Throughout the election process, I have been critical of many Trump supporters and voters. However, I was never in the camp that called all Trump supporters bad. One of the very few things that Hillary Clinton said that was absolutely correct was that about half of Trump supporters are deplorable. Let’s not deny that Trump’s campaign was fueled by bigotry, sexism, racism and xenophobia. While some of his supporters voted for him in spite of those things, many of his supporters voted for him because of those things. This is evident in many opinion polls. According to Public Policy Polling, 59 percent of Trump supporters believe Obama was not born in the U.S., 40 percent of Trump supporters believe blacks are lazier than whites, 33 percent believe Japanese Internment Camps were good, 31 percent would ban gays from entering the U.S., 20 percent disagreed with Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation, and 87 percent wants to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S. Hillary Clinton saying that half of Trump supporters are deplorable is actually a conservative number. Hillary in her speech called those people “irredeemable.” She’s absolutely right. The majority of Trump supporters are horrible people. However, a large portion of Trump supporters are not racists, sexists, bigots, and xenophobes.
Many people voted for Trump because they have been kicked down by the system, and they wanted change. In 2008, Obama was elected and received the largest amount of votes in American Presidential Election history with over 72 million votes because of his promise of change. People were inspired by his progressive rhetoric but spurred by his "incremental change" which in reality is neoliberalism covered in sugar. He mobilized a group of people who were never interested in politics until that moment. After his first term in office, not much changed and those people lost hope. Yes, unemployment numbers dropped dramatically under Obama and he produced millions of private sector jobs. However, those jobs that were created under Obama were low paying jobs. Income inequality increased under Obama. The richer got richer while the poor got poorer. From 2009 – 2013, 95 percent of all new income went to the top one percent of Americans. Obama bailed out Wall Street while leaving Main Street hanging. The excitement of hope and change died down after Obama’s first term, so instead of receiving more votes the second time around, Obama received 7 million fewer votes in 2012 than he did in 2008. The 2008 election was a turning point in American history, but Obama was not ready to turn. President Obama continued the neoliberal policies of Bill Clinton that America hated and did everything that republicans wanted to do. He expanded the two wars that George Bush got us into to seven. He increased NSA spying, he made Bush’s tax cuts for the rich permanent, among many other things that were not supported by the American people.
Hillary Clinton, many times throughout her campaign promised to continue Obama’s legacy. Her response to “Make America Great Again”, was that “America is already great” was absolutely the wrong response to that statement. Her saying “America is already great,” ignored all of the issues that the American people are facing. For many Americans, America is not great. America is not great for the parent who works three jobs just to make ends meet. It’s not great for the millions of Americans saddled with student loan debt. It’s not great for the family who once had a well-paying factory job that was replaced with a low paying job at McDonalds or Wal-mart. Yes, the unemployment rate is lower so fewer people are unemployed, but most people who are employed don’t make enough to survive. Unemployment rate alone is not a good measure of how the economy is doing, and neither is the stock market which are at record highs with Obama. The stock market tells us how well the rich are doing. Wages are just as if not more important than the other factors I mentioned.
As of 2016, 38 percent of Americans make under $20,000 a year, 51 percent make under $30,000, 62 percent make under $40,000, and 71 percent make under $50,000. Half of all Americans live below the poverty while we have the highest childhood poverty rate of any industrialized nation in the world. The American middle and lower classes are worse off that any industrialized nation in the world besides Russia and the Philippines despite America being the richest country in the history of the world. People are struggling and that was ignored under Obama. Hillary Clinton promising to continue Obama’s legacy and stating that America was already great, was a promise to ignore those issues as well.
Everyone who voted for Donald Trump is not horrible people. The majority of Americans hate him. His unfavorables were as high as 63 percent which was record highs for a presidential candidate. The problem was that the alternative Hillary Clinton was not much better. Her unfavorable numbers were as high as 58 percent which is the second highest unfavorables for a president candidate ever.
The biggest difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was that Donald Trump didn’t act like the typical politician. Americans hate politicians. According to the latest 2016 Gallup Poll, congress has an 18 percent approval rating. It’s clear Americans wanted something different. They were so desperate that they were will to try anything because they could not continue to afford to go down the path that they were going down. According to a CNN exit poll, nearly 25 percent of people who voted for Donald Trump, believed he was unqualified. This is why so many two-time Obama voters voted for Trump. They voted for change. Hillary Clinton promised not to change anything. She abandoned her base and refused to even visit places like Wisconsin, a state that was considered part of the “democratic firewall.” CNN’s Van Jones interviewed a family of two-time Obama voters who voted for Trump and those were the reasons that life long democrats voted for Trump. He didn’t represent the status quo.
Although Trump made so many vile and disgusting comments, at the end of the day, his voters believed he was going to bring change. They believed he was going to make their lives better. They were willing to take a chance on a wildcard, rather than a known commodity that they knew would continue to take them down a path they could ill-afford to go down any longer. His promise of change meant more than his rhetoric to them. Many former Obama voters either voted democrat all the way down and voted Trump for president or voted democrat all the way down and didn’t vote for president ask explained in the video below. Hillary Clinton was able to do a decent job explaining why Trump was horrible, evident in her receiving more than 2 million more votes than him, but she did not do a good job in explaining to the voters why they should vote for her. That’s why she lost. It’s not bigotry, racism, sexism, etc. Yes, those things obviously exist but that’s not the reason 7 million fewer people voted for Hillary than Obama in 2008, despite a larger population. Clinton lost because of her promising to continue to Obama’s neoliberal policies which helped only the rich and powerful.
Democratic loyalist, I am warning you, if you put up another neoliberal, corporatist democrat against Trump in 2020, you will lose again and we will have Donald Trump for eight years. I warned many her supporters than if they don’t try to hold Hillary accountable and force her left, if they continued to allow her to ignore the American people, she would lose to Trump. You didn’t listen and it’s exactly what happened. I am warning you again today, if you back another corporate democrat in the 2020 election, Trump will win a second term. The Clinton days of blaming the poor for being poor, the blacks for the issues in their communities, and bailing out Wall Street while leaving Main Street out to dry is dead, and good riddance. It’s time for the progressives to take over the democratic party. You centrist, democratic loyalist need to step aside, you're done.
