Why Trump won?
It was supposed to be a tight race in the US presidential election. Donald Trump was supposed to solidify what was thought to be a shaky base near the west, make sure he takes the must-win states of Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio, and look for chinks in the Hillary Clinton's armour in the Great Lakes regions.
It was a narrow path to victory for him but yesterday we learnt that he not only did that but he took down Clinton's walls.
Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan were supposed to be a sure thing for her. The wall crumbled. Pennsylvania where the Obamas and Clintons spent so much time on, went red. Wisconsin, a sure blue state she never set foot on since she was nominated, went red.
The questions now are: How did Trump manage to do that? What was his mantra? Why did so many US citizens send him to the White House? Why the media was caught napping?
First of all, Trump knew his base. Blue collar white Americans without higher education. Most of his base is in rural areas, especially in swing states, which can go blue or red on the election night.
Being in show business for quite a while, Trump knew what to tell them, he knew what they wanted to hear. He knew they would take him seriously rather than literally. He knew his base wants to believe in someone.
“He attacked the norms of American politics, singling out groups for derision on the basis of race and religion and attacking the legitimacy of the political process. He ignored conventions of common decency, employing casual vulgarity and raining personal humiliation on his political opponents and critics in the media,” wrote Alexander Burnsnov in the New York Times yesterday.
“Amid all his innumerable blunders, however, Trump got one or two things right that mattered more than all the rest. On a visceral level, he grasped dynamics that the political leadership of both parties missed or ignored -- most of all, the raw frustration of blue-collar and middle-class white voters who rallied to his candidacy with decisive force.”
His mantra was “speak their language”. He made himself appear as a person who understood the frustrations of the blue-collar middle-class.
“He ignored the rules of modern politics and spoke to Americans in plain, even coarse, everyday language, without massaging his words through the data-driven machinery of consultants, focus groups and TV commercials. He scoffed at ideologies, preaching a tough, blunt pragmatism fuelled by unbridled, unashamed ego. He told people what they wanted to hear: that a rapidly changing and splintering society could be forced back to a nostalgia-drenched sense of community and purpose, that long-lost jobs could be retrieved, that a pre-globalised economy could be restored,” wrote Marc Fisher in the Washington Post.
“Trump won because he understood that his celebrity would protect him from the far stricter standards to which politicians are normally held -- one bad gaffe, and you're done. He won because he understood that his outrageous behaviour and intemperate comments only cemented his reputation as a decisive truth teller who gets things done. And he won because he had spent almost 40 years cultivating an image as a guy who was so rich, so enamoured of himself, so audacious, and so unpredictable that he could be trusted to act without regard to the powers that be.”
“All he had to do, he said, was connect directly to the pains, fears and frustrations of a nation that had been smacked around by globalisation, terrorism, rapid demographic change, and a technological revolution that enriched and enraptured the kids with the stratospheric SAT scores, but left millions of Americans watching their jobs fall victim to the latest apps, overseas outsourcing, robots, and a stunning shift in the nature of commerce and community.”
And vote they did for him on Tuesday. Rural republicans in swing states in probably one of the highest turnout elections in living memory voted in large numbers. They outnumbered voters of the cities of those states, traditionally democrat, and turned the state red.
Pennsylvania fell. The state the Obamas and the Clintons finished their campaign in alongside star powers Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi.
No star power could deter the blue-collar white Americans. Ohio and Florida fell.
The media was an ostrich refusing to accept what was coming.
“They couldn't believe that the America they knew could embrace someone who mocked a disabled man, bragged about sexually assaulting women, and spouted misogyny, racism and anti-Semitism. It would be too horrible. So, therefore, according to some kind of magical thinking, it couldn't happen,” wrote Margaret Sullivan in the Washington Post.
The media took every word Trump uttered literally. When the media heard Trump wants to build a wall and Mexico to pay for it, Trump's base heard “we are going to have a sensible immigration plan”.
His base took him seriously, not literally.
And of course there was fuelling the hatred for the elite. Trump despite being someone born with a silver spoon in his mouth knew very well how to energise his base. Painting the Clintons as elites he used slogans like “lock her up”, and "Hillary for jail”.
He even suggested appointing a special prosecutor, when he becomes president, to try Clinton.
It was Clinton's failure that helped Trump a lot. She failed to inject enthusiasm in her base. She could not hold on to the Obama coalition of minority voters that gave him the office twice. She could not get the African American votes as much as she needed, nor could she capitalise on Trump's calling Mexicans “rapists” and locking down the Hispanic voters.
Following the Access Hollywood tape fiasco, she failed to mobilise women against Trump in large enough numbers, which probably sealed the deal for her campaign.