"Trump wasn’t elected because Clinton was cordially detested. What American presidential candidate since George Washington hasn’t been?"

"She was dull on the stump. But if dullness were politically fatal, the entire American political system would have been in the cemetery with President Harrison since 1841. (He gave a two-hour inaugural address in freezing rain, then caught a cold and died a month later.) Clinton’s 'popular vote' victory was and is inconsequential. America, since its founding, has had a devolved system of voting for the president that eschews nationwide first-past-the-post to give more obscure regions (our Scotlands) a greater say than weight of population would allow. She and Trump knew the rules. The cheating would have been different in a different game. Russian electoral interference was doubtless factual but doubtfully culpable. I’ve spent time in Russia. The idea that the Russians could fine-tune America’s enormously complex machinery of election is … I’ve driven Russian cars. And there’s no use blaming Trump’s election on the rise of populism. 'Populism' is an epithetic catch-all in use whenever the ideas popular with the good and the great aren’t popular.... America is what you get when you turn a random horde of people loose in a vast and various space. Some came here on the make, some on the run, some were dragged here involuntarily as slaves, some were chased here by poverty, oppression or bigotry and some were here already and were defeated by disease and demographics until they became foreigners in their own country. The bunch of us have never got along...."

From "Trump v Biden: PJ O’Rourke on why this US election is the craziest yet/Why on earth isn’t Joe Biden set for a landslide? The inimitable political commentator takes a ringside seat at the election circus" by (obviously) P.J. O'Rourke writing in the Times of London.