Millions of white voters are mad as hell because they have been left behind by policies favoring the rich and powerful put in force by both Republicans and Democrats, though more so by Republicans. They knew from bitter experience the so-called "American Dream" was nothing but a cruel, unattainable fiction for them and their children. Thus, they rallied behind a self-promoting, populist, bigoted demagogue named Donald Trump because he viciously attacked the Democrats and Hillary for those policies—as well as establishment Republicans—and put the blame for the decades-long decline of whites squarely on their shoulders. Those disaffected voters bought that argument based on emotion rather than reason and turned a blind eye to Trump's obvious and repulsive character flaws because they bought into his angered attacks and his brash, anti-establishment, in-your-face persona. For them, he was the answer.
According to Trump, the problem was the Dems favor undocumented and other immigrants, blacks, Muslims in general, Syrian refugees in particular, free trade pacts that damage our own economy while loudly pillorying Clinton as a dirty, rotten, lying crook who belongs in prison, with or without benefit of a trial and conviction. Disaffected and enraged voters bought Trump’s bluster lock, stock, and barrel. It simply didn't matter that Trump is an unprincipled demagogue who mocked a disabled reporter, bragged about sexually assaulting numerous women, and spouted multi-faceted misogyny, racism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia in the matrix of a shameless, unadulterated narcissism.
From this post-election vantage point, meaning hindsight of course, assigning blame is fairly easy. First, Hillary’s wounds were self-inflicted: her thoughtless and potentially criminal use of a private server to send and receive official State Department emails, her highly questionable relationship to the money-making features of the Clinton Foundation, and her sleazy coziness with Wall Street and the Big Banks as she raked in $18 million for giving more than 80 paid speeches to banks, corporations, and trade associations. And second, the Democratic National Committee crawled in bed with Hillary and then put its finger on the scale to ensure she won the nomination. They were as happy as five-year-olds at a birthday party with an establishment politician they knew could be controlled and would be more than willing to accommodate the wishes of the major Democratic contributors. As a further incentive, the DNC knew that picking Hillary would eliminate the always irritating Bernie Sanders and his ragtag legion of uncontrollable supporters who actually believed he wasn’t for sale.
Those actions cost the Democrats the Presidential election because far too many Americans hated both Clintons and what they stood for and would go to ANY lengths to defeat Hillary. The unpalatable truth for too many Americans is that Hillary was a flawed candidate who came across as an untrustworthy and business as usual politician.
Democrats must accept their responsibility in Hillary’s defeat. They backed a marginal candidate who they desperately wanted to be better than she was. They backed a candidate who had a shrinking window for success that was slammed shut by James Comey, with malice or not. They backed a candidate who had the smallest chance of defeating Trump of any Democratic candidate and refused to see the consequences of that choice.
Okay, what’s done is done. My advice to leftists is to suck it up, put the election behind you, and get on with your lives and political activities. We survived eight long years of George W. We can do the same during four years of Trump.
Here’s our real problem. We wanted to believe in a country where decency and civility mattered. Where someone so crude, so hateful, and so mean-spirited didn't stand a chance in a national election. A country where a candidate so flawed, manifestly unqualified, and clueless about political process as Donald Trump could never be taken seriously. Because America and Americans were fundamentally better than that.
The truth is our national problem is much bigger than Trump or Clinton. For many decades both nationally elected Republicans and Democrats turned their backs not only on minorities but also on the white working class while they bellied up to the Big Business trough that is Washington and got fat on the easy money. And here I'm talking about every presidency since Jimmy Carter. Unlike minorities that are split into many diverse groups, the white working class had the numbers and the political and organizational clout to strike back at the status quo. They did that by supporting a shameless demagogue who spouted anti-establishment rage that they bought because that's what they felt in their hearts and souls. Their anger and resentment took wing on Trump’s bombast and in their desperation they did what the political elite decided long ago was unthinkable: they voted. And Hillary lost.
One personal result of this election is that, although I am not cheerily optimistic about our future as a country, I am no longer totally jaundiced about who we are as a people. What happened this election, among other things like white supremacy raising its ugly head, was that disenchanted people voted to change a system they saw not only had turned its back on them but also was actively working against their interests. What better example of a functioning democracy is there? Obviously I think Trump is a terrible solution to a critical problem but maybe his election is a wake-up call, a call to do something about a problem we as a nation had refused to recognize. My only caveat is that in trying to address that challenge we do not as a nation devalue and underserve minorities.
Author's Note: After reading a fascinatingly prescient article by Amanda Taub in Vox, published on March 1, 2016, and available online at http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism, I have realized my thoughts above needed to be revised. The following paragraphs owe a substantial debt to Taub's ideas and words.
Additional Factors in Trump's Election
Trump appealed to many people who were convinced that they had been left behind by the tide of social change emanating from Democrats in Washington. His appeals were directed to those who placed great value on social order, tradition, conformity, authority, and hierarchies, all of which offered ways to prevent chaotic change that threatened to turn their world topsy-turvy.
Trump supporters identified with threats to the status quo, such as affirmative action, a black President, a growing political elitism that left them feeling helpless, whites becoming a minority in America, etc. They essentially did not care about his crassness or vulgarity or exaggeration to the point of lying because more than anything they wanted a leader who wasn’t afraid to use forceful action on a historically unprecedented scale to relieve or even to eliminate the sources of their fears.
Trump’s bombastic, direct leadership style appealed to a certain number of those who felt threatened because his personal style is simple, powerful, and punitive. They were convinced that he could solve problems that “establishment” national politicians were too weak to address or too beholden to the business-as-usual powerbrokers. Those problems included fear of specific (dangerous) "others", such as Mexican murderers and rapists, Muslim terrorists, black criminals, etc.
Trump attracted the support of many who were unusually susceptible to messages about the ways outsiders ("dangerous" others) and social changes (such as same sex marriage) threaten America, and so lashed out at groups that are identified as legitimate targets. In Trump’s world, social threats were perceived as especially dangerous and as demanding extreme responses, such as mass deportation of millions of illegal immigrants, limiting civil liberties across the board (such as allowing the federal government to monitor all phone calls, domestic and foreign, without warrants for calls to any number linked to terrorism), crushing the Black Lives Matter movement, creating an official list of Muslims living in the U.S., and banning foreign Muslim nationals from visiting the U.S.
In other words, it is flat out wrong to categorized Trump’s supporters as overt racists or xenophobes or only as members of an angry working class; the reality is far more complex and deserves a great deal of reflection.
As a final point, don't forget all those millions who voted for Trump largely because he wasn't Hillary. For many, who he wasn't was far more compelling than who he was.
