The making of Trump’s America

Donald Trump has been elected the 45^th President of the United States of America leaving people’s social media feeds filled with fear, American’s considering immigration, and pollsters, analysts, and politicians completely dumbfounded as to what went wrong with their assumptions and theories.

Hence, I was not at all surprised that the day after the result, several of my friends contacted me to ask what this meant for the US and also the rest of the world. However, before jumping to this question (which I know millions of people are already asking, and will continue to talk about over the years to come), I believe it is imperative for us to understand what enabled Trump to become the President, especially, after an eight-year run of the Obama administration.

Of course, there is no simple answer to this question, and each aspect of what I am about to discuss, can and will be expanded upon by others on its own in the future.



For starters, across the vast majority of the Western world, the ‘left’ has failed to implement policies true to the ideals and values of their progressive base, hence, we have witnessed several instances such as Brexit in the UK, the rise of far-right politics in parts of Europe, and the case of the One Nation party and Pauline Hanson in the Australian Senate, all of which are very much aligned with these changes in political thought. Moreover, this movement away from left-wing politics towards more centrist ideologies by major parties that have traditionally had sizeable leftist values in the past, as is the case with the Democrats (as witnessed under Obama), has led to the manifestation of a vacuum that has grown large enough in size, to the point where the radical right have been able to fill it up. This, of course, is not to say, that the right and its policies did not fail in the eyes of conservative voters as well, but the shift of their representing parties, particularly the Republicans, moving further towards the right, has only enabled Trump to win based on his campaign promises.

This disenfranchisement and disillusionment is also the reason why Trump is the frustrated voters’ answer to the ‘establishment’ a la Hillary Clinton, and her decades of experience in politics has only hampered her chances as well, as both sides of the political spectrum have been fuming at the ‘establishment’. Additionally, this frustration has also proved that the Reagan Democrats are still very much alive and strong, as voters in traditionally Democratic states voted heavily for Trump, mainly due to the basis of his promise to bring back economic prosperity to the US and provide jobs to White blue-collar workers. So much so that we may even come to know them as the successors of the Reagan Democrats, or the ‘Trump Democrats’, one day. Furthermore, the fact that the Republicans have also managed to keep a hold of power in both the House and the Senate has further reinforced this view.

However this is not to say that the scenario at hand, could have taken a very different direction, especially if Bernie Sanders was on the Democratic ticket, as a lot of Trump’s voters were the same people who supported him in the primaries, also due to his promise of bringing back jobs to the American people and fighting against the establishment, although we will never truly know. Moreover, as expected, millennials, did not come out and vote in droves, especially in the way that they did for Sanders during the primaries, and this also enabled Trump to win the election.

Yet, one of the most important aspects of this presidential election was almost completely ignored across most media platforms, despite its relevance to this election — the role of race and minority issues, as stated perfectly by Van Jones on CNN. It is a fact that America will not be a white-majority country for much longer, with almost 40 per cent of the population already being represented by POCs. And to claim that certain voters do not fear a ‘non-white America’ is not only a naive assumption to make, but also an ignorant view of reality on the ground. Almost all the voting results showed that Blacks, Latinos, Asians and other minority groups in America, voted significantly for Hillary Clinton, however as we all know, this was not enough, as Trump’s message against the very same minorities once again spoke out to the masses, such as, but not limited to, areas like the Rust Belt, where he needed it to work the most.

Most importantly though, the truth of the matter is that today’s extreme partisanship within the American political system, be it centrist or far-right, the American idea that individual liberty is based on the freedom to not vote, the Electoral College system being the only means to vote (barring Maine and Nebraska), and that the American political institutions with all of their checks and balances, have somehow allowed for corruption and the infiltration of corporations and the rich into politics are critical in allowing Donald Trump became the President.

Hence, overall there really is no surprise that his message stood out for large swaths of the population, along with the failures of America’s almost ancient institutional laws, the lack of millennials and POCs voting due to their frustration and disillusionment, the strength of Bernie Sanders’ progressive movement biting back on the democratic establishment, and the rise of the radical right across the Western World.

Therefore, I can conclude by saying that if the Democrats truly want to see changing fortunes next time around, it is imperative for them to go back to the drawing board, and come back stronger with a progressive candidate that can pull in voters, such as Elizabeth Warren, otherwise the party is more or less doomed, as Trump reigns supreme over the USA, or in what may even come to be known as Trump America.

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

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