No basket of deplorables

After a stomach-roiling election season, we are now just a few days away from Nov. 8—the day final votes are cast in mass and the American people choose their next president. On campus, most students seem to have made their electoral decision. With 75.7 percent of polled students planning to vote Clinton and only 6.4 percent recorded as Trump supporters, Duke’s population is even more blue than usual. Unfortunately, the red tinge on campus and around the country has been ferociously maligned. Trump supporters have been universally categorized and dismissed as white, poor, dumb racists—angry artifacts of politics past. Though the dismissive narrative is near ubiquitous, it lacks nuance. A large portion of Trump’s support base is the product of a complex history of racial and socioeconomic strife. It is important to dig deeper into the birth of the “Make American Great Again” crowd rather than cast them aside into a basket, because even if Trump does happen to lose next week, his supporters are not going anywhere.

Without a doubt, there is more to the pro-Trump demographic than sporting red hats and gripping “silent majority” signs. According to available data, Trump’s early supporters were overwhelmingly white, male, not college-educated and resentful of a “rigged” political system. They tended to live in segments of the country that are economically reliant on manufacturing and according the Pew Research Center, 60 percent of them have had their finances negatively impacted by trade. Studies show that they often “live in places that lack economic opportunity for the next generation.” There is a perception among Trump’s hardcore supporters that they are getting left behind and shut out of the ladder to prosperity. They crave a candidate who will bring down the system that has failed them and dismantle elite institutions that do not and do not want to understand them. As Democrats and Republican leaders have left behind laborers, Trump has emerged as someone who promises to esteem them again. He promises cultural protection to a portion of the population that fears that the people of their country are beginning to look increasingly different from them. When Trump makes “politically incorrect” statements, his words resonate with Americans who are angry that while they are struggling to get by, others who speak different languages and eat different foods than them are lauded, celebrated and succeeding. Trump does not smooth-talk like a RINO. He speaks plainly and with passion—in a style that touches the heart of the white working class.

With Clinton projected by most accounts to win the election next Tuesday, we must learn how to address Trump’s base in a post-Trump landscape. His supporters will not, as some Republicans hope, quietly crawl back into the shadows of U.S. politics. Their grievances must be acknowledged. We have to recognize that although automation and trade deals may lower our Amazon prices, they displace employment, leaving people feeling unanchored and unneeded, thus forming a demographic fueled by economic anxiety. When liberals mock Trump’s voting base and claim them to be out of touch with the times, they ignore a common worldview. They and the Democratic party play lip-service to the working class, but are arrogantly comfortable with ignoring the unsavory parts of their lives.

On a path forward, we must decry claims that swaths of the U.S. are “deplorable” and instead recognize that Trump supporters, like all of us, are just starving for their own country to care about them.