Surprise!
The billion dollar election is over and the billionaire won.
Donald J Trump will be the 45th president of the United states.
More money was spent in these primaries and presidential race than ever before, according to estimates, and the rich man triumphed.
New York was a frenzied place on Tuesday night.
In midtown Manhattan there were two parties two blocks apart, one for Hillary and one for Donald.
Democrats were meant to be the happy ones, celebrating the first women president.
As it turned out, it was the rival bash which went with a bang.
Around 2.45am Trump took to the podium, quietened the crowd, and delivered a statesmanlike speech of victory.
Across the rest of this firmly Democrat city, people were either dumbfounded or crying into their whisky.
If New York lost its spark, Washington appeared defeated – the political capital saw all that it knew overturned by a man who did everything wrong, and got it right.
Not a single pollster called the result – received wisdom must be retired and everyone needs to learn new lessons.
What is still true? Urban Americans are more likely to be Democrat than Republican – its an old rule of thumb and it remains the case from the 2016 result.
It is also still true that the east and west coasts are Democrat, the rest Republican.
And it is still the case that defeat and victory are separated by thin margins – around 150,000 votes are the difference between the two, of 120 million they garnered in total.
This wasn’t a revolution but American democracy ticking over.
Any other candidate, any other time, and the reaction would be less hysterical than it is.
One truth of US politics is that voters don’t like repeat appearances.
The last person to try several times for the White House was Richard Nixon.
Hillary was unusual in trying twice – but also in having the appearance that she been round the White House block repeatedly.
White men over 50 – the sector being given credit for Trump’s win – began to see her as a Tricky Dickie of the 21st century.
Nor is it unique for liberals around the world to recoil in horror at an American choice – we all laughed at Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Dan Quayle (vice-president) and George W Bush.
So we must be careful about what surprises us.
Trump wasn’t even the biggest spender – Hillary is thought to have splurged the most.
An era in which managerial and plausible (and patronising) leaders guiding democracies towards ever greater integration through globalisation is over.
Americans want to feel good about themselves, believe there are better jobs and lives to be had, and hope that a burst of nationalism will fix things.
They woke to a Trump speech which will have thrilled them:
The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer….We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals. We’re going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none, and we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it.”
Will he be the new FDR, the president behind the New Deal in the 1930s who poured the concrete on which much of America still relies?
Perhaps more like Truman or Reagan – strong men governing in times of economic glory?
Maybe – and he may be the guy who builds a wall on the Mexico border, repeals Obamacare, appoints judges to the Supreme Court who scrap pro-abortion legislation and same-sex marriage, reneges on climate change promises, cavorts around the world acting in his own financial interest and chumming up to Russia.
Its just very hard to tell what will happen because Trump is a man who alienated the entire American corporate, political and media establishment.
Usually you would look to an incoming president’s allies for the direction of policy – but there is no team around him.
In the usual scheme of things, a republican president with a republican senate and congress would mean a free run at whatever the party wanted – but most republican politicians have fallen out with Trump.
Much has been made of the comparison with Brexit – the nationalistic roar of protest against liberal progressive politics.
Sticking with that comparison, the actions turned out to be lot more confused and vague than the words had hinted at.
Trump is a man who never appeared that besotted with the idea of becoming president – rather a candidate who once he had started, wasn’t going to be beaten.
That could mean he is a more amenable president than people are giving him credit for.
And who is the world to judge – of the major nations Russia, the UK, China and Japan all have nationalist economic policies, why not the USA?
Or maybe the racism, sexism and anti-semitism keep coming, a ceaseless lava of vulgarity from a volcanic man who has no greater instinct than to surprise.