It's true Democrats should make compromises with Trump – like painting smiley suns on cages before putting babies in

I suppose we should be relieved that fewer people than feared voted for a psychopath who puts babies in cages. It’s like one of those mornings when you find a crocodile in the kitchen and are grateful there aren’t two.

It feels as if millions of people voted for Ebola because they’ve put up with the normal elite politicians for years, so it makes sense to try something different such as a deadly contagious disease. But after a couple of years some of them are troubled by the frothy vomiting, so there’s been a small swing against it, which is encouraging.

Trump was helped in many areas by a persuasive policy put forward by Republicans that if you’re the sort of person who doesn’t agree with them, you don’t get to vote at all. In Georgia, for example, Republican governor Brian Kemp won by a tiny margin in a state where hundreds of thousands of poorer voters were left off the voting register.

To be fair, a highly experienced official was in charge of the election, whose job was to check if it was carried out fairly. His name was Brian Kemp, and Georgia should be congratulated for a wonderful exercise in cost-cutting, having the election run by one of the candidates. What’s the point in paying extra for someone from outside when he was going to be there anyway?

Think of the money the FA would save if they tried this, and let Jose Mourinho referee his team’s matches.

One common reason for the vote being denied was a name on the original registration containing a hyphen, while the state records showed that name not having a hyphen. Thank the Lord this was spotted, because, of all the forces threatening democracy in this world, these wrongly hyphenated bastards are the worst.

They may have introduced this rule after watching us in Britain, to stop the skulduggery carried out by whichever character actor fooled us he was a politician called Jacob Rees-Mogg, so you can’t blame them.

A judge ruled 34,000 names were struck off illegally, but another 53,000 were held up past polling day.

Trump tells us he loves the poor, and this insistence on the hyphen issue is typical of his enchanting tough love. Similarly, he’s furious at a CNN reporter who, in an anti-Trump rant, waved his microphone towards a woman.

This was appalling treatment of women, he said, and you can understand his outrage because he’s always been an impassioned feminist. For example he pays porn stars a proper rate, because he believes the Future is Female.

But the movement against Trump did seem to partially defeat him, so now there’s a debate about how to get rid him of altogether.

Many older Democrats suggest now is the time to “reach out” to him, in a spirit of compromise. They haven’t given details yet, but I suppose that means when he makes up a story of a “caravan” of dirty Hondurans heading towards the border to destroy the country, you reply: “With respect, Mr President, we’d like to make up that there’s only a Winnebago of dirty Hondurans”, and see if you can meet in the middle.

And instead of confronting him, they should suggest he grabs women by the arse instead of the pussy, and paints a smiley sun on cages before putting the babies in.

Compromise is tricky with Trump, because he’s changed the rules. Misdemeanours that would have finished a politician three years ago happen twice a day now. He could start a press conference at the White House by doing a dump on the lawn, saying, “That’s Barack Obama, that is, and the steam is CNN.” And if a reporter waved his arm to waft the smell away, he’d say, “How dare you point at women like that?” And we’d be relieved if his ratings stayed the same.

Many people try to make the point that he doesn’t do things properly and writes nonsense on Twitter, but this makes no difference, as his supporters like him for that. You might as well try to stop people seeing the Spice Girls reunion by screaming: “Can’t you see – some of their words make no sense?!”

The Democrat Nancy Pelosi suggested Democrats shouldn’t “go after” the president, or personalise their campaign. Maybe that was the mistake we made with Hitler – we should have insisted that whatever anyone feels about his political views, they shouldn’t resort to songs about him having only one ball, especially as this is offensive to the testicularly challenged community.

The other problem with trying to compromise could be that Trump and his hardline supporters know they make everything up, and they don’t care. They seem to follow to the letter a handbook on politics which is also followed by France’s Marine Le Pen, Brazil’s Bolsonaro, Nigel Farage and their mates. You call your opponents the “elite”, even if you’re the most elite person in the country, then make up daft figures about immigrants: a million, a billion, 30,000 of them on the roof right now, it doesn’t matter. Then you accuse your opponents of corruption, whether they are corrupt or not. If your opponent is Saint Francis of Assisi, you claim you’d put them in jail for stealing that chaffinch.

So you might as well reach out to Flat Earth supporters and suggest meeting them halfway by agreeing the Earth is triangular.

The most successful candidates against Trump appear to have been the more radical ones prepared to confront him, or activists such as those running alongside the Parkland students. Because defeating him may require inspiring millions of people against him. And as a slogan, “Let’s reach out to him and compromise” might not seem as rousing as it ought to be.