Cras wrote:
It was a campaign based on fear, and being anti- things. It was take the largest single block of voters there is, and tell them everything that is different to them is a threat to them. Muslim terrorists. Hispanic immigrants. Liberals. Godless atheists. Schrodingers job thieves/benefits scroungers. Once you've done all that, and made your opponent stand up for all those groups, you've got that vote locked in. It was exactly, to the playbook, the exact same thing as Brexit. Persuade the electorate to be afraid of things, then they'll believe you can help, even in the absence of any concrete policy or plans.
On the other hand, to completely and entirely dismiss the fears of Trump voters as *entirely* illusionary and non-existent is arrogant, and precisely the catastrophic mistake that the Democrats made (see also: Remain camp, Labour etc. before them). Whether we like it or not, the fact is this: many blue collar men in America (rightly btw) feel they've been left behind in an ever-increasingly globalised world, where their manual jobs are done far more cheaply and efficiently by Chinese or Korean workers on £1/hour or whatever, with no unions and precious little environmental protections or whatever, either. Thatcher saw this coming 40 years ago of course; we still have those in the UK blaming and bemoaning her for exactly the same (inevitable, unavoidable) syndrome: the loss of "great" mining jobs and unskilled factory stuff. The pragmatic approach, of course, is to accept what is inevitable and to try and plan for it/change and refocus, reprioritise the entire economy to suit this new externally-driven reality (the UK in the 80s and 90s, basically), never easy things to do, and impossible without great numbers of casualties along the way. This is preferable, however, to burying one's head in the sand, pretending it isn't happening until far more violent, *enforced* change is foisted upon you by the markets/your creditors, but I digress.
I'm sure Trump's voters have legitimate grievances but he is not the answer. In fact, nothing is. Change and adapt, or die.
I'm not saying I like it, far from it. But there it is.