The new reality

On the morning of polling day, in the upper-crust suburban residential area of Wellesley near Boston in Massachusetts, a veteran Democrat supporter, who was busily gardening at that hour, refused to comment on the likely outcome. He smiled when asked whether there’ll be celebration if Hillary Clinton won. “I am not watching the news today. I will know all about it in the morning tomorrow,” was all he would say.

This state of anxiety was visible in Democrat supporters of all hues, even as most early polls, the high voter turnouts, and analysts were signalling a headstart for Hillary and a certain win over the Republican candidate Donald Trump. They predicted she would easily hit the 270 mark, while Trump would hover around 200 or so; the pollsters gave her a 75 per cent chance of winning. Even outgoing President Barack Obama, who made a fabulous ‘last’ speech at Philadelphia during the countdown, actually betted on a Hillary win, to give the United States of America its first woman president. Obama, as the results have shown, was proved wrong.

It is too early to break up the demographics of the voting pattern, but a few things are clear even at this stage: A majority of white America voted for Trump, a majority of Afro-Americans and Latinos voted for Hillary, a large chunk of educated voters and women plumped for Trump; the email controversy triggered by the FBI chief, days before polling, went against Hillary and reinforced the popular perception that she had made glaring blunders; the Wikileaks investigations into her links with Wall Street and corporate big money did not flatter her image either and underscored her establishment links; Trump managed to hammer across the message that she would continue the status quo politics, whereas he is an outsider who will topple the establishment — represented by politicians like her.

Added to all this, the huge disillusionment of the working-class population, especially among the whites, which has been pushed to the wall over the years with no respite, went against Hillary. The working class has been given a raw deal and they wanted to get back at the system. As the documentary filmmaker Michael Moore put it, “People are upset. They’re angry at the system and they see Trump — not so much that they agree with him — but they see him as the human Molotov cocktail that they get to toss into the system with Brexit and blow it up, send a message.”

As analysts struggle to make sense of the result, several enigmas have surfaced. This is the same white population which voted for the first black president of the US. So, how did a post-racist society suddenly turn inwardly racist by voting for Trump?

Certainly this assessment is not entirely right, and other factors may be at play. The same people voted for Obama, overwhelmingly, even in the swing states, so the paradigm shift tells a story of disillusionment and bad faith, even while there might be traces of the xenophobia, racism and fear of immigrants, Muslims unleashed by the Trump campaign.

The majority who, at one time, uplifted their vote for a formidable vision of Obama’s ‘Yes we can’, have now quietly chosen to go for the baser instinct and the lowest common denominator. Indeed, social scientists will tell you, once again, that those with a bad instinct or ideology will never admit it publicly, and hence the pre-poll surveys failed to capture this. Those feelings were, instead, expressed quietly on voting day.

In the same vein, academics are mystified that the educated and the female segments voted overwhelmingly for Trump, though a large chunk of them did go with Hillary in states like Massachusetts, which was predictable. On TV, a Trump supporting businesswoman described him as upfront and asked what was wrong in the language he used against women; women, too, talk about men like that, she argued. All of this was said in the presence of her family.

It does seem, then, that a dominant streak of misogyny operated in the voting patterns across the country. Two terms of a black president, followed by that of a woman, that too one who is unpopular, was seemingly a bit too much to take for the majority of Americans. That women voters did not seem to mind the foul language and sexism displayed by Trump was evident from the fact that they chose to vote against Hillary in many places, especially in Democratic strongholds. The defeat of Hillary has been unexpected in many states, as has been the victory of Trump in the affirmative blue states (she leads in the popular votes, though).

As of now, America is still shocked and it is rejoicing, simultaneously. Trump sounds conciliatory. But a deep underlying anxiety and fear stalks the land; much like a reality show that was scripted in bad faith from beginning to end.

Amit Senguptais a journalist and academic, currently a fellow at the Newhouse Centre for the Humanities, Wellesley College, Boston, Massachusetts

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