Donald Trump Election

This is not an objective point of view, it is a text, an essay, whatever you call it. It’s purpose is not just to analyse how Trump got elected. It is also to show in what ways his election is an issue. Good reading.

introduction :

Donald Trump was elected president of the United States of America on November the 9th. The reaction to the news has been extremely controversal. Especially for people of color and women, Day 1 was all about the likelihood that they would be subject to hate speeches and crimes increased, and they could already see the dark times ahead. Nevertheless, the elected president has won, but how can this be explained, in spite of the large movements of revolt that followed. This issue may be dealt with in terms of social, economic and cultural considerations.

1. A rejection of the current political system by frustrated or conservative Americans

A. The current political system, what issues because of it and what the polls show

First of all, Trump’s victory can be linked to the rejection of the current political system by frustrated or conservative Americans. Indeed, for a large number of people in USA, it seems to be at the end of its rope.

The American political system doesn’t take into account the needs of a vast portion of Americans (who are put aside, living in poverty, isolated geographically as much as politically, and they are often less educated). Trump decided — as a good businessman — giving them the impression that he cared about them and he succeeded to reach out to low-educated people and working classes. Based on exit polls, Mr. Trump did significantly better than his predecessors among whites without college degrees. Whites with college degrees have favored Republicans in recent elections. They shifted toward Hillary Clinton in 2016, though Mr. Trump still won the group.

On the other hand, Clinton’s support from minorities fell short : African-Americans, Hispanics and Asian-Americans overwhelmingly backed Mrs. Clinton, but their level of support for her was less than their support of President Obama four years ago. At the same time, Mr. Trump’s support among whites was slightly more or equal to recent Republican nominees.

At this point, we can say two things: (a) Trump’s major strategy was to convince low-educated white voters and (b) he succeeded ! Now, we must ask ourselves why those people have voted for him. Why were white, working-class voters were “the most concerned” by Trump policy ?

White’ frustrations were not new. They had mounted for decades, boiling over in the slow recovery from the Great Recession. That was particularly true among men. From 1975 to 2014, according to census data analyzed by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, white male workers without a college degree saw their median incomes fall by more than 20 percent, after adjusting for inflation. In addition, those people have seen during the meantime, specific cities or states get richer and richer as California, Boston or Washington which always gained more wealth.

The Subprimes in 2008, the growth rate at less 2.6 % in 2010 — far away of the 5.6 from Reagan’s years (world bank numbers) — the unemployment rate and the 15% of the USA population stuck below poverty line in the country may be looked upon as the main reasons for the rejection of the current political system.

The American economy has never been as breathless as nowadays, as the Chinese are exploiting all the weak points of USA and surfing on their 7.1 % of growth. The American people feel betrayed, underwater and uncared for the authorities.

B. Trump’s proposals

Donald Trump has shared a very isolationist program that he justified because “he wants to give to America its jobs and industries”. He choses — apparently — to dedicate his program to the working class :

• His first “big” proposal supported by his slogan “America First” is that he wants to bring back relocated jobs based in China or Mexico for instance. He wants to create huge taxes for companies which choose to relocate. Yet we can ask ourselves about the honesty of this proposal on account of the fact that Trump’s company is relocating many activities.
• Trump wants to increase the minimum wages from 7.25 $ to 10 $ per hour.
• He promised he was going to create 25 millions of Job for the next 10 years.
• He wants to reduce taxes to 6000 billions of $.
• He wants to delete the succession tax and the housing tax
• Trump has proposed to create a huge tax for products which come from China.
• Trump wants to build a wall between Mexico and the USA because according to him a big portion of Mexican people are rapers, thieves and criminals. And, unfortunately, the white, working class less educated believe him. They want this wall.

Each of those proposals are made in the name of this working white low-educated class. But when we go deeper we find out that its program is hypocritical.

Those low-educated people who put their trust in Donald Trump are waiting for more jobs but also for more education, help in the loan system, healthcare, warfare state… So who are the real winners ? The people without whom he would not be president today ?

This graphic well shows that despite all his promises Trump does not really care for his main electoral class. In addition, Trump discharge that he wanted to delete the Obamacare. So how did he manage to hide this truth from the eyes of everyone ? He actually spent his time speaking of other issues, he was always unclear in his words especially about the student loan crisis. He did not say how many people he was going to help, the size of the program was not specified and he was also very vague about the financing process… So Mr Trump, where are you going ?

2. An urge for isolationist policies due to the terrorist threat and international instability

A. The terrorist threat the rise of populism

The biggest issue for american people, rich or poor has always been homeland security. Written in the constitution from the beginning, the protection and security are very important for the Americans. Initially raised in case of a British attack, the gun laws are now almost irrevocable.

Trump has declared some proposals about terrorism which are considered impossible and foolish. First of all he said he would destroy ISIS 30 days after he officialy became president — we are still waiting. He wants to authorize torture (waterboarding etc….) Yet, the major point is that Trump is apparently going to protect his people.

This could be actually viewed as one of the reasons why Trump’s budget did not worry the working class. If they feel safe, they seem to be satisfied.

Another big point of his strategy consists in playing with the geopolitical issues in the world and in Europe for instance. His international policy may be regarding as foolish: (a) he wants to recreate links between USA and Russia and he wants to give Russia more liberties to decide about Syrian issues and (b) he wants to renegociate the first deal made with Iran last year about nuclear weapons. Some experts and journalists as Ezra Klein are qualifying his policy of “dangerously impulsive”. So how can Trump convince people with this kind of international policy ? Trump is justifying himself with the examples of 2001 and more recently what happened in France. Yet some concrete example of similar policies showed that it they only led to failure(Sarkozy’s Libya policy for instance). In addition, the US population is showing significant signs of concern about the terrorist threat. Overall maybe Trump is right to take those decisions.

On the other hand, it is beyond dispute that populism is rising in Europe — ranging from Hungary to France. This may be explained by a massive disappointment of European peoples and a lack of trust in their governments. But how can we blame the Europeans ? As recently cases in France showed, they are right to mistrust their institutions ! The hard European unemployment rate of 9.3% does not make things easier !

B. The immigration and muslim ban

Trump has developed another strategy which showed his success : playing with fear and preconception on specific groups of people. Scapegoats designated by Trump are the Muslims and the Mexican.

The muslim ban has created tense debates in the country but also in the world. Trump has decided to create a complete shutdown of Muslims entering in the USA. Irak, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria et Yemen were the destinations you could not be coming from if you wanted to go to the US. What is very ironic about this proposal is that there has never been an attack on the American soil which involved people who came from the banned countries. In addition, the 2001’s attacks were committed by Afghans terrorist and we can note that Afghanistan has not been banned. Hence, the Muslim ban has been suspended by 3 judges from San Francisco.

The white low educated (who for the big majority voted for Trump) need scapegoats. Trump gave them the Mexicans. So he proposed to put the 11 millions non-regulated immigrants in detention centers before making them all leave the country. In criticising the Mexican he created a feeling of rejection from his electoral body. After he created this rejection he just had to put pressure on this new issue and to magically propose solutions. So as to fight the Mexicans Trump has also decided to reverse the right of “birthplace” from immigrant’s child and he wants to build a wall of 1600 km2 between Mexico and the USA. Overall, Trump’s strategy could be considered as manipulation: he raised an issue — which did not actually exist, then he convinced his electoral body and finally he magically proposed solutions to a problem which did not exist before he talked about it. He wants to make less educated americans believe that everyone from certain countries is a threat.

3. A personality who stands out, full of reassuring promises and limitless bluntness

A. A provocative personality who convinces

Somehow Donald Trump was able to mobilize the forgotten, the failing, the distressed, the left behind and the angry to win the Presidential election. To figure out how Trump managed to win, it’ll help to take a look at his personality.
Trump is very famous for his harsh words and his bluntness. When he speaks, he is addressing the worker class and it works ! Yet Trump’s personality is not just this. Trump’s personality is also :

• “I would bring back waterboarding and I’d bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”
• “Look at those hands, are they small hands? And, [Republican rival Marco Rubio] referred to my hands: ‘If they’re small, something else must be small.’ I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee.” 3 March 2016
• “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” 27 July 2016
• “Ariana Huffington is unattractive, both inside and out. I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man — he made a good decision.”
• “I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.”
• “You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful, piece of ass.”

So yes, he’s outrageous, insulting, sexist. How the hell did he manage to get the voters ? How the hell did he mobilize this forgotten class after saying such things ? And how the hell did he manage to get women’s votes, because yes, some voted for him. As you can see on the chart below, the percentage of women who voted for Hillary is similar to Trump’s one (54 % — 53%). Yet if we made a thorough study in taking race and not only gender in consideration, the results are unbelievable. These charts confirm the scary truth about white voters who voted for Trump.

Now, we know that mostly white men and women voted for Trump. We often say that his electoral body is composed of poor people — the working class. Yet when we look at data about poverty rate by Race/Ethnicity, the results are very troubling !

So now we can ask ourselves who are the people who voted for Trump.

B. That appeals to a certain type of Americans

Obviously, the working white class has voted for Trump, tired of parliamentary discussions, politicians never acting, never making decisions. Trump’s personality has seduced them. Yet regarding the last chart, another proportion of people has voted for Trump. Trump has convinced the less educated men and women. Hillary, thanks to Latinos, black, others minorities and high educated white people, could have won, but she did not. She did not because Trump did something very particular which gave him his victory. He took advantage of the “White supremacy” and convinced some white educated people to vote for him. This is why the victory was on his side. In addition, he succeeded to make part of the middle class vote for him and that’s why he won. He did not just convince white low educated, he stole form the Democrat’s electoral body.

The Trump’s communication and the medias

A. Trump and the press

Trump and the media have always had a weird relationship. On the one side, the current president hates the medias and blames them incessantly. “I am running against the crooked media” Donald Trump always complains about the media taking his words out of context. His language is insulting and outrageous. The New York Times has published and printed 6’000 Trump’s insults on a full 2 page. The press war was opened. But does she really started ? Recently, Trump’s administration has decided to ban some media from the white house — a first time move in history of the USA. After the muslim ban, we have the “press ban”. BBC, CNN and the Guardian but also the NYT and the Washington Times were forbidden to go to a press meeting. This act shows well the Trump’s hate for medias. But now, Trump is damaging press freedom. What is surprising is that also famous Republican are worried about him ! Mccain said “Dictators get started by suppressing free press”.

So despite all those critics and issues how Trump did manage to use press as a ramp for his victory.

B. “Good publicity is preferable to bad, but from a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all. Controversy, in short, sells” D.J.Trump

Mockeries on disabled journalist, sexist and violent words, torture allowed, muslim ban, insults against B.Obama and H.Clinton, Trump is limitless. Yet maybe there is a dark side of the Trump Iceberg. Because of all Trump’s blunders press is constantly talking about him. No a day passed without an article about how Trump was a “mean” person. But when we make a thorough examination at the cost of the campaign we can note something very important. Indeed, Trump ad spending was ridiculous compared to Hilary’s one. Do you know why ? He did not need to spend money on this because all media were constantly speaking about him like we said. So Trump could waste really more money on actions on ground and that’s one of the reasons why Trump won.

Conclusion :

Trump has runned his campaign like a real business man, hursh and violent words were used to get the attention of the media — to be under the spotlight. Then, we can not forget to speak about big datas : Cambridge Analytica. He knew exactly what he needed to say, who he needed to accuse, to insult. In addition, he used all the Hillary’s scandals to make people suspicious about her. The money he saved on publicity was the money he used to reach always more and more people. He used himself as an example of success and made his campaign around his personality and the person he is — “the outsider” or the “the self made billionaire”. Marketing, communication process, outrageous pitches, Trump made a great campaign. He showed the world that politics is no more having a program or convincing people. It is now about who will persuade and reach the more people.

JB.CAMBIER