I hate to ask, but could the election have been rigged? 
I know very little that's useful about foreign policy but countries had a preview of a Trump administration and should have been making moves to build up their own defence given the unreliability of the US. That shock might be good for them in the long run. It's always bad to put your eggs in one basket despite what modern economists tell us about monopolies.
As someone else said, another wild ride. I'm not sure he's healthy enough to go 4 more years but time will tell.
I noticed that this time round, there was a great deal less interest in the US elections - at least, in my neck of the woods. Bar chat ignored it completely, and I had been wondering why that might have been so different on this occasion.
Yes, the tragedy of weather deaths was a far more immediate cause for concern and interest, but I suspect that the true reason for the unexpected lack of interest has come about due to a widespread loss of faith in all politicians. Here, in Spain, Sanchez, the head honcho and of the left, lost his credibility when he came out in favour of saving the Catalonian independence bosses from facing the courts for sedition and various charges of misappropriation of public monies, all in exchange for their six votes that keep him in power nationally. A blind populace would have been able to see through that one. A couple of days ago, he and the King and Queen of Spain paid a public visit to one of the storm-ravaged towns in the province of Valencia. The mobs were unhappy at what they considered the slow pace of rescue units arriving, and threw mud and other stuff at the visitors. Sanchez fled back into his vehicle and vanished, leaving the royals to hold the fort. A tearful Queen held her ground, doing what she could to comfort the women and hold her nerve against the fear of lynching; the King did the same. How unfortunate that these two people hold no political power, that it all rests in the pockets of the cowards.
In Britain, the Conservatives showed themselves beholden to a tight, inner group of isolationists that led to the self-inflicted shot in the head of Brexit. The party that succeeded in giving the nation what had been made out to be the gift of the past two centuries, led to the unbridled conceit and hubris of its bosses and, when it became clear the benefits had been illusions, saw those Brexit angels cast into deep, outer political darkness. With all that domestic shit going down, it’s not surprising that events across the Atlantic haven’t figured that much of late. Big mistake.
If I lived in the US, I think that I would be just as disillusioned: surely, the country must have two better people to represent it than the choices offered last time? The Democrats made the error of continuing to keep a senile old man in the driving seat. He should have been eased out as soon as it became internationally obvious that he wasn’t well enough to continue in office. But no, nothing was done, and the damage to US credibility was allowed to continue. Harris, unfortunately, could never have escaped contamination by proximity; she, too, became too close to the failures of image and paid the penalty this time.
All that said, nothing much has changed regarding the candidates: the people could only vote for those who bought themselves into the political game. There are no giants anymore, only well-funded charlatans of all stripes.
