Learning from the Trump Win

Learning from the Trump Win

Donald Trump won the electoral vote by 306 to Hillary Clinton’s 232.  Trump won the popular vote in 49 states, excluding California by 1.6 million votes.  Clinton won the popular vote in California by 4.3 million votes.  Clinton indeed won the popular vote in the whole country, as loudly proclaimed by her followers, but the above adds some perspective to that statement.

A true wonder is how a candidate like Donald Trump could win the presidency.  Not that he is the demonized “prince of darkness” or devil incarnate defined by the same media that lied about all other aspects of the election, but because how heavily stacked against his candidacy were so many aspects of American society.  The popular president and his minions, and virtually the whole Washington political establishment were against him. Virtually all major newspapers and magazines were against him. All major media other than Fox were against him.  Virtually all so called intelligentsia were against him.  Pretty much 100% of university thinking was against him.  All the special interest minority and lifestyle groups out of identity politics were against him.  The above societal elements, radicalized women, blacks and Latinos against him (or tried to, as it turned out).  He did not help his own cause by his own outrageous pronouncements and tweets about women, minorities, trade agreements and other topics normally not broached in a presidential campaign.  His backers cared not a whit for his peccadillos.  He represented the changes they sought.

The vaunted polls reflected all of this anti-Trump sentiment.   Other than one or two polls, all the national and state polls showed him to be behind by 4-5 percentage points at election time.  Some of us kept saying “this is a movement, not a campaign – you can’t apply the same principles to a populist movement as to a normal election”.  The whole thing smacked of Brexit, five months earlier, also a populist revolt.

Trump was indefatigable.  He crossed and re-crossed the country in his “Trump Force One”.  And he ranted and raved and inspired massive crowds wherever he went.  20-30,000 people would stand in line to get into his rallies, And the “experts” said “it means nothing, look at the polls; the polls don’t lie”.

Hillary had a well oiled machine (I guess first conceived by Boss Tweed), that reached all over the country, down to town and township and household level.  Trump had a sporadic organization half supported by the Republican Party.  To make up for it, everyday normal citizens took it upon themselves to obtain and place Trump signs in their yards and in their stores. And once one got out into the outback, the preponderance of Trump signs was overwhelming.  The people that constitute the backbone of this country were not vociferous during the long campaign, as is their wont.  They were not silent during the election, though.  They spoke their minds with votes, all across the identity politics board.  Not only non-degreed people voted for Trump.  Many more blacks, Hispanics, degreed women, and other groups thought to be pro Clinton voted for Trump than the polls thought possible.  The whole country demographic said “we’re Americans too.  We see what’s happened in our country.  We can’t have four or eight more years of Hillary and the same”.  Union members said, the brass may vote for Clinton.  The rank and file will vote for Trump – and they did.  Many Hispanics in the I4 corridor in Florida and other locations said “Somos americanos también. Estamos votando por Trump” (we’re Americans too, we’re voting for Trump.

This was a grass roots movement of dissatisfied average Americans who had had enough of political correctness and a do-little apologetic government in Washington.  They were sick and tired of attempts to lay guilt on them for being ethical, moral, religious, hard-working Americans. Hillary in her smugness called them a “basket of deplorables”, and that resonated with them just like Obama’s comment in 2008 about “clinging to guns and religion”.  Trump didn’t even have to say anything, although he sure did at every rally.  The liberal elite’s arrogance, contempt and derision shone through loud and clear.  

So what do we learn from Brexit, Trump’s win and the populist movements sweeping a good part of Europe, and threatening to bring down the Euro Zone and even the European Union?

We had better pay attention and vet carefully the immigrants streaming into our counties and their implied connections with Islamic Terrorists who have murdered innocent people in the U.S. and Europe. We should be more aware and renegotiate trade agreements that may result in cheap goods, but which result in economic activity flowing to countries with cheaper labor and looser laws.  We should beware and let our system of checks and balances work against rampant nationalism that could morph into either totalitarian Fascism or Socialism.

If we consider ourselves liberal/progressive, we should scale back demands for special privileges for special identity groups and stop our propensity for identity politics.  We are all equal under our laws, which should be enforced equally in all cases.  We should eschew racist movements like “black lives matter” that sow discord into our society.  All lives matter should be our watchword.  We should support our laws, and our law enforcers. We should fully educate ourselves on controversial subjects like abortion, global warming, drugs and other hot button topics by not only referencing anecdotal thinking and data that agrees with our point of view, but also become aware of contrarian views and data.  We should tone down the “we know what’s best for you” elitist attitudes that anger a significant segment of the country.  We should acknowledge that intellectual, philosophical, political thought and erudition is not the sole property of Acela and West Coast liberals/progressives.

If we consider ourselves conservatives or libertarian populists, we should be magnanimous in our victory against Clinton and the status quo.  We should not repeat the liberal elitist thuggery immediately after the election of rioting and law breaking in the streets.  We should prevent  more exuberant types from any reprisals against minorities or immigrants or liberals.  We should keep an open mind in discussions with liberals/progressives and try to understand their point of view.  We should eschew the false news and far right wing views being promulgated on social media and right wing sites.  We should take tweets by top officials with a grain of salt, since we do not have access to the reasoning behind them.  We should be equally cautious about news from the known biased mainstream media.  Just because they lost the election doesn’t mean that they have become any less dishonest and slanted than they were before and during the election.

To summarize, we should all become more tolerant of one another.  To the liberals/elitists -  there is a whole world out there in middle America that does not necessarily share your views.  To middle America – The intelligentsia in Acela and the West Coast have been raised and educated differently than you.  They are entitled to their views and opinions just as you are yours.  Hopefully we can draw on the good points of each camp to go forward and make America great for all of us.

December 11, 2016

Ray Gruszecki