At around 5.30am the truth began to dawn on Kamala Harris. That was when she cancelled her proposed victory speech at her Washington campaign headquarters.

Donald Trump’s achievement in becoming America’s 47th occupant of the White House is perhaps the most extraordinary in the country’s entire political history. He is 78 years old and was up against a slick, much younger opponent who seemed to channel the preferences and instincts of the demographic who’d been predicted to swing this election in her favour.

Mr Trump is a convicted felon who is facing dozens more cases, both criminal and civil. It seems that the more he insults people, the more likely they are to vote go him. He has lurched from one alleged sexual scandal to another in the course of the last 10 years.

Gary O’Donoghue, the BBC’s brilliant Senior North American correspondent eloquently summarised it thus: “If this is going the way we think it is - getting back to the White House in a second non-consecutive term, only done once before - is an extraordinary, absolutely mind-blowing achievement. We keep using this historic word, but this really would be one of those moments in the history of this country that you simply would never have envisaged.”

Let’s speak frankly here: at a moment in history when the world has never looked more unstable than at any point since 1939, the most powerful nation on earth has just chosen to be led by one of its most unstable citizens. 

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John Bolton, National Security Adviser in Trump’s administration between 2018 and 2019, said: “I think [Kamala] Harris would be catastrophic for national security. Trump's inability meanwhile to carry a thought for more than a short period of time would also be catastrophic for American National Security. The world that he would inherit if he's inaugurated is clearly more unsafe and he doesn't have a clue how to deal with it.”

So now we know: the best way to beat a spell in the American pokey is to become Commander in Chief of the US armed forces. The president-elect’s victory last night means he’ll get the charges against him either dropped or postponed. The federal case in Washington DC against him trying to interfere in the 2020 election will never now come to fruition. The Department of Justice’s policy is that a sitting president can’t be prosecuted.

Mr Trump has already said he’ll fire Jack Smith, the special prosecutor within minutes of taking office. In Georgia, another case will probably be postponed. In New York he was due to be sentenced in three weeks for the 34 fraud charges of which he’s been convicted. No-one seems to know what happens now. Does it get postponed, giving Mr Trump four years to - oh I don’t know – get his Supreme Court Justice picks to downgrade serious fraud to a minor misdemeanour?

In the weeks ahead, the US Democrats will search their souls and those who fancy themselves to be sophisticated and civilised will look to blame the usual suspects. They should look no further than their own arrogance and hubris.

In Scotland last week, the news that Mr Trump was more popular here than Kamala Harris was greeted with disbelief. It shouldn’t have been surprising, though. The SNP’s contempt for its own citizens has been laid bare to many Scots for several years. You could draw comparisons between Nicola Sturgeon and her hapless successors and Kamala Harris. All their smug authoritarianism and finger-wagging and their sermonising - you can't do this; you mustn't say that – seemed also to characterise Ms Harris’s rhetoric.

This was apparent in her dismissal of faith groups whom she and her supporters portrayed as reactionary, witch-burning knuckle-draggers. The vast majority of Christians in the US and Scotland aren’t very conservative at all. It's just that - like other groups - they don't react well when clever people insist on being condescending to them. Many American Catholics will have voted very reluctantly for Trump.

A woman is left disappointed by the resultsA woman is left disappointed by the results (Image: Getty)

Whenever they are forced to choose between their faith and their party, their faith usually wins. The key is to avoid forcing them to make the choice. A mature politician can find a path through this without affecting the terms of the church-state social contract. Kamala Harris and her advisers were either too stupid or too arrogant to discern this. They drove reasonable people into the arms of a demagogue.

During the Brexit campaign we discovered that if you keep telling reasonably liberal sections of society that they're reactionary, stupid and hate-filled, you risk driving them to vote for candidates and options they'd never have previously have considered.

Political analysts have a phrase for people who don’t really engage with intense politics. They call them “low propensity”. In the 2020 American election, one million of them didn't vote in Georgia. This time it seems many of them - 20% of the vote – became politically energised. This was helped by Mr Trump coming to Georgia in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Elaine, while the Democrats were a little slower.

It’s scarcely believable that in the course of four years the Democrats didn't see what Mr Trump and his people could see. It was indicative of people whose contempt for working people is so ingrained that they literally can’t bear to spend too long win their company. It’s unforgivable. If you can't dislodge a man who can “barely hold a coherent thought” for more than a few minutes - a known criminal - then what does it say about you? We’re talking about a man who is accused of trying to stage a coup four years ago. 

It's not that the US voters are knowingly harbouring a criminal, it's that the Democrats gave them no other choice. Meanwhile, the deployment of A-list celebrities to endorse you is also counter-productive. People like buying their music and watching their movies. But they're not stupid. They react badly when these multi-millionaires start telling them how to lead their very ordinary lives. Call it the Bono Principle.

It’s when a very privileged, very affluent elite want you to believe they're down with the kids and all radical and then start telling you that you're a hate filled bigot. There they all were last week, vying with each other to show just how appalled and disgusted they are with Trump. Yeah, okay, we know. But don't keep banging on about it. And what have you ever done for the poor? How dirty are your hands?

At around 5am poor old Joe Biden first began to get the blame from a Philadelphia democratic fundraiser called Lindi Li. I loved him, she effectively said, but he should never have run in the first place. Did she ever get round to saying this to the people who handed her millions of dollars for the campaign?

Rodney David, a former Republican congressman, offered the Democrats some advice. “They need to take a step back and look at Ansen County in North Carolina. It’s a 40% black county and Donald Trump won it. So, when Democrats call Donald Trump racist and Republicans racist, why don’t you have a little self-reflection and look at Ansen County and understand there are a lot more issues that are important to Americans all throughout this country, that have given him what may be a landslide victory.”