Why she lost the poor America

Strangely, it isn’t Donald Trump’s radical victory that surprised me. What actually surprised me is the reaction of disbelief that followed in the liberal progressive America that was convinced that ‘she’ would prevail. There were obvious signs that Trump might win, though, that many amongst us refused to see. Two particular incidents stand out that led to my belief that maybe Trump wasn’t such a ‘non serious’ candidate as we were made to believe. Stepping out of the echo-chamber of social media, one realises that there is a US out there that is very different than what we see on the TV and movies.

Three months before the elections, I landed in Washington DC to what was an obviously little or no enthusiasm in Clinton’s election camp. Having been actively involved in President Obama’s first campaign in 2008, I could feel that type of buzz only in Trump’s camp or previously in Bernie Sanders campaign. People were either confused about Clinton, confused but still voting, or were simply not voting her. Within this spectrum, beyond a handful people that I met who truly supported and respected Clinton, majority were convinced that she was as ‘crooked’ as Trump claims but voting her meant blocking the bigger evil from the White House. This desperation was well understood by the Clinton’s campaign that saw ‘most’ people having little choice but to vote her by default. This mindset pushed the Clinton camp to make its worst mistake of getting arrogant by taking peoples desperation for granted and not reaching out to the Midwestern states that Trump eventually snatched right from under her nose. What mattered to the Clinton camp were polls and the numbers that all miscalculated a comfortable win for her – reinforcing her campaigns arrogance and ignorance to a large vote bank that decided to go against her on the Election Day. Simply put in terms of the electoral strategy, it’s not that the Clinton camp was out of sync with reality as many analysts including Bernie Sanders argue; the reality was very well understood but ignored underestimating people’s desperation to vote someone like Trump against her.The arrogance took the best of both the Clintons and Obamas that till the election night saw Trump as merely a joke.

Second, and more powerful incident that raised a red flag came exactly a month before the elections when I saw a poverty stricken face of the United States. This face didn’t care about electing the first female President, pushing neo-liberal agenda, political correctness or Trump’s misogyny. This was a face of hungry and struggling America in the form of a Black woman that I met who was a mother of three college going kids. She worked three jobs to make her ends meet one of which was to drive Uber from 9pm to 1am. Trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty, she would continue to be poor because of the rigged and unequal system and education that benefitted only the rich class in the US. She explained how the poor people in the US end up living in the poor neighbourhoods that have poor quality of schools which means lower chances of poor children for upward social mobility. Moreover poor neighbourhoods also meant dangerous environment with gun violence and drugs ruling the day.

Her stress was not only to earn bread but also to keep her children off the streets so they don’t indulge in gangs and drugs. In her own words, “there are mini Afghanistan’s and Somalia’s right here in America that the politicians don’t see”. For this poor America, President Obama did very little beyond being a great celebrity. The college fees went up, health care became unaffordable, and America became unsafe but the conversation in Washington DC centred on issues that mattered only to the elite Ivy leaguers. The US election, essentially, was as much about Clinton Vs Trump as it was a referendum on President Obama’s performance. Trump, as loathed as he was, ripped apart that same Washington DC the face of which was Obama-Clinton and unfortunately became the voice of angry struggling America. Strictly from an electoral strategy point of view, it was a disaster for Clinton to let Obamas take the center stage of her election campaign.

What has happened in America is true for many other countries around the world that has seen a right wing resurgence largely because the liberals sheltered into their own elite bubble have failed to deliver and for worse have become ignorant and unwilling to the needs of people. Essentially, it isn’t really Trump that has won, it’s Obama’s and the Clinton’s that represent the liberal values that have actually lost and with their loss the US will never be the same again.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 19^th, 2016.

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