An Election To Remember

With every national election there are winners and losers. This is a natural process that occurs every four years.  However, the election of 2016 was different.  Or at least most Americans think it was!  So, did America witness a new type of political process, and is this a suggestion that we cannot go back to the way it was?

In many ways, I think it is too soon to tell, but in a way, it was the Hollywood story that seems too good to be true.

The Democratic Party had all but given its nomination to Hillary Clinton before Bernie Sanders appeared. The DNC did not know how to react to a Sanders campaign, but it had already established a formula to deal with fringe elements to deny them direct access to the nomination. The Super Delegate concept, created after George McGovern’s loss to Richard Nixon, ensured that Ms. Clinton would be the nominee, much to the disappointment of Mr. Sanders’ supporters. 

And as a concession to Sanders and to keep his constituents within the democratic coalition, the Democratic platform moved further to the left. The moderate Clinton was now a progressive.

At the same time, Donald Trump, another outsider and not a true Republican, launched a bid for its nomination. Everything about Mr. Trump’s campaign was radical.  It was the opposite of Clinton’s and it clearly drew on Trump’s celebrity developed in part from his television show but equally from Trump’s efforts to remain in the public eye since the 1970s.

Unlike Clinton’s run for the presidency, Trump’s run involved defeating a wide range of Republican insiders and veterans.  The field, which at one point had nearly twenty contenders, rapidly decreased after each primary.  Unlike the Democratic primaries, the Republican ones were supplemented by a series of debates. And at these debates, Trump was able to shine despite demonstrating a knack for not answering questions or revealing a lack of the necessary understanding of political or social issues.

What seems to go unnoticed in the Republican primaries is how Trump defeated his opponents. While everyone is aware of how he badgered and criticized his foes, gave them nicknames and discussed their looks, little attention was given to what his actions conveyed.  Often Trump spoke to audiences in non-verbal ways.  Nell Painter’s recent editorial highlighted how Trump’s slogan of “Making America Great Again” was an appeal to whiteness, but it did not speak to the constant tactics Trump employed in making his message stick. Trump not only denounced female candidates as being unattractive, he equally feminized his male opponents. His attack on Mitt, Romney, John McCain and George Bush focused on their inabilities to lead the nation and on the formers poorly run campaigns.  Through name calling and bullying, he made distinctions between himself and “losers”. He easily emasculated Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush to the point where he was insinuating that he was the only man on the stage. And when the other candidates realized they could not slur Trump, they attacked each other. A perfect example of this was when Rubio challenged Cruz’s heritage by suggesting that he could not speak Spanish.

If Trump was attempting to cultivate young and working class whites, he was successful in turning the primaries into a fast pace reality show. He made each primary a drama series, and he extended the gaps between primaries by galvanizing audiences with free television time where he continued to insult the other candidates on a daily basis. Pandering to his audience and not the political establishment Trump created a base of “deplorables.”   And, by suggesting that he did not support political correctness, Trump expanded that base by allowing race, sex, gender, and class to take center stage in his campaign.

However, what escaped the view of older voters and those lacking technological savvy was the other part of the Trump campaign. Trump’s attacks on the mainstream and appeal for voters was waged over social media.  That Donald Trump, the one who used Twitter, was more critical of “Bad Hombres” from Mexico and made very casual racial slips of the tongue.  Trump surrogates used Facebook and other forms of social media to “sell” fabricated information to populations who do not watch televised news or only select networks.  And select publishers supported Trump by promoting falsehoods in questionable websites and books.

Here Trump was at his best, and it is here where several analysts saw him developing what they called a “rape culture.”  It is critical to understand that the videotape that should have instantly killed his candidacy was secretly hailed as another sign of his manliness. Trump, more than any other candidate, continued to suggest that a woman, in general, and Hillary Clinton, in particular, could and should not be president of the United States as he made every effort to prove that only a strong man could save America.

As the fallout continues from Donald Trump’s presidential victory, many are asking what went wrong with the Clinton campaign?  People are looking for possible answers to what many believe is the cause of this national nightmare. Was it the fact that Clinton’s e-mail controversy was dragged out over the course of two years, was it the legacy of Benghazi, was it the Clinton Foundation, was it Bill Clinton, that the Clinton campaign lacked energy, or was it that Hillary Clinton could not be trusted?  While all of these points have merit, it seems that we have overlooked that it was more Trump than the other factors.  That Trump, though a very flawed messenger, delivered a series of brilliant messages that his audience accepted without questioning whether or not he could deliver.

Trump made a clear appeal to whiteness, nativism, and classism but made a veiled appeal to masculinity and domestication.  That wealthy and blue collar males, whether Republican or Democrat, accepted this is not really surprising.  Men of various social classes heard and accepted different coded messages. Even among groups that Trump insulted including African Americans, Latinos, and Muslims, the masculine commentary was well received, and Trump’s words were excused. In contemporary terms, Trump embraced hip hop culture and became a political rapper. He built an identity that allowed him to throw over tables, curse people out, be a baby-daddy, and flaunt his wealth.  Yet, like a rapper he bears no responsibility for his actions. He did not have to share his taxes and could deny his past as a liberal.

By taking back America, men could take back their households both literally and figuratively.  He would masculate businesses by overturning Obamacare, hand medicine back to the doctors, and he would place strong men on the Supreme Court.  He would beat up ISIS, kick out immigrants who took away jobs from decent people, and deport criminals or put them in jail.  He would be tough where Obama had been weak.  He would stand up to Congress and rid Washington of corruption. And he would start by taking care of the “wicked woman” Hillary Clinton, and putting her in jail for a long time.

Additionally, a tax break would give men, specifically white men, addition wealth and power, and wealthier men could rule their households as “strong men.”  Trump’s insistence that he was pro-life, when it was clear that he had not been in the past, was another example of this masculine appeal.

What is somewhat surprising is that white females, particularly college-educated women were not turned off by Trump’s language and actions.  In many respects as more and more women came forward to accuse Trump of sexual assault, the reaction was very different than what occurred when Bill Cosby was accused of similar predatory behaviors.  Trump, like Cosby, had been recorded stating that he had participated in such activity, yet Trump denied what he said and then threatened to sue each woman.  Why women, particularly those who voted for Trump, disregarded these claims is hard to accept.  Additionally, it was compounded by Republican surrogates, including several prominent women, who accused Bill Clinton of sexual criminality, but overlooked Trump’s lengthy history as a womanizer. 

And during each presidential debate, Trump’s body language and actions appeared to challenge Clinton’s physical and psychological presence.  Yet when questioned on his leering behavior, snorting/sniffling, and stalking Clinton on the debate stage, Trump always denied that his acts were sexist or malicious.

So the question remains, if women were voting for Trump because they desired to or because of some secret call to racial unity and purity? Or because their husbands told them to? Did Kelly Conway devise the critical strategy to make Trump’s message more overt?

At the end of the day, it seems that Trump’s calls to “Make America Great Again” was all that mattered. Not the insensitive remarks, the threats, the terrible language, nor the political flaws.  Trump scored a shocking victory by beating Clinton in traditionally democratic settings. The polls did not capture the “secret” Trump voter or the women who would betray one of their own. And, in gaining this impressive victory he upset all of the values that Americans hold dear.  Not only did he campaign on destroying the Obama legacy, but he broke the belief that America had become a post-racial society.  Trump’s bullying mannerisms have opened the door to all types of racists and sexists who have displayed misogynistic, anti-African American, anti-Latino, anti-disabled, anti-Semitic, anti-Islamic, homophobic, behaviors in the week following his election.

The ugly American returned during the election of 2016, and in the process America is forced to recognize that it is far from the progressive nation it claimed to be. And, ultimately, as the election is being contested with protesters from both sides in the streets, American democracy has also been tested and similarly failed to uphold its global standard.