November 8, 2017
Exclusive: Neither
the Democrats nor President Trump learned the right lessons from the 2016
election, leaving the nation divided at home and bogged down in wars abroad,
writes Robert Parry.
By
Robert Parry
One
year ago, the American electorate delivered a confused but shocking result, the
election of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, a quirky outcome in the
Electoral College that put Trump in the White House even though Clinton got
three million more votes nationally. But neither party appears to have absorbed
the right lessons from that surprise ending.
he
Democrats might have taken away from their defeat the warning that they had
forgotten how to speak to the white working class, which had suffered from job
losses via “free trade” and felt willfully neglected as Democrats looked toward
the “browning of America.”
The
choice of Clinton had compounded this problem because she came across as
elitist and uncaring toward this still important voting bloc with her memorable
description of half of Trump’s voters as “deplorables,” an insult that stung
many lower-income whites and helped deliver Pennsylvania, Michigan and
Wisconsin to Trump.
For
more than a decade, some Democratic strategists had promoted the notion that
“demography is destiny,” i.e., that the relative growth of Latino, Asian and
African-American populations in comparison to whites would ensure a future
Democratic majority. That prediction seemed to have been validated by
Barack Obama’s winning coalition in 2008 and 2012, but it also had the
predictable effect of alienating many whites who felt disrespected and
resentful.
So,
while the Democrats and Clinton looked to a multicultural future, Trump used
his experience in reality TV to communicate with this overlooked demographic
group. Trump sold himself as a populist and treated the white working class
with respect. He spoke to their fears about economic decline and gave voice to
their grievances. He vowed to put “America First” and pull back from foreign
military adventures that often used working-class kids as cannon fodder.
But
much of Trump’s message, like the real-estate mogul himself, was phony. He
really didn’t have policies that would address the needs of working-class
Americans. Still, his promises of a massive infrastructure plan, good
health-care for all, and rejection of unfair trade deals rang the right bells
with enough voters to flip some traditionally Democratic blue-collar states to
Republican red.
