect, though. It had two serious weaknesses. The first was Trump’s failure to stick to a message.
Then it was back to Lord Downer, now warming to the task at hand:
Some of his personal attacks, the claim of immigrants eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, the personal abuse of Liz Cheney and so on were certainly not vote winners. His attacks on Harris were also too personally abusive. To call Harris thick and unintelligent might appeal to his base but would be seen only as vulgar party politicking by swing voters.
He would have done even better had he stuck to the cost of living, immigration and no world war themes. They were cut-through messages.
Second, the Democrats did do well in attacking Trump over the abortion issue. It wasn’t, of course, true that Trump himself wanted to ban abortions but he was held responsible for the US Supreme Court overturning Rowe v Wade, as he had appointed three members of the court. That decision ruled it was unconstitutional for the federal government to make policy on abortion – that remains the preserve of the states.
Still, Trump’s attempt to present himself as pro-choice was unsuccessful and in doing that he not only failed to convince many women who were pro-choice but also alienated some of his evangelical supporters who were pro-life.
There’s a lesson there for Australia: keep away from the abortion issue as best you possibly can. Trump lost a large number of female votes because of this issue and you can be sure the Australian Labor Party is planning to run this issue against the federal Liberals.
One of the good things that has come out of the American election is that American voters are less inclined to vote on racial or ethnic lines.
That about 25 per cent of black men voted for Trump and he won a significant proportion of Hispanic votes is a sign that the messages about race are losing traction. Academics and commentators who have been promoting critical race theory will be deeply disappointed by this.
Naturally the reptiles took the opportunity to slip in a snap of the new heroine of the Tory rump, a certain Kemi Badenoch, on the principle that the Monty Python skit about the black knight is something for the Tories to emulate:
Then it was back to Lord Downer for his closing remarks:
This was an election that was a step towards what new British Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch says of racial politics: “I look to the day when the colour of our skin is no more significant than the colour of our eyes or the colour of our hair.”
Finally, do we Australians have anything to fear from a Trump presidency? Generally speaking, I think Trump will continue to maintain a strong alliance with Australia and AUKUS will be secure. I’ve said before, I doubt that Trump will impose tariffs on Australian exports to the US.
And it will be important that our federal government does everything it can to ensure that doesn’t happen.
As to personnel, it is true that Anthony Albanese and Kevin Rudd have given very negative character references of Trump in years gone by. Be that as it may, that’s politics. Trump and his administration, when they finally come to office on January 20, should accept Australia’s right to choose its own ambassador and understand that Rudd can change his mind on any topic as quickly as the summer breeze can change direction.
This is the worst day for the left since Vladimir Lenin got off the train in St Petersburg in 1917.
Or perhaps the worst day for the planet, given the MM's attitude to, and understanding of climate science? The pond won't mind much, the pond won't be around for the worst of it, but occasionally does pause to wonder about the fate of all those vulgar youffs who voted for the MM.
As for his Lordship evoking Lenin, what a dumb cluck he is, a voice from a now distant past:
Alexander Downer was foreign minister from 1996 to 2007 and high commissioner to the UK from 2014 to 2018.
His Lordship was nonetheless, in his references heading back to 1917, in keeping with the mood:
Never mind, time to close in the usual way with a celebratory cartoon, and as usual the immortal Rowe was on hand, catching the mood in his inimitable way:
