With less than 24 hours to go before voting in the US, Nobel-prize-winning American economist Paul Krugman’s warning that the country is “close to being a failed state” and that the “government is almost incapable of functioning” rings loud.
Issues at the core of the divide are racial inequality, healthcare, climate change, education, and the economy. While Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, wants a more racially-inclusive America, Trump has increased racial tensions. While Hillary wants to make Obama’s Affordable Care Act better, Trump wants to tear it down without espousing a clear plan to replace it. While Hillary wants to address the planet’s most pressing need – to combat climate change, Trump has called climate change a concept created by the Chinese. Hillary wants to make public college education debt-free for students, Trump has no such plan. While Hillary has a well laid out plan to address the nation’s economic problems, Trump promises to “Make America Great Again” and bring manufacturing jobs back to the US, without a clearly laid out plan.
However, Trump still commands a huge following. His message of America not being safe for Americans has resonated with millions of white working-class voters, especially because there is a feeling that America isn’t working for them anymore. And, this is true.
Economic peril
Many working-class people I interact with on a daily basis here in the US echo the sentiment of being tired working multiple jobs on minimum wage. They all want to live the American dream that their parents were able to live. Their dream was: ‘Work hard and you will be able to afford a good lifestyle’. However, that isn’t the situation anymore. Most jobs of their parents’ generation have evaporated. They don’t exist anymore. It’s either been shipped off overseas to reduce labour costs or they have been removed to pave way for automation and increase productivity.
While unemployment claims have reduced during the Obama administration, many workers claim that this has largely has been due to an increase in minimum wage jobs. People cannot support families with these jobs. So, they work multiple minimum wage jobs to support their family and cling to their lifestyle that they once took for granted. They work hard and they work long hours – but their position doesn’t seem to change. Hence, when Trump comes gallivanting into their lives, his message of broken America resonates.
Education
Trump loves the poorly educated, as the man himself claimed once on his campaign trail. Education is a way out of poverty, but college education is prohibitively expensive and does not help these families whose bread-winners struggle with multiple minimum wage jobs. If you are poor and have a bad credit score, you are unable to get a student loan to attend college. If you are middle-class and have a decent credit score, you may qualify for a loan. When you graduate, you end up working most of your life to repay tuition and fees. What’s worse, there are college dropouts who have to repay huge loans – which is doubly difficult as they do not have a degree.
When you are in college, people notice that affirmative action policies help some students get into college. So, when children of white working class people see this, they assume that the kids who make use of affirmative action policies have it easier than them. When they see these kids graduate and get jobs that pay more than minimum wage, they feel their lives are shattered. They feel that their opportunities and privileges have been taken away from them. So, when Trump says our jobs are going away, his message resonates with them.
In today’s scenario, life without a college degree is hard in India; it is all the more difficult in America. And lack of education does more than putting people back into the circle of poverty, it makes them gullible to falsehoods.
Down with the establishment
For many voters, Hillary Clinton is the face of the establishment. She has been in politics for over three decades, and embodies everything voters think is wrong with the nation. They realise the system doesn’t work for them, and that they have been sidelined from the American growth story. They are scared that their hard times will continue if Clinton wins.
While the democrats have been able to stabilise the economy, they haven’t been able to bring back the blue-collar manufacturing jobs that voters yearn for. So, they feel compelled to turn against establishment politicians, who have been unable to give them what they want.
Trump rails against the establishment and has run on the platform that he is not a politician. He also makes grand promises of bringing back these jobs. However, what voters do not understand is that these jobs were shipped by companies, including Trump’s, to either reduce labour costs or to increase productivity through automation. These jobs are never coming back.
Desperation
While some moderate white collar voters consider voting for Clinton, her email scandal keep surfacing over and over again – reminding voters of her link with the despised establishment. They are reminded of the political gridlock in Washington that has depressed their hope for meaningful legislation since 2014.
Given their tough situation, the voters in their desperation have turned to Donald Trump – a man they don’t fully understand. They are willing to overlook Trump’s racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, and sexist tendencies to vote for him. Many are still standing by him, even after his horrifying comments on grabbing women by their genitals.
Not all Trump voters are bigots or racists. Many are rational people that I encounter daily, who have just been put in an impossible situation of answering a very tough question: Do I put myself ahead of the society and vote for Trump? Or do I put the society ahead of myself and refrain from voting Trump? Come election day, we will find out. But either way, the cycle of pain continues for these voters.
(The writer is a former journalist, currently working in the US. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not reflect the views of the newindianexpress.com)