The task at hand to actively be supportive in direct ways for those who are most threatened.
By Doug Porter
Like many of you, I’m feeling shocked and scared this morning. Donald Trump is going to be the next President of the United States. Let’s work together to make sense of this looming reality. (I’ll write at another time in the near future about state and local contests, and there was much good news there.)
The people Trump villainized in his campaign have every right to be terrified. His win was a victory for authoritarianism, nativism, misogyny, and racism. Those who support cultural reaction will feel and act empowered by his victory.
But this is not why Trump won. His victory came for economic reasons in addition to those aforementioned causes. Trump promised prosperity after getting people’s attention by playing to their fears. His ultimate appeal came down to ‘a chicken in every pot.’
Sonali Kolhatkar, host and executive producer of Uprising, a daily radio program, summed this up in an essay published at Truthdig:
My social media feeds are filled with disbelief about the strength and virulence of white supremacy, patriarchy, racism, and sexism in the US. It is tempting to think that tens of millions of Americans stupidly voted in a dangerous new President simply because they hate people of color, immigrants, LGBT people and more. While there is a strain of truth to the existence of such prejudices, the desire to scapegoat others is often a sign of collective weakness and insecurity borne from having a sense of loss. In this case the loss of jobs, decent pay, good benefits, and more. Desperate masses will tend to pick the leader who offers the most dramatic change and promise to make their wildest dreams come true, no matter how impossible such claims may sound. It has happened in many countries throughout history in a phenomenon that social scientists have studied. Trump’s greatest support came from white voters without a college education.
While it might be tempting to dismiss these voters, it is precisely this dismissal, based on a sense of righteous arrogance that has angered Trump voters against educated liberals. Educated liberals oversaw the greatest rise in income inequality since the Gilded Age. Educated liberals shipped jobs off overseas and championed free trade agreements like NAFTA and the Trans Pacific Partnership. And all Clinton did was appeal to educated liberals to elect her – an educated liberal just like them. To Trump voters, an exclusive club of elites has taken over the country. Even if the reality is highly different, even if there is great heterogeneity among those who voted for Clinton in terms of race, gender, age, college education, etc, it is the appearance of elitism that matters most.
This election was a rejection of the status quo, which was all that Clinton promised. She literally embodied a continuation of the past 8 years. Given no other major-party alternative to the status quo, voters chose Trump because Trump enthusiastically promised an end to the status-quo.
If there had been just bigots voting, Trump would have lost badly. Exit polls suggested that 7 in 10 voters favored a path to citizenship for immigrants. Large numbers of (white) women voted for Trump.
Reactionary Economics
Those who support reactionary economics were empowered by Trump’s Triumph. The last time Republicans won the White House, the House, and the Senate at the same time was in 1928, and we all know how that turned out.
The point in the future where Trump and his congressional allies fail to deliver on economic promises represents both the greatest danger and opportunity for progressives.
As Kate Aronoff wrote in today’s Guardian:
Together we can propose plans for a democracy and economy that work for the vast majority of people living in them, calling out the system as rigged, showing the ways men like Trump rigged it and charting a tangible way forward. That socialist Bernie Sanders remains one of the country’s most popular politicians should inspire some hope, as should the fact that large majorities of Americans favor raising the minimum wage, reforming the criminal justice system and taking on climate change. Pointing out the gap between that fact and Trump’s rule could embattle his first term, and make a second unthinkable. (Fortunately, Trump will probably be as inept at governing as he was at running his business empire, creating both anger against him and a hunger for reasonable alternatives.)
Over the short term, we have a partial script for what happens next. As with Brexit’s Leave voters, the vast majority of those who backed Trump at the polls are not hardened racists – though many are suffering at the hands of the status quo’s disastrous economic policies. In stark contrast to Clinton’s establishment sheen, Trump simply offered an alternative and a series of scapegoats: chiefly, immigrants and Muslims.
As the state of the economy was an opportunity for Trump, so is it his biggest weakness. A Republican-run Washington DC won’t be moved by simple street demonstrations; it will collapse if confronted with economic disruption. Strikes, boycotts, and alternative workplace solutions are all part of that package.
Unrealistic Faith
White Progressives need to recognize our responsibility in creating this situation. An unrealistic faith in the power of core liberal institutions like the Democratic Party, coupled with a belief that truth is enough motivation, got us to where we are.
Thomas Frank, author of Listen Liberal! wrote about this in his post-election column at the Guardian:
The even larger problem is that there is a kind of chronic complacency that has been rotting American liberalism for years, a hubris that tells Democrats they need do nothing different, they need deliver nothing really to anyone – except their friends on the Google jet and those nice people at Goldman. The rest of us are treated as though we have nowhere else to go and no role to play except to vote enthusiastically on the grounds that these Democrats are the “last thing standing” between us and the end of the world. It is a liberalism of the rich, it has failed the middle class, and now it has failed on its own terms of electability. Enough with these comfortable Democrats and their cozy Washington system. Enough with Clintonism and its prideful air of professional-class virtue. Enough!
There will be plenty of time for finger pointing in the partisan arena. Playing the blame game won’t stem the incoming tide of reaction. The task at hand to actively be supportive in direct ways of those who are most threatened.
Again, Aronoff in the Guardian:
But even as we defend our brothers and sisters from attack, the broader fight against Trump’s rule can’t be a defensive one.
What Is to Be Done?
Photo credit: Flickr.com / PacificKlaus
Change has always been about more than electoral politics and it’s time for the other parts of that equation, namely protests and organizing to come to the fore. I’m reminded of the FBI files on the Black Panther Party pointing to their free breakfast program as the most dangerous aspect of their work.
Here’s a quote from then-FBI Director J Edgar Hoover:
The BCP (Breakfast for Children Program) promotes at least tacit support for the Black Panther Party among naive individuals and, what is more distressing, it provides the BPP with a ready audience composed of highly impressionable youths. Consequently, the BCP represents the best and most influential activity going for the BPP and, as such, is potentially the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for.
As to the specifics of what needs to be done--no, we don’t need to recreate the Black Panther Party or its programs–there is (a little) time moving forward to have this discussion. Being elected president doesn’t entitle the office holder to a magic wand.
Folks should have deep humility in this moment, they shouldn’t be doubling-down. We all have things to learn from how Trump happened.
— deray mckesson (@deray) November 9, 2016
One Day at a Time
Chip Berlet has been studying and writing about the right wing in this country for forty years. He understands the dangers we are facing, perhaps more than anybody else I know.
Here’s his advice for coping, via Facebook:
Memo: A Dozen Things to Do
1). Make sure our allies and neighbors in our communities are safe from verbal and physical attacks. Defend every target of demonizing rhetoric threatening our allies and those facing oppression or repression.
2). Be strong. Have each other’s backs.
3). Help the next generation grow into leaders.
4). Reboot the grassroots movement for progressive social change and debate tactics and strategies openly and without rancor.
5). Boot the smug neoliberal elites out of the leadership of the Democratic Party and take it over one county at a time.
6). Build bridges across existing boundaries and develop broad-based and diverse ethical progressive coalitions built around democratically-determined Principles of Unity.
7). Leave no one behind. Build a society where no one is thrown under the bus or out of the lifeboat.
8). Study the dynamics of unfair power and privilege based on the intersections of race, gender, and class.
9). Since White folks (like me) are running out of White folks, us White folks need to learn how to talk to our White neighbors about social and economic justice for all. Capitalize “White.” Race is a biological fiction but a political fact.
10)…….Write limericks and
………….haiku to craft snappier
………….slogans, signs, and chants
11). Sing, dance, celebrate, grow flowers, and stay strong and healthy for yourself, each other, and our collective future.
12). Pass it forward so that the circle remains unbroken.
Finally, let’s face it. The Berners were right about their candidate’s strengths.
On This Day: 1872 – Twenty people, including at least nine firefighters, were killed in Boston’s worst fire. It consumed 65 downtown acres and 776 buildings over 12 hours. 1938 – Nazi troops and sympathizers destroyed and looted 7,500 Jewish businesses, burned 267 synagogues, killed 91 Jews, and rounded up over 25,000 Jewish men in an event that became known as Kristallnacht or “Night of Broken Glass.” 1967 – The first issue of Rolling Stone was published in San Francisco. John Lennon was on the cover.
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Doug Porter
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I don’t follow Michael Moore very much but I think this article does a good job of putting Trumps appeal into perspective and just like you said it goes beyond simple racism.
http://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/
I truly believe there are good meaning people who voted for him and simply have no realization on how much he will not be the savior they think he is and will make their circumstances worse. #1 of the 5 I think articulates it best.
Despite its bottom of the barrel racism, misogyny & ignorance, American blue collar angst has registered a strong rebuke to global capitalism. Combined with Bernie’s white collar progressivism, Brexit & world-wide war fatigue, capitalists beware! Trump has seen the ghost of Karl Marx & considers him friendly.
Thank you, Doug, for these two columns, “Trump’s Triumph” and yesterday’s “… The Loser is the Media.” You’ve done as much service to reason and ethics as any journalist I read. If the national press consistently applied itself to the wearying work of digging, and had gone about its business with as much energy as you have, I doubt we’d find ourselves where we are today.
Chip Berlet’s 13 suggestions sound like something I read on Freedomworks back in 2010; y’all are going to start throwing tea parties.
Good on ya. I’ll disagree with most of what you say but I like it when government fears its citizens.
I voted for Stein. I understand why many don’t trust Clinton. But I was dumbfounded last night when it became apparent that Trump was actually going to win.
I was watching MSNBC whose reporters seemed even more dumbfounded than I that everyone missed the signs it was a real possibility. The next absurdity was that it was then determined by the MSNBC reporters that the “rural white voter” caused it. Like all white people who live in small towns go into the voting both together and vote as one; and everyone else in the country votes differently.
So now, it’s being promoted that we shouldn’t hate these hey-seed white folk, just because they caused Trump to become president. Never mind that there were unexplained Latino, Black, Environmentalists and even “educated liberals” who voted for Trump.
This sentence that you quote, Doug, bugs me. “While it might be tempting to dismiss these voters, it is precisely this dismissal, based on a sense of righteous arrogance that has angered Trump voters against educated liberals.”
It’s a righteously arrogant sentence which presents the concept that all who are educated and liberal supported Clinton. That’s not why writers like this are being held in disdain. It’s because they profess to speak for all educated people who are liberal — as they can’t grasp why they are infuriating people with their omnipotent, but erred opinion.
It is not true that all enlightened, educated liberals voted for Clinton. I know several “educated liberals” personally who backed Trump. The anti–manditory-vaxxers have much distrust for the CDC and the Obama Administration. Some of them are scientists and physicians.
Others who are environmentally disabled and can get no help because of problems in DC also backed Trump. These people are rich, poor, black, white, yellow, red and orange. They are educated, uneducated, urban and rural dwellers and workers. They are conservative and liberal and in between.
Some people voted for Trump because they see Clinton as more of a war hawk. If you haven’t read the WikiLeaks, you owe it to yourself to do so. You should see what some of the ex-CIA agents write when trying to sound the alarm.
And no, people are not “deplorables” because they are tired of seeing young U.S. men and women die in the Middle East in the name of corporations controlling natural resources and pipelines. Again, read the WikiLeaks and particularly Clinton’s speeches to Wall Street.
Others voted for Trump because the Obama Administration has a horrible reputation of retaliating against whistleblowers. John Kirikou, Thomas Drake, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden were all retaliated against while Obama was president. Their “crimes” were exposing gov’t backed human and civil rights violations. And those are just the ones more publicly known.
“Black Lives Matter” came about under Obama w/the advent of everyone having a video camera with them at all times — documenting the pervasive problem of unpunished police brutality and murder.
The Water Protectors were just hauled off to jail under this administration; with an award winning documentary filmer of the protests facing the possibility of seventy-five years in prison just for documenting it.
Wall Street was bailed out with no one being held criminally responsible under Obama. Many lost their homes from the massive crime. It almost collapsed the economy and it’s been a major shifter of wealth in this county. I know people in this county who went to jail for trying to save their homes from wrongful foreclosures by bogus note holders.
People are screaming about corruption in the courts. Did you know that PA Atty Gen Kathleen Kane, who exposed judges and prosecutors trading pornography on their computers, just got sentenced to jail? And speaking of jail, how about all those highly profitable private prisons filled primarily with people of color? Those stocks have flourished under Obama.
ObamaCare is based on the premise that people will be fined by their gov’t if they don’t give money to a private sector insurance company; and the mandatory premiums are going up. Huh? Kennedy (who got sick in 2006) wanted single payer and this is where the compromise took us.
It’s not ignorant, unenlightened people who chose the nuclear option of Trump. It’s people who are fed up with systemic corruption, dealing making, and cronyism in government down BOTH ISLES — who were willing to take any alternative with Trump.
And not to compare our new president to Hitler, but that’s exactly how he came to power based on the promise of a renewed functioning government. People were fed up with the corrupt status quo.
My point is this, with all due respect the liberal media needs to wake up and stop only reading and quoting each other; then assigning motivation of who voted for Trump and why they did it, based on myopic perception.
It’s not the “rural white voter” or the outrageous spins on the Net that caused this. And it’s unintentionally causing reverse discrimination of middle class, white America, to promote that it is — because they are not enlightened like all the educated liberals who voted for Clinton.
It’s not okay to write about how we should forgive the rural white voter b/c they can’t help that they are so angry and under-educated. Hello? Who deemed this all their fault in the first place? Hint: self-professed “educated” liberals who profess to speak for all educated liberals — but really only talk to liberals who think like they do.
Sure, there are some white supremists who jumped on the Trump train because they couldn’t stand having a black or woman president. Sure there are some who voted for Trump because their jobs have gone else where or to minorities.
But if we don’t stop lumping the “rural white voter” into one category inferring that they all are angry for the same misguided reasons; and blaming them for all the ills which brought Trump to power — we’re going to fuel the chaos and racial divide; and probably help create a bunch of defensive blue collar, white supremists in the process.
People didn’t vote for potty mouth Trump. They voted to cause an out of control government to implode — regardless of the consequences.
This is how scary things are about to get.
It’s Trump’s proposed cabinet — complete with Sarah Palin.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/who-is-in-president-trump-cabinet-231071
Excellent essay Sharon!
How voted Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Tennessee, Montana, Idaho, the Dakotas, Arkansas, the Dakotas… Georgia, Alabama… you get the point, don’t you? Dems won the popular vote. Y’all won the electoral college. You should feel snug and smug, Sharon, you have state’s rights to make you feel good. The South has risen, again. As to the fairness of your perceived attacks on rural America by spoiled liberals who don’t like Trumpidity just look up the stats on who white, non-college educated males voted for, and who the college educated voted for. And who women voted for. Looks like we want to keep them dumb and down on the farm, don’t it? Isn’t there a Republican attack on public education and a move to charter schools among the Libertarians?
In other countries, the peasants have risen up against the king and swerved Imperial rule toward democracy when the intellectuals couldn’t do it alone. I’ve lived in the country. I’ve had serious good understadings with people there. I can’t understand what makes you think we’re not in trouble because of the ideas you peddle.
November Witch Strikes Early On The Great Lakes
Democrats go down with the Edmond Fitzgerald
The unthinkable electoral loss of Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania sank the political fortunes of Hillary Clinton like the gales of November through America’s rustbelt. These must win states were meant as a firewall but no one saw the wings of a gathering storm.
A crushing blow to a once proud Democratic establishment who in the words of Donald Trump had rigged the campaign in favor of Secretary Clinton. The real estate mogul was correct and despite his many off color remarks and penchant for hoof and mouth disease, he prevailed. But how and why did a seemingly cake walk of a contest turn into the greatest political upset in decades perhaps of all time.
One notion that I would float forward is the paternal card. Mid-Western Democrats are the product of an immigration wave that occurred roughly one hundred years ago. Most are blue collar and through their work bring a strong man presence to their families hence the word paternal being of Latin roots meaning of the father. It seemed counter intuitive to court perhaps the most paternalistic voting bloc in America being Latinos but when led to the gallows one quickly has a change of heart as Hispanic voters held their nose and went Clinton. There was however no hangman in the Midwest. The family oriented Democratic constituencies across the Great Lakes had no stomach for the so-called glass ceiling. They felt that life was slipping away and hope was an afterthought. The Obama wave of 2008 with its overdose of passion and hope was still water as President Nixon’s silent majority came home to roost. Adding chaos to the mix was African American voting was down in the Motor City and elsewhere. Across the lake, the Badger State had not gone to the GOP since 1984 when the former Governor of California Ronald Reagan won his second term as President. But even voting in the City of Churches was muted and quite frankly I cannot remember one visit to Milwaukee by Hillary Clinton although I’m sure she had visited the city steeped in Democratic tradition. Even in Ohio, Governor Kasich who had railed against Donald Trump for over a year found no adherents. It was a lost cause. Vice President Biden and the Jesuit tradition in Pennsylvania despite imploring the faithful to the bitter end came excruciatingly close but had to punt.
Never in my lifetime have I witnessed a political candidate of any rank certainly a nominee of a major party withstand such a barrage of attacks, pitfalls and self-inflicted wounds while proceeding to victory. I cannot imagine the strength of constitution in such an individual whether I agree or disagree with their policies. Perhaps the downside of such a personality is in lowering the bar in choosing men and women who run for public office. But then again, saints don’t get elected while sinners take a pass. The ghost of Phyllis Schlafly loomed over working class neighborhoods from Duluth to Allentown.
The Clinton camp banked on the Mid-West and lost.
Daniel J. Smiechowski
ANOTHER hidden Trump voter.
They’re not hiding anymore & seem proud to have supported a candidate who clearly benefitted from voter suppression in states like North Carolina, where black turnout was suspiciously low. The Guarantee Clause of the US Constitution says, “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government . . . .” Where is the outcry?