Many of us are still in shock and cannot understand how Donald Trump, with all of his failings - from business bankruptcies to misogynist "p%**Y- grabbing" statements to wall building and his insults regarding Latinos, Mexicans, Muslims, and others - could win the presidency WHILE losing the popular vote by 2.9 million votes. We wonder... how could all of those folks, including many former Democrats, union members, blue collar folks, women, and minorities, cast enough of their votes for Trump in historically blue states (carried by Obama twice), that Hillary lost this historic opportunity to become the first US woman president? Why did these voters cast their votes against their own interests and help to elect someone who is plainly supporting policies and positions that they oppose? Now, I am not a pollster - but, then again, they were all wrong. I am not a pundit - but, they were all wrong too. I am a Progressive Democrat and I am rightly and mightily concerned that in about one month Donald Trump will take the oath and become president of the United States! Along with his cabinet appointments, he is moving toward the day of reckoning and I felt sort of like a resident of Tatooine in Star Wars watching the skies as the Death Star, the Imperial Emperor, and Darth Vader slowly approach for the final showdown with the resistance. "How did we get here?" seems to be the question. So, let me add my view on this question, right or wrong.
1. THE DEMOCRATIC DRIFT. Early on in the primary season, I had the uncomfortable feeling that somehow, we as Democrats just were not connecting with our brethren in the mid-west. With the Sanders campaign in full battle mode, they scored with working families - especially in the mid-west states of Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania - on issues related to job loss and economic opportunity. Senator Sanders placed the blame on NAFTA and other free-trade proposals, notable the Trans Pacific Partnership that President Obama was pressing hard for at that time and Secretary Clinton had described as the "gold standard of trade agreements." Although Hillary had reversed field on the TPP, most skeptical voters assumed that candidates say whatever is necessary to win and that she simply felt some heat from the left and flip-flopped on the issue. Meanwhile, the Trump camp specifically and the Republican Party generally, who had all along expected to run against Clinton, was spending months attempting to embed in the minds of the voters that Hillary was not "trustworthy."
In the end, many blue-collar workers, especially in the mid-west, felt that they had been abandoned by the Democratic party - and by Hillary Clinton in particular. After all, Democrats had "sold them out" with "bad trade deals." They came to believe that Bill Clinton did it with his support of NAFTA. And, Barak Obama was now doing the same thing with TPP. In spite of Hillary's protestations that she opposed TPP (after she supported it), she was "sandwiched" between her husband and her President on the issue, and that was that. The laid-off factory workers and those who lost their jobs to off-shore operations as companies moved their factories to low-labor-cost locations south of the border, and corporations moved their cash off-shore to foreign tax havens, saw this as Hillary fudging the truth. In any case, working families felt abused, abandoned, and sacrificed to the profit motivations of large companies, millionaire CEOs, and the corporate elite. Even worse, they concluded that the political class - the DC elite - K Street lobbyists and the Beltway denizens - was not a part of the solution, but that they had also sold out to corporate interests, and were a part of the problem - Democrats included. The "Democratic Drift" was becoming a deluge.
After all, didn't Hillary just get paid $500,000 for a speech to Goldman Sachs? Isn't Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation taking millions of dollars in donations from US corporations and foreign interests and governments too? Doesn't that mean that they are also in the pockets of the wealthy business interests? So... who does Hillary listen too? No wonder the banks got bailed out when the recession hit.... and, the rest of us lost homes to foreclosure... No wonder that the stock market DOUBLED AND MORE over the last 8 years and the pay of CEOs went through the roof while pay for working folks is falling further and further behind. And, what about Whitewater??? And, Benghazi??? And, who killed Vince Foster anyway??? Do you realty think that Hillary now sees the mistakes she made and the painful job losses resulting from these international trade deals that benefit wealthy corporations or is she just saying that now so she gets to be elected? And, after all, after all of these investigations over years, with all that smoke there must be some fire too, right?
The goal of this insidious and continuous right-wing strategy to discredit the Clintons and drive mistrust of Hillary worked. Poll after poll showed that most voters felt that Hillary was competent and experienced but, not trustworthy enough to be president. So, if both Democrats and Republicans are in the deep pockets of millionaires, billionaires, and big corporate interests including Wall Street, then who can save us? Who can we trust to feel our pain and to carry our banner? Perhaps it is someone who isn't part of the political class, not from inside the beltway, not a part of the merry-go-round of pay-to-play politics that has poisoned our democracy. The conclusion was that an outsider was needed - someone who didn't take big donations, was not "politically correct", would speak the truth, and would clearly take up our cause for a better future with more economic opportunity, better health care options, and more security in the future. And, that person.... was and is Donald J. Trump. Nativism, misogyny, and isolationism, aside, Trump seemed up front and strong. Naming Mexicans and Muslims as the problem provided the scapegoats necessary, and the seemingly-stalled Obama Administration (blocked at every turn by Republicans in the House and Senate), looked ineffective at addressing these issues and a boatload of other challenges. President Obama, as he continued to campaign for the TPP well into the Primary Election season, seemed out of touch with working folks. Trump, on the other hand, promised to sink the trade deals proposed, re-negotiate NAFTA, stop the flow of illegals into the US, and prevent the entry of "dangerous" Muslims into our country. Expanding job opportunity, bringing back corporate profits from their off-shore locations, and preventing American jobs from leaving the country was the snake oil that was needed to ignite a large number of voters who had tuned out over the years and to bring along some Democratic voters who felt abandoned and set a drift by their own party. Both groups "drifted" over to Trump in sufficient numbers in the industrial mid-west to turn the tide in Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania to name a few, and that gave Trump the Electoral votes necessary to win the Presidency.
2. "DEPLORABLES AND THE DUMB VOTE" As I watched Hillary speak at a LBGT fund-raising event in New York, I winced when she delivered the line describing Trump supporters as being a "basket of deplorables." The line got a rousing round of applause and was much the topic discussion and blow-back from the Trump campaign and a broad number of commentators in the days that followed. I am sure that the comment was meant to describe racists, misogynists, Islamophobic and homophobic folks as "deplorable", and not apply it to every person who felt that Trump was the answer. In my opinion, those beliefs - and the people who espouse them are, in fact, deplorable - especially in a democratic system where all are "created equal" and freedom of religion is embedded in our founding document, the US Constitution. Still, the comment was made and those Trump supporters who believed that Hillary had insulted them as throw-away Americans, took offense at this apparent insult. Shirts reading, "I am not deplorable", or just "DEPLORABLE" appeared and underscored the sting of the comment that Hillary made at that event. She paid dearly for that statement on election day, having inflamed Trump supporters with this perceived insult.
Throughout the campaign, and especially in connection with the ever-present incremental polling reports, a distinction was constantly made between "college educated voters" and those "without a degree." It seemed that the level of education variable had a distinct data impact on who the voter was attracted to as a candidate. It looked as though the "college educated" leaned to Clinton and those "without a college education" toward Trump. The dialogue was quickly transformed into short-hand comments that sounded like a distinction between the "smart vote" and the "dumb vote" or, in the alternative, the "educated vote" and the "uneducated vote." No matter how you slice it, these descriptions mutated into yet another insult leveled at Trump voters by the "lyin' media" and the "DC elites in the beltway" supported by those wealthy Wall Street folks and the liberal coastals in NY and LA. It was the rest of the country - the great middle and working folks - who felt abandoned, lied to, and abused by that crowd who now called them "dumb", "stupid", and "uneducated" for finding themselves in economic distress. More of the same just was not an attraction for these "dumb" voters. The alternative choice was someone who was one of them and who publicly defended them in rally after rally - Donald Trump. In fact, at one rally, Trump even announced that he "loved uneducated voters" after an earlier polling report showed that he was narrowing the gap between he and Hillary in one state. As the rage of these "deplorable, dumb, and uneducated" voters seethed with insult after insult heaped upon them by people, pollsters, politicians, and Democrats who they had supported for decades, their anger grew as did their commitment to Trump. Their frustration and anger would be evident on election day - revenge would be theirs on November 8th. After all, their hero - Trump - would never actually DO any of those outlandish things that he said during rallies...... right?
The truth is that the system - Democrats and Republicans alike - had failed working families over the last 20 years. From the mid-90s through 2016, too much money in politics - in fact, an obscene amount of money, including "dark money" - that has polluted our political system; too much abuse of redistricting of congressional districts making our "representative democracy" less than representative and more of a manipulation; too much gridlock and too little responsiveness in the Beltway; and too much disconnect from every-day real people and the problems that they face every day has sewn the seeds of suspicion and distrust in our governmental institutions and those who lead them. The "deplorable, dumb, and uneducated" voters sought out - and found - an outside "disruptor" to "drain the swamp" and "blow up the system." And, the person they chose was Donald Trump. Trump first beat the Republican establishment and then laid waste the Democratic establishment as well. The question remains, what will a President Trump do and how will he do it? In a few weeks, the next chapter will begin.
In the days ahead, I will explore the Trump cabinet nominees and the seeds of the resistance being sown even now.
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