With the ascendance of a populist demagogue to the White House throne, there seems to be a deep, underlying change in the fabric of the American ethos. How, Democratic voters ask themselves, could such a fear-mongering, homophobic, racist, vitriol-spewing orange man so easily jump to the highest rung of the American political ladder? I, like the majority of Americans, was disappointed by the outcome my country chose a week ago, but I will not so easily dismiss the misgivings of middle-class America as Hillary supporters have taken to doing since watching their candidate fall.
Donald Trump’s consistently bigoted remarks risk normalizing hate speech and discrimination, but it was Democrats' folly to assume that these comments were the only dividing issue of this election. Trump overwhelmingly won the uneducated vote, a fact that left-leaning voters will smugly adopt to conclude that the uneducated are simply too unintelligent to choose an appropriate candidate.
College is, for many students, an intellectual awakening towards understanding differences in race, gender, class and sexuality. Campuses are fertile grounds for forward thought, but this makes it much too easy for the academically privileged to gaze out of their ivory towers and scoff at lowly laborers who can’t seem to comprehend the weightiness of their progressive ideals. Not all of America is so lucky to have the luxury of hearing an Econ 101 professor extol the benefits of free trade or the indulgence of sitting through orientation skits that discuss provocative topics.
Democrats owe much of their astonishment of this year’s election due to their inability to look beyond the realms of their own worldview. For years, they rendered anyone who refused to accept their morals as undeserving of the right to have an opinion.
Talking heads insisted that this election was one of sexual assault, scandal and bigotry, but on last Tuesday those things proved to be insignificant in the broader scheme of things to his voters. For years, the Red Sea of middle America has seen incomes fall and factories shut down, and they have watched as a liberal government continued its quest of social equality and awareness.
This isn’t to say those strides have been bad — truly, they have laid the foundation for a legacy of awareness and tolerance, and through continuing these legacies the U.S. will one day be the land of equality it purports to be. But these weren’t the only issues of the era, and by prioritizing them to the detriment of struggling America, the Obama presidency lit the fuse of a deep, unfeeling anger.
Unfortunately, this unfairly put social justice on the wrong side of the fence for Trump supporters and the Republican Party at large. To the right, discussions to understand concepts like micro-aggressions and hate speech turned into points of weakness and lack of tough skin. Protests against police brutality became unruly riots of those who couldn’t appreciate their country.
While it appeared that the nation was moving towards greater understanding, its direct approach was in fact isolating large areas of the country. For the first time in nearly a quarter-century, the majority of both parties expresses highly unfavorable reviews of the other.
Partisanship has reached unprecedented levels, so far that a concession to the opposing party is a tribal betrayal. In acknowledging the left’s misstep in predominantly focusing on social issues, I’ll be labeled by my own party a traitor to the cause of righteousness; yet by recognizing the very real, fundamental issues with our nation that spurred it, I’ve become an out-of-touch, emotional idealizer to the right.
Amidst all this misunderstanding, one candidate grasped how deep this divide was.
The election of Trump marks the apex of a deep-seated anger towards a government that has seemingly neglected large areas of its middle territory. Barack Obama inherited the embers of a financial collapse that would forever mark his presidency as a failure of recovery for those that were hit the hardest.
For eight years, a large portion of Americans have felt slighted by a government that they believe hasn’t cared for their wellbeing. To an extent, this is true — the financial crisis and a century of globalization has left whole towns in decay, grasping in the ether for their bygone America where they enjoyed the steady life of the middle class.
Trump struck a profound, resonating chord with his first promise to "Make America Great Again." For middle-aged and elderly voters in these areas, the Trump presidency signifies the promise to return to the seventies and eighties when a high-school diploma meant the ability to earn a normal standard of living. For their children, an Obama presidency has become synonymous for the struggles they see in the towns around them.
Taking this, the fact that a little under 48 percent of voting Americans were willing to cast a ballot for him despite what he says isn’t all to surprising. However, it presents a massive issue not just because of his voters' alarming dismissal of homophobic and racist content, but also because of the severity of the issues they do find important. Large areas of the U.S. are struggling, and much to their frustration, their desires often meet idle passivity from Democrats.
As empty and shaky as Trump’s promises might have been, they were what millions of Americans who have felt the pain of the last two decades wanted to hear. The past eight years have seen tremendous strides towards realizing the equality our 14th Amendment declares, but they’ve accompanied a general apathy of the governing party and media towards the decline of the middle class across the American republican expanse. Trump’s inexperience was the antithesis to Hillary Clinton’s career of public service, a chance for change, and that proved just enough to build his path toward the Oval Office.