Rodney Hide: Revelling in Trump's victory

Trump's win is a triumph for voters. Photo / AP

I am still revelling in Donald Trump's victory.

I don't know the sort of President he'll make but he has confounded his critics so far and may still surprise them.

What I love is that he has proved the importance of voters over talking heads. It's mom and pop and the kids down the road who count come election time - not celebrities and experts with the latest polling data.

It's wonderful to be reminded everyday people matter, not the powerful and the expert.

Trump's win should also kill off identity politics. That's a good thing. That's the idea that you should vote according to your sex or race. People voted for who they wanted: not the candidate dictated by the group into which experts had them pigeonholed. That's incredibly empowering.

People also proved not to be the delicate flowers we are led to believe. The media gleefully reported the many groups that Trump had supposedly offended and alienated. That proved not to be so. Every talking head was shocked and offended. The people not so much.

We can now all speak a little more freely and more plainly, less worried about which delicate flower might take offence. That's a very good thing.

I have kept the best until last. Trump declared the global warming scare a hoax. He's following through appointing sceptic Myron Ebell to head his Environmental Protection Agency transition team. EPA staff are reported in tears and being offered counselling. The prospect of serious policy reversal appears real.

I am hopeful Trump's election is the beginning of the end of the anti fossil-fuel policies that the United States and other Western nations, including New Zealand, have been slavishly running these past few years.

That prospect alone is cause for jubilation.

Trump's said he's off to Washington to drain the swamp, not swat flies. He's making a good start.

Trump's win should have humiliated the talking heads and experts. It hasn't. They now say it's the voters and democracy that got it wrong. That's their arrogance. They can't allow the possibility that they are wrong.

Well, a lot of us now know different.