I'm shocked. I mean, I guess I should have predicted this. I've been wrong about nearly everything in this election
except that Clinton would be coronated. Donald Trump is our President-Elect. Donald Trump. The guy who spouted off every moronic populist position he could, never once backed anything up with a fact, and bullied anyone who dared question him from his pulpit on twitter. Ugh.
The polls were wrong, just as they were in Brexit, but the margins here are astonishing. Some of these races (like in the rustbelt) were not even that close in the polls. It's very hard to imagine, as a college educated white woman, that Trump could win. After all, I personally know very few people who could even stomach the man, let alone vote for him. And perhaps it's the hysterical outrage about him that skewed the polls. People wanted to vote for him, they just didn't want to tell pollsters for fear of being judged. Well, welcome to judgement land because Clinton voters are going to assume the worst about Trump voters for a very long time.
And I understand that, to a point. Hey, I've lost elections before. I know how it feels. It feels like shit. I've cried over losses and I've never faced a foe as obnoxious and upsetting as Trump. People have every right to be upset and angry. It is only reasonable to ask yourself 'how the fuck could this have happened?' The problem I foresee, though, is that people who ask the question will not want the answer. They'd rather believe that 50% of the population are just racist, sexist, gross, bigoted and awful. We've been playing this 'anyone who would vote for him/her
must be a terrible person' game for so long that it is just second nature. And it requires no effort to understand those with whom you disagree.
As I see it, there are many reasons Trump won last night. Some are small and some are large, but these, in my humble opinion, are the key reasons and the key issues that we, as a society, have to address unless we want to descend into populist policy and divisiveness that would make the last 16 years look like a party.
Fundamental Change in BOTH Policial Parties:
Van Jones is absolutely right when he says that both parties have to recognize the problems in their own parties. Really, they are 4 parties trying to fit into two:
Leftists (Bernie)
Center Left (Clinton)
Center Right (Rubio/Kasich/Ryan)
Rightist (alt-right/anti-PC/hard evangelicals/Trump)
And the fact is that the Center-Left couldn't make up for their party divide and the Rightists found common ground with some of the leftists (blue collar white struggling workers). That is what happened. More than anything else, that is what happened. Yes, there is an added issue of uneducated whites who are resistant to change that MUST be addressed. But this isn't just a case of racists vs civilized people. If you only discuss it that way, you can expect this to happen many more times in the future.
Resentment:
Resentment holds many forms in this election. Racial resentment is but one part of the story. There is resentment over Obamacare, which has his middle-class families the hardest. There is resentment over Washington business as usual. There is resentment over media bias. There is cultural resentment. All of these things came together to make any and all warnings about Trump's badness amount to very little for most.
As far as racial resentment, this is a matter of education, proximity, and understanding. I promise you. The racially illiterate #alllivesmatter people in this country will not get any closer to seeing the racial injustice in this country by being called stupid 'redneck' racists. The fact is, most of these people have a blind spot for the experiences of others. That doesn't mean you give up on them and write them off. Do we want the country to actually be a safer place for minorities or do we want to bitch about the people who don't get it? Let's try reasoning with people. Let's try changing minds! Let's stop pushing them away and back into their own resentment cocoons. Because, as a struggling white person in America, it would be very easy to feel like no one cares about your problems. And if you feel that way, it's a very short walk to resenting people who you think are having their grievances heard. I'm not endorsing this mentality, I'm imploring people to understand it.
Economic resentment, though, very likely played a
much bigger role in Trump's win. Look at the areas he flipped from Obama. Look at the ground he gained. He is picking up areas of blue collar workers who've been left behind in this new economy. Pocketbook issues
always have more impact than social issues. Some of these people are energy sector workers who see the Democratic Party going after their profession. Some of these people never recovered from the economic downturn. And despite the talking points that Obama surrogates have trotted out over the years, many people have dropped out of the job market completely and many more are underemployed. People who used to be able to earn a good living for 40hr/week work can now barely make ends meet.
Media resentment seems obvious. Democrats, you can deny this all you want but the majority of MSM is biased in favor of Democrats. It's why Fox News has such a large following. And this bias has led to a media badgering of Republican candidates for decades. So much so that Republican voters (and even conservative Democrats) do not believe the media when they are critical of Republicans. They seek out media that agrees with them, insulating themselves from other views because media has so specialized its message it now just offers up confirmation bias to whoever wishes to listen. Many liberal commentators have all but admitted this. They called Bush, McCain, and Romney the devil and now when the Devil was there, no one believed them.
Resentment cannot be underplayed. If you treat those who disagree with you like uncultured swine, they are going to be resentful and that resentfulness will not always represent itself in the most rational or mature of ways. If we don't deal with this, we are facing worse than Donald Trump in our future.
Polarization
We are so polarized at this point that I honestly believe that we would defend any behavior in our own candidates. To be fair to Clinton, her behavior was more defensible than Trump's (in my opinion), but she is not without many many many faults. And Democrat after Democrat defended them. To be sure, Republicans did this with Trump as well. When we have a system so polarized that we are conditioned to excuse
any behavior of our candidates, how can one be surprised when voters start condoning heinous behaviors.
Let's not pretend Democrats would have cared about Bill Clinton's sexual assault allegations if he were the candidate. Hell, they didn't care 20 years ago when they voted for him. And yet, they were outraged by Trump's allegations of sexual assault and verbal advocation of assault. The fact is, we are, all of us, hypocrites about this so long as we are conditioned to believe winning is everything. And we are very much conditioned to believe that.
Scapegoating
Yes, part of Trump's appeal to a chunk of his supporters is scapegoating 'others' like undocumented immigrants and Muslims. There is no denying that, and it's a
serious issue. We
have to get struggling people to understand that their enemy is not people fleeing poverty from south of the border. These people are
not taking your jobs. They are
not raping and kidnapping people by the thousands. They are just like any of us. Muslims in America just want to live the American Dream like everyone else. Muslim extremism in America is very rare.
This is extremely troubling, this trend toward scapegoating. but do you know how to fix it? Electing Clinton wouldn't have changed anything. It would have just made the scapegoaters losers. They still would have been xenophobic and afraid. The
only way forward is to bring these people into the 21st century, not try to progress while carrying around a ball and chain of about 25% of the population.
But even these numbers are not so cut and dried. Latino voters did not go to Clinton in the numbers that were anticipated. Why? Becuase many latino voters are facing the same struggles as these lower middle-class white families, and they see undocumented workers as 'cutting the line'. Fair or not, that's just reality, and we have to accept that too. Becuase you can't hope to win the latino vote simply by touting out 'Immigration Reform'. These people are keen and nuanced voters. You have to work harder than that.
*****
Some other thoughts:
- Contentious primaries help your candidate. Coronating Clinton was the worst idea the DNC ever had. For one, it pissed off a fraction of your voters pretty epically. Secondly, there was less chance to vet Clinton as a candidate. Three, in an election where people were frustrated with Washington, handing a Washingtonian the election on a silver platter was terrible strategy.
- This is not a time to call for the end of the Electoral College. The Electoral College protects us from letting NYC, Chicago, LA, etc decide our elections for us. It forces candidates to focus on all kinds of regions and their issues. One major reason Clinton lost ground in the rustbelt is that she took that vote for granted. Without the Electoral College, those voters are rarely even heard. Instead of having an emotional reaction in the despair of a loss, remember that if it went
your way, you wouldn't want to lose the Electoral College. We can't make swift decisions about this based on upset over one election.
- Obamacare. Democrats have drastically underestimated how unpopular this bill is. Premium hikes came in the mail over the last few weeks. The middle class has, inarguably, been hurt the most by this bill and they are not interested in 'fixing' what was broken from day one. They want
real reform.
- SCOTUS is important but most people don't understand the complexities of justice decisions. The only group this argument works with are well-educated people.
We will be okay. I swear. I'm really upset by this result. I don't trust him. I don't like him. I worry about discourse in America with him as President. I worry about the reaction in our country to such a terrible person as our President. But I know that America
isn't just a bunch of racist. We are a complex, growing nation that desperately
needs to unite. And the President isn't a dictator.
Act locally, guys. Don't flee to another country (p.s. you will find they have pretty strict immigration policies). Don't stop speaking to your family and friends. Don't ostracize 50% of the population. Engage with them. Proximity breeds understanding and tolerance. Political purity breeds ignorance and close-mindedness. Engage in local races and propositions as ardently as you do a Presidental race. Protest. Sign petitions. Help your neighbors. Be kind. Try to wake up the part of the population who still lives in the past. We are the future. This result is bad. It will lead to a lot of heartache and hard fights for what being an American really means, but those are battles worth having. Because you cannot march forward into the future while leaving half of the population behind. We have to bring them with us. No democratic government can last when we are this divided and this unwilling to listen to each other. Today is a new day.
While liberal rags throw together scathing indictments of Gary Johnson and his supporters, I'd like to offer the man thanks. Thank you for being the first Presidental Candidate I've ever voted for that I didn't choose as a defensive maneuver, but because I really believed in you. And you did good, Gary. We didn't hit 5% but you did well. We got over 4 million votes!
