Parliamentary historian and commentator Peter van der Heiden was sure that Hillary was going to win. He was wrong. Just like all those other expert. Here is his analysis.

In the upcoming weeks, a wave of so-called experts will try to explain how it was possible that they were so far off in their predictions about the American elections. Let me be one of the first – even though I am thousands of kilometres away from America and can hardly claim to be an expert – I was wrong. Colossally. Trump in the White House, nobody expected that. Yes, Michael Moore, but I took and take him even less seriously than Trump.

What does the election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the USA mean, exactly? First of all, that all political wisdom gained over the past centuries, can be thrown out the window. Apparently, as a candidate, you can snub big parts of the electorate, live your life in a questionable way, deny facts that are well-documented – actually, you can do anything, even the one rule in campaigning, ‘never put on headgear’, does not apply to Trump.

Secondly, the fact that Trump won shows that polls do not say anything. Brexit already showed this, but with Trump, the difference between the polls and the actual outcome were just as big. Apparently, these days, it is hard to predict accurately – even for the until recently acclaimed Nathan Silver.

‘The fact that Trump won shows that polls do not say anything’

Thirdly, Trump’s election means the non-election of Hillary Clinton. That has less to do with her womanhood – for women, this apparently wasn’t enough reason to vote for her – than with the fact that the Clintons are the personification of the status quo. Of the interweaving politics, money and the media. Of the backroom politics. Of the political correctness. Of the power of Wall Street. Of the babyboom generation, which has taken care of itself well and is still doing that – but which gives the regular American the feeling that he or she cannot keep up with the globalising world. Trump is none of those things. Of course, he is a babyboomer and well taken care of – but he does not carry responsibility for the system that made that possible. This way, he could not only get away with tax evasion, but even make that Hillary’s problem: she could have done something about it and did not.

Space for Trump
What will change for us when Trump replaces president Obama? In the next two years, Trump will have the possibility to really change things. Not only has his party won the presidency, it also kept its majority in the House of Representatives. Trump can easily get his conservative judges into the Supreme Court – and they can stay there for years and years. That counts for everything else that only needs a normal majority in the parliament – and that is almost everything, except for the making of treaties. So Trump has a lot of room – even though there is always the bureaucracy, that will limit the unexperienced president’s moving space as much as possible. How effective Trump is will be hugely influenced by his team. Even though Trump is allegedly not the man to make it easy on his staff to push him in a certain direction.

‘We might get Geert Wilders as prime minister’

Or, to name something else, not the man to let himself be bothered by international agreements. What we will probably see starting 20 January, is a president who, with blunt rhetoric – Trump’s signature move – and wild plans will cause a lot of insecurity. Whether things will really get messy depends on the diplomats around him, who will have to work overtime to limit the damage done by his words and behaviour, and the diplomats and governments of other countries, who will have to learn to deal with a loose cannon like him. Luckily, the world already gained some experience from the last Republican president, who left us with some extra terrorism hotbeds. Let’s hope that our world leaders – and, for arguments sake, I count Mark Rutte as one – do not walk into the same trap again.

And when I said Mark Rutte, you can fill in Geert Wilders. Because the same thing might happen to us in March. I will not predict anything about that anymore.