Why He Won
Ever since the 2016 election, pundits and others who follow politics have been trying to answer two basic questions: What happened? Why did he win? My personal attempt to answer these questions has been shaped by my time at a college where the student body and faculty lean left. What follows here is a collection of experiences I’ve had that make me think: “this is why he won.” They are presented briefly, with minimal analysis. I don’t believe they provide the whole picture of President Trump’s 2016 victory, and I’m not even certain they are too significant. But they have seemed true enough to me.
On election night, I watched the returns in the basement common room of North Residence Hall with some friends. The reactions ranged from confidence in Secretary Clinton’s victory to an uneasy feeling that a surprise might be in the making. One acquaintance left to scream and cry outside the building. I understand strong emotions, but this struck me as verging on the absurd. News coverage described a Clinton campaign that was hesitant to concede even in the face of apparently long odds. Clinton did not give her concession speech until late the following morning. Those reactions by the campaign and the candidate struck me as arrogant: an extreme disbelief that Clinton could have lost to Trump. They also highlighted what seemed like a complete inability to understand why anyone might find even a little redeeming value in Trump.
A friend later described Hamilton as a liberal blue dot “in a sea of red racism.” While he is probably right that Hamilton is more liberal than its general surroundings, I was put off by the broad brush stroke, calling the area racist so easily. No evidence was presented, not even a single anecdote which might be extrapolated to the population. Just “a sea of red racism.” Painting one’s political opposition as racist or sexist or homophobic, as so often happens, is an easy way to explain away more complicated factors. It reduces people’s opinions, emotions, and experiences to a single dirty word which can easily be dismissed. This story, like others, makes me think “this is why he won” because it displays an inability to delve into the roots of others’ political convictions.
I heard an argument that old people should not be allowed to vote because they won’t be around long enough to see the effects of their votes. I strongly disagree with this, but I didn’t think “this is why he won” until I heard, as an aside, that it was even more OK because older voters are Trump voters anyway. Silencing a group by disenfranchising them in the political process which is supposed to foster agreement out of discord is not the way forward for a society. Like the previous story, it gives people an out: don’t listen or find agreement, just remove the right to vote in the first place.
In a conversation about West Virginia, a friend was dismissive to the extreme. As he discussed the opioid epidemic ravaging the state and the rest of the Rust Belt, he was cool to the suffering and the lack of opportunity in these areas. He described people living there as hicks and idiots, and questioned why they didn’t just learn to code, as if getting such a job was a magic wand which can fix all such ills. In a separate discussion, he exuded great compassion for illegal immigrants and the challenges those communities face. I wondered why he was able to display such compassion for only one group of people and not another.
A professor asked a class for thoughtful, fact-based reasons why the United States should not have states. A number of well thought-out, rationally debatable answers followed. But one student responded simply, “Alabama.” It was humorous, sure, and I chuckled, but it was also a sign. That answer was neither thoughtful nor fact-based, but it also wasn’t an attempt at humor. It played off of a preconceived notion (mostly northeasterners’) of the South. (A later show of hands showed that nobody thought of him- or herself as a southerner.) The answer displayed a sizable amount of elitism and a disdain for those hillbillies down there who vote Republican. Rather than a plausible argument against having states, it served as an argument for them, since it might be good that the attitudes behind such snide comments cannot be imposed on other states, including Alabama, as long as they exist--especially since the disconnect between so many of the people in the different parts of our country is extreme.
Each one of these vignettes can be discussed, perhaps for hours. I also completely understand that these stories are divorced from the context that might add nuance. That, however, is less important than thinking about how each of them makes people feel. For if voters think the small experiences they encounter in their daily lives should influence their votes, then those are part of what decides elections. I know I will keep on gathering these stories as we ramp up into the 2020 election cycle. Without trying to build a grand thesis about what happened in 2016 and why, I think it's important for me and all of us to understand how the little situations and comments we experience in our lives may not only reflect, but also affect, the broader political environment.