Thanks to Rob Walsh for the featured image.
I have often heard the argument that those who agree with President Trump, or those who voted for and support Trump, are all sorts of evil people. Racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, islamophobic, ableist, xenophobic, nazis, kkk, white supremacists, fascist, traitors, and deplorable. And these arguments are the only possible motivation for why someone wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016. And that logic carries forward into today’s political climate. If you don’t support the radicalization of the Democratic party or their agenda, then you are all of these wicked and evil things. When did this shift to absolute thinking occur? Why did people vote for Trump? Why is this message of otherism and hate so widespread among the population today? And, most importantly, how do we bring civil discourse back?
2016 was an interesting year to say the least. Living in the deep blue state of California where progressive and borderline socialist policies are the norm, I watched the lead-up to the presidential election with a mild interest. As a libertarian, I knew that my vote, while reflective of my conscience and beliefs, realistically would be drowned out in the multitude of Democrat votes, I still believed in doing my part and exercising my rights to vote. After all, if I don’t, I have no right to complain.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were in a close race for the nomination, though by all accounts it looked as though Hillary was the anointed candidate, having been a lifelong Democratic loyalist and Party member. Bernie, however, had the youth of America. The long standing premise that getting a college degree would be the fix-all for employment had turned out to be a myth. Colleges were churning out students with degrees in fields that had low job-growth prospects or paid little in terms of salary or benefits. It had seemed that the students who were banking on the promise of living wages and opportunities had their rose colored glasses shattered. And Sanders, running on a platform of “democratic socialism,” promised to wipe out their student loans, guarantee them good jobs (if they wanted them), housing, and what really radicalizes people, hope.
And on the other side, Donald Trump worked his populist message of prosperity and America First policies throughout the center of the country, particularly in the electoral battleground states. He campaigned a message of making America great again, the presumption being that during the Obama administration America had lost its greatness. Faced with a slow recovery, and the lack of the “shovel-ready jobs” promised by the sitting President, Trump promised to fight for American jobs and to return economic prosperity to the people who felt that the government cared little for them. Oddly enough, Trump’s message also inspired a similar feeling in the hearts of the working class, hope.
So on both sides of the aisle, you had messages of hope, of change, of something different than what is, or what was at the time. And when the Democratic convention came around, and Hillary got the nomination, Bernie, and by proxy his followers, and his message, got rejected. I suppose that it is an interesting commentary. When in power, you’d want to see consistency and a continuation of the policies you believed to be working. Bernie’s message was that what was happening in Washington wasn’t working. And so was Trump’s message, though on different ends of the spectrum.
So the disenfranchised Bernie fans were snubbed, and while Sanders, ever the politician and loyal party guy, pledged his support to Clinton’s campaign, his followers did not. They believed that they had been screwed over by the establishment, corporate Democratic party, that their views were not included in this party that would elect another insider and career politician. It meant that the party of Hope and Change was content with more of the same. And on the other side, Trump won the nomination, his message resonating with the working people, and his reputation like Teflon. He survived the mud-slinging, and delighted in it. As a media figure, he relished the press coverage and used it as a way to stay in the spotlight. Polarizing as he came across, everyone knew who he was and what his message was.
So it came down to Clinton and Trump. And the Clinton camp slung all the mud and darts and accusations that they could. And like the Republican candidates before them, none of those seemed to bog him down. So the attacks turned on the voters, the Trump supporters. If the candidate couldn’t be made to cower, then the thought was that the voters could. So the accusations began. The “isms” and “phobias” du jour were catapulted toward the supporters of the Republican nominee. The visceral hatred and othering of those would disagree with them were heaped in piles at the feet of Trump supporters.
All the while, those spurned Bernie supporters licked their wounds and stayed home. When the election came around, write in votes for the Cincinnati Zoo gorilla Harambe numbered in the tens of thousands. The Democratic party was united in the deep blue states, sure, but in the battleground states where Hillary had skipped campaigning and believed that she had a lock on the votes of the “voting blocs” of minorities, women, and various other recent supporters, the votes turned out to be either less enthusiastic than 2008 and 2012, or less supportive. Trump’s message of give me a shot, I will make America great again, and I will focus on rebuilding the economy and putting America’s interests first resonated with people who had felt skipped over by the Democrats. Minorities voted for Trump, asking themselves “why not?”
And as the night dragged on, the election results trickled out. What had been believed to be a “landslide” for Hillary started to turn into a tight contest. What had seemed so sure, what the media had predicted as a historical night for women turned out to be a referendum on the direction of the country. What had turned out to be, was a rejection of the policies of the Obama administration, and by proxy, Hillary’s continuation of those policies.
But what remains from that election, and what I hear most vociferously is how the voters who supported Trump are all “ist” and “phobic,” that their only motivations for supporting this demon of a man are based in hate and exclusion, and that their either too hateful, or too stupid, to understand the “right” side of the argument.
I posit that aside from the message of the “new normal” expressed by the Clinton campaign four years ago, the biggest motivation for many Republican and independent voters was spite. To be called evil, terrible, deplorable, and less than human brings out an anger in people. An anger that still resonates today. To constantly be harassed for a difference of opinion and the assumption of motives over the last four years is reflected in the enthusiasm for Trump. And it is what I believe will again be underestimated in this year’s election.
A Place 4Politics 