So the closest, most-hard-to-predict election for US president in living memory has ended in a total blowout By winning the presidency for the second time in three attempts, Donald Trump wrote himself into the record books this week, ensuring his foray into electoral politics will go down as a historic winning hand. More importantly, he and his supporters, once again outperforming their polling numbers on polling day, delivered a crushing blow on behalf of hardworking, unassuming, and far too often overlooked Americans, who don't subscribe to the radically altered world views espoused by the country's 'coastal elites'.

The exit poll data from this year's election, showing exactly how all 50 states voted to materialise such a decisive victory for the 'movement' Trump represents, reflects a seismic shift: the conservative, rightwing, Grand Old Party of American politics, the Republicans, are now the representatives of working class Americans. The Democrats, traditionally the party of the working class and the trade unions with their leftist values and welfare-oriented policies, have unmoored themselves from the concerns of their traditional voter base, drifting further and further into the cesspit of identity politics.

This time, for the very first time, we saw the Arab American or Muslim vote emerge prominently as a significant voting bloc, with enough heft to swing the result in at least one Battleground State. Concerns that Muslim and Arab American Democrats would abandon Harris over the Biden administration's unwavering support for Israel's war in Gaza, particularly in Michigan, which has the nation's biggest concentration of Arab Americans, had been swirling for months.

As if the situation in the Middle East wasn't enough, Harris was seen going out of her way to embrace the former GOP congresswoman Liz Cheney, diminishing her support among Muslims further. She sought to utilise endorsements from Cheney and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, to court Republican voters who might have been uneasy about supporting Trump. Harris and Cheney even teamed up for events in the battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan - the three states comprising the Democrats' famed "blue wall", that Trump broke through so memorably in 2016, only to lose all three in his 2020 defeat to Biden. This time he retook all three again from Harris, and this proved decisive in his victory.

All in all, the race this year went a long way towards restoring the integrity of and people's faith in the integrity of American elections - despite warnings streaming in from multiple news sources in the closing days, of nefarious right-wing plots to achieve the opposite effect. But the doomsayers were proved wrong, and although Harris would keep us waiting for a concession speech, it was left to the somewhat sidelined figure of President Joe Biden, to come out and evoke the spirit that has seen the American experiment of democracy survive almost 250 years without interruption, incorporating elections every four years without fail.

The US election system "is honest, it is fair, and it is transparent. And it can be trusted, win or lose," Biden asserted, speaking to supporters and officials at the Rose Garden in the White House. He also added there would be a "peaceful transfer of power," in a subtle nod to how Trump, in 2020, refused to accept he lost the election.

In what is likely to be one of his final acts as president, Biden - the one Democrat Trump failed to beat - said he spoke with the Republican and assured him that he would direct his administration to ensure a "peaceful and orderly transition," because that's what the people deserve. The people must get what they deserve - including leaders.