Lessons from an Election

It’s been ten days since the election and there’s been a lot of talk and hand-wringing about the lessons to be learned from the result. What shows up most frequently in my feed is the idea that the elite coastal liberals are guilty of neglecting the rural working class, so they are to blame. Before we sink too comfortably into the narrative that blames those who fought against Trump for his victory, let’s review the facts.

First, when the final counting is done, Hillary will have won the popular vote by around two million. By a significant margin, more people in this country wanted to continue down the path we’re on under Obama than flip the applecart over. This isn’t to argue against the legitimacy of Trump’s win, but to point out this wasn’t a radical change in the nation as a whole as much as a shift at the margins and quirk of population distribution. It’s worth noting that those who make less than $50k went strongly towards Clinton while those in the next bracket up went slightly towards Trump and the rest were evenly divided. Trump won with the less educated and with whites, especially with the less educated white males. Clinton won with women and minorities of all persuasions.

But let’s get back to those neglected working-class whites, the ones in Middle America who feel abandoned by our government. They think the system is rigged against them, and maybe in some aspects it is, but our representative democracy is actually rigged FOR them: a vote in Wyoming carries four times the weight in the Electoral College as one in California; the two Senators from South Dakota have just as much influence as the two in New York. It’s this disproportionate representation that allowed Trump to win despite losing the overall vote. And if you look at the government these people say has neglected them, it’s primarily Republican. While our national government has been mostly split for the past couple decades, at the state level rural America is in Republican control. The majority of red-state voters have a Republican governor and a Republican legislature, and most rural counties have Republican leadership, so to blame the liberals for government’s failings requires looking away from the everyday reality of governance.

Compounding this error is the idea that we can re-cast this election as one of economic hardship and lack of empathy from the left. This is post hoc reasoning. We must remember that Trump entered politics pushing the racist birther conspiracy against our first black president. He launched his campaign by calling Mexican immigrants rapists. The chants at the Republican convention and his many rallies were to ‘build the wall’ and ‘lock her up’, not ‘increase GDP’ or ‘stop TPP’. The only consistent theme in his campaign was hatred of the other. His economic policies, like his foreign policy and social issues, were inconsistent and incoherent. From saying wages are too high to agreeing to increase the minimum wage, to arguing against social security while promising not to touch it, to modifying his tax plan multiple times but still ending up with large tax cuts for the wealthy while INCREASING taxes on the middle class – the very people who supposedly voted for him on economic, not racist, grounds – Trump’s economics are a disaster for the poor and middle class. The very fact that we have to spell out it was the WHITE working-class who supported him, not the working-class as a whole, shows that this is about race no matter how much people want to talk about something else (anything else). I’m being asked to believe that these good, hard-working (white) Americans did not respond to the overtly bigoted rhetoric, but instead chose to believe a billionaire, one who inherited his wealth, with a documented career of screwing over the working-class, when he said that he would fight for them, despite stated policy that proves he will not. That seems far more insulting to their intelligence than simply calling them racist.

The truth is anything as large and complex as a Presidential election is going to have many stories, many intersecting issues that make reducing it down to one simple narrative incomplete and unsatisfactory. But we do it because it’s easier to comprehend. It’s somehow reassuring to say that our country chose Trump not because of its bigotry and moral failings, not because it was duped by a thinly veiled con-man who spouted easily disproved lies, but because our economy is not as good as it could be for white people in rural America. Yes, there is some truth in that, but if that’s your takeaway, if you hold that thought above all others from this episode, if you disregard the racism, sexism, and bigotry, if you ask for empathy for the middle-class white male while not demanding it for the oppressed minorities who suffer even greater indignities, there is something wrong here. Once again it’s White America calling for understanding and compassion towards white Americans while downplaying the concerns and considerations of those with darker skin. We have a lot to learn from this election, don’t let it be the wrong lesson.