WELL, at least Donald Trump may have less time to spend at his Scottish golf courses. And Katie Hopkins says she plans to move to the USA – silver linings folks. Those jokes at a towns’ conference in Kirkcaldy fell flat as a pancake yesterday – deservedly. There is no upside to the election of Donald Trump. None whatsoever.

It is a disaster.

Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum, speaking on Radio 4 before Trump’s acceptance speech, said his victory meant the end of a rules-based international order. It also means the end of the Paris Agreement and any real effort to combat climate change, and the probable start of a copycat far-right surge across Europe (where 11 countries have national elections next year.)

The US Senate and House of Representatives have both been retaken by Republicans. Game, set and match to the forces of authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism.

David Remnick, writing in the New Yorker, spoke for millions – maybe billions of people in America and beyond: “The electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump’s world of vanity, hate, arrogance, untruth, and recklessness, his disdain for democratic norms – a fact that will lead, inevitably, to all manner of national decline and suffering.”

It’s true. Frightened, impoverished people in the USA – particularly, but not exclusively white working-class men – turned against politics, expertise and “the system”. It was like Brexit in the north of England all over again.

But, as the sleep-deprived President-elect rambled through his acceptance speech, it became clear that candidate Trump might be morphing into a slightly different President Trump.

He spoke about bringing warring sides together, ruling for all of the people. And his bizarre praise for Hillary Clinton’s tough campaign and contribution to public life received no roar of approval from pumped-up followers more used to campaign chants like “Ditch the Bitch”, “Lock Her Up” and “Drain the Swamp”.

Trump got his biggest cheers for promising to help war veterans and America’s “forgotten men and women” with massive infrastructure spending. That is more than a little telling or even vaguely ironic – it’s tragic.

Barack Obama spent the last eight years battling the Republican-run Congress to get infrastructure spending programmes passed – he failed. Congress opposed his $50 billion “roads, rails and runways” proposal in 2010, and then again when it was incorporated into his American Jobs Act in 2011. Republicans blocked Obama’s plans for an infrastructure bank, a national high-speed rail network and corporate tax reform, which his GROW AMERICA Act depended on for finance.

GROW AMERICA (Generating Renewal, Opportunity, and Work with Accelerated Mobility, Efficiency and Rebuilding of Infrastructure and Communities throughout America) focused on upgrades for neglected infrastructure but, when Obama proposed a $53bn spend on high speed rail, Congress rejected it. Three years later he was asking for just $5bn. He didn’t get that either.

Why does any of this matter now?

Because, strangely enough, Trump may find himself having to pick up Obama’s infrastructure projects to find jobs for the unemployed blue-collar workers who have just propelled him to power. And that – alongside his own “programme” of massive tax cuts, axing of trade deals and ditching NATO – might bring him into conflict with the “old-school” Republicans once again running Congress.

According to Time magazine’s Michael Grunwald: “Republicans say nice things about infrastructure but haven’t shown any interest in paying for it. As a result, the nation has failed to take advantage of low interest rates to invest in overcrowded airports, outdated railways and flimsy bridges.”

So will Trump persuade his estranged fellow Republicans to support infrastructure spending at long last? Will Republican senators keep a lid on Trump’s wilder excesses – apparently his team had hidden The Donald’s mobile phone for the last week, in case he proclaimed crazy new policies that might have rocked the boat.

Who knows? And that really is worth saying. If journalists, pollsters, diplomats and politicians in the States all failed to see the Trump bandwagon rolling, it’s doubtful outside commentators can have any clue.

But Donald Trump didn’t just win – Hillary Clinton lost. Of course, her secrecy over emails and the extraordinary last-minute intervention by the FBI were factors in her defeat, alongside her less than impeccable left-wing credentials. Then there was her slightly aloof manner which contrasted badly with the eminently charming Obama, and his passionate wife Michelle.

Early analysis of voting patterns shows that Hillary failed to win as decisively as predicted amongst Latino voters and saw support amongst young people and voters of African descent fall. And, whilst the majority of college-educated female voters backed her, Clinton lost support amongst non-college-educated women.

It seems they looked at the first viable female candidate for the White House – flanked by well-educated, famous and successful women – and saw not a sister but a member of the establishment exuding a sense of entitlement they themselves did not possess.

Clinton’s Democratic rival Bernie Saunders would refuse to lower himself to respond to Trump’s taunts and instead stayed focused on his own proposals for a dramatic redistribution of wealth. He succeeded in attracting low-income voters with calls for free college tuition, the removal of student debt, a national health service and the removal of big money from politics.

In other words, the real issue for “America’s forgotten men and women” was always the economy, stupid. Clinton only offered more of the same.

But, as Sanders was too radical and threatening for more affluent Democrats, they plumped for Hillary and left Donald Trump to mop up voters for whom jobs and the economy mattered more than identity and social justice.

There is at least one lesson in there for progressive Scots as Holyrood acquires some new welfare powers. Having the “least worst” political platform won’t do. And playing it “safe” instead of arguing for wealth redistribution will one day risk everything. As anger spreads throughout the world’s most unequal societies, we must realise Scotland is not immune.