Almost four years ago — 10 days after the 2016 US presidential election, to be exact — I had the pleasure of speaking at a conference in New York. Even after Donald Trump was elected, it did not seem the unexpected result had sunk in at the time. Among a surprisingly large number of the conference’s participants, there was what I call an outspoken optimism to observe.
Of course, a group like that does not represent the whole United States in any way, but it underscored how wrong many election predictions were then. And developments in the US election campaign in the past six weeks have evoked some memories from that time.