The Deplorables Strike Back!

Trump is the President. Hail to the Chief. Before I go any further let me say that I am and was opposed to Trump as President of the USA. I also think he is a boorish, bigoted misogynist. He may even be a racist. Now that is out of the way, he is still my President. He was elected by nearly 60 million popular votes and as such he has the right to run the country as he sees fit. I may not like it, I may protest his actions but he is still my President. The hallmark of a democracy is a peaceful transfer of power, no matter how painful and loathsome the act itself maybe. That is what builds the foundations on which an enduring democracy can thrive. So, yes, Hail to the Chief.

How could this happen? Every single poll, every single prognosticator and every political operative had Clinton winning by a few percentage points. In an election where 120 million people cast their votes, a few percentage points are a gaping canyon. Yet the lady lost and not only lost but lost the Blue Wall. The Blue Wall is formed by Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois. A bastion of trade union power. Of the four states Hillary could only hold Illinois. What gives? Let me see if you agree with my after-midnight analysis.

Trump tapped into a deep fear in the rural and industrial parts of the country where society is going through some earth-shaking structural changes and people are unnerved by the changes that they can do very little about. This fear and loathing is a complex phenomenon and it is segmented. Let us take a look at this segment by segment. Trump's slogan, "Make America Great Again" is a masterstroke of simplicity yet evokes complex emotions and desires. You can think of a bucolic pre-industrial time as "great", you can think of factories churning out cars as "great" and you think of the days of slavery as "great". This is marketing at its best. Every target segment can have its dream and fantasy, no questions asked. This message tugs at your emotion and yet is vague enough to fit any emotion. All you have to do is close your eyes and think of a "great" time. I keep thinking of Bruce Springsteen's iconic ballad, "Glory Days". The slogan is meant to evoke a nostalgia for the "glory days", however you define glory. Against this marketing masterpiece Hillary was talking like a policy wonk and, um, "stronger together".

The Racist Element

Undeniably Trump has tapped into the White Nationalists and Racist minorities of the country. Some estimates put that number at around 20% of the population or roughly sixty million people. These are older white people who have grown up in an agrarian America or in the heyday of industrial might. They long for a uniform society and they blame the "others" for their decline of wealth and wellbeing. This segment is simply looking at the "glory days" and trying to find someone to blame. These are the actual "Deplorables" in the mosaic of Trump support. They want most of all to bring back the "glory days" of segregationist America, want to get rid of Mexicans and are afraid of Muslims. They want all these "outsiders" controlled and deported. There has always been a racist element in society. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) started at the beginning of the Republic and only became somewhat dormant in the last 25 years. This is White identity politics, exclusionary and is populated by the dregs of KKK and Aryan White Supremacists. They have grafted Trump's "Make America Great Again" to the dreams of a White Super State in the model of Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy. This xenophobic segment turned up in every Trump rally, booed the press, beat up protesters and people of color. These are ideologues. A good analog for this group is the Jihadi clusters in Muslim countries. These Trump "Deplorables" show the same intolerance as the Jihadists and will become similarly violent given half a chance.

The Economic Luddites

A vast swatch of the Blue Wall and other parts of the US are populated by people that I call Economic Luddites. They are afraid of the changing economic landscape that is the result of technological and structural shifts. There were factories that used to make apparel (a business that I am in now) and provide a decent middle class living without requiring too many skills or education. I sell sweaters and if I had to make them in the US the price of a $200 sweater would be $700 at a minimum. Global competition has wiped out the unskilled jobs. In the auto industry and other industrial segments there is actually a shortage of workers who can master technology and work in an integrated robotic/technology environment. However, most of the Economic Luddites are unwilling and/or unable to learn the necessary skills, go back to school and train for the new economy.

The result is that a vast majority end up unemployed or flip hamburgers for minimum wages. This constitute another 12 million people. They despair and sink into an abyss of drug use as an escape method. It so happens they were the beneficiaries of the industrial age in America. The jobs in factories were family enterprises where the son followed the father to work and so on. The economy has shifted away from those factory jobs to a post-industrial gig economy. It has become a mobile world and the Economic Luddites are hanging on to the concept, reviving the industrial age. They dream of bringing back the buggy whip in the days of Tesla. Trump gave them a magical promise to bring back those blue collar jobs. In their desperation they swallowed it hook, line and sinker. I dread the day when this magical thinking turns out to be just that, magic. This segment votes for Trump out of fear and hopes that he may magically bring those jobs backs. Never mind the realities of technology and a changing world.

The Religious Right

This group is easily identifiable and they fight the Culture War based on their religious and cultural convictions .They are afraid of gender equality, they are afraid of the LGBT community, they are afraid of foreigners and mostly they are afraid of Muslims (maybe somewhat justifiably). This gripping fear and their own End of Days mythology informs this group and they are willing to be blind to the realities. In actuality, this is another, albeit, smaller group of Deplorables. No redemption here.

Progressive Bankruptcy

This electoral debacle did not happen just because Trump tapped into the anger and frustrations of the uneducated and under-educated underclass. No, the Democratic Party is also responsible for giving the Buffon the keys to the Kingdom. They have been intellectually dishonest and tried to compromise in matters of principle. They are bankrupt of courage and fortitude. They basically wanted to bamboozle the Progressives into thinking they are progressives and the Right wing into thinking that they can deliver the Progressives for the Right wing causes and compromise on culture war. A good example is Obamacare. This is a kludgy healthcare system some 100 years behind the rest of the developed world. Obama had to basically bribe the insurance companies with a mandate accompanied by fine for the poor sods (consumers) so that the insurance companies would play ball.

However, the insurance companies are looking after their bottom line and they want a free for all, exclusionary (no one with prior illness or women with possibility to become pregnant are excluded) money first venture. They are not into Do-gooding namby-pamby. The honest thing would have been for Obama to propose gradual lowering of the MEDICARE threshold from 65 today to zero in say twenty years. Medicare is a working system, yes it needs some investment into technology but a push to make Medicare for all would have been an honest progressive project as opposed to the half Pineapple and half strawberry of Obamacare. Time after time the Democratic Party and its allies compromise while the opposition just obstructs. When there was an opportunity to let the Bush era tax cuts sunset they compromised, they did not bring back Glass-Stiegel (that separate Investment banks from deposit banks). One half step after another. In the international arena they refuse to confront the font of all evils, the Saudi regime. The list just goes on and on.

We need a little honesty. Someone needs to tell the American people, especially the jobless under-educated masses, the jobs of yore are not coming back no matter how many Trumps we put in power. Someone needs to tell them that the country is changing regardless of the hand wringing by folks who want to bring back the simple old days. Someone needs to tell them, and unless we check the unbridled nationalism we are heading towards a repeat of the Thousand-Year Reich on the fertile soil of the United States of America. Meanwhile, let us celebrate Democracy with a big D in America, the land of the free and home of the brave.