2016 Presidential Elections: A Nation Divided
- Natasha
- Nov 25, 2016
- 5 min read
So I will start by saying that when I thought about writing this, I made a decision. I knew I might lose readers or dredge up anger, but the reality is that emotions are boiling and people are hurt over one of the most divisive and vitriolic elections to date. It comes as no surprise that I had to deal with my share of confusion, depression, and disgust over the election.
I will start by saying that I did not vote for Trump. I voted for Hilary Clinton. My decision never swayed from the start of the election and it was of my own political beliefs and ideologies that I believed Clinton was the better candidate. So let's get that out of the way.
The nature of this election highlighted something that many millennials and many people have come to realize. The nation is divided and the rhetoric spewed out by Donald Trump was one based on racist, xenophobic, homophobic, sexist, and a misogynistic narrative. Some say that this was a tactic to gain votes and even so, it still does not justify the words he spewed out. As a presidential candidate at the time and now president-elect it would likely serve in his best interest if he didn't incite fear and hatred among his citizens.
However, many of us didn't realize how much of a bubble we were living in, to think that there were people who had such deep-seated frustrations about the last administration and about the future of this country that they believed Trump to be a better candidate based on a slew of misinformed lies. Am I saying that Clinton was the best choice? No, not entirely, but out of the two candidates, someone who served in public office for over 30 years, was the First Lady, a Senator, and Secretary of State, I would think she would have a better handle on the job than Donald Trump. On top of that, she promised to fight for certain rights that I agreed with like, paid family leave, equal wages for women, investing in clean energy jobs, working with Bernie Sanders on making public college free or more affordable and the list goes on.
However, what came of the election was an increase in the number of hate crimes being committed, fear that immigrants will be deported back to their country, Muslims will be systematically targeted out, minorities feeling their rights being slowly taken away, the LGBTQ community losing the right to serve in the military, be insured by healthcare providers, get married and other civil rights, and women possibly losing some of their rights such as abortion and contraception.
With Donald Trump as president I had a lot more to lose than those rights as well. With his decision to slowly cut funding and cripple funding to the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institutes of Health, my funding, my research, as well as my prospects were going to diminish. My friends have it worse since their research is more directly related to climate change, but neither of those things bode well for us researchers.
While the elections occurred and began to manifest themselves in a more concrete winner, I began to rationalize why any sane person would want to vote for Trump, until I realized how much anxiety and stress it was causing me. I stopped after a while, realizing that many of those who did vote for Trump either were rather well-informed but did not like Clinton and voted for Trump, liked what Trump was saying and voted for him, believed Trump's persona of a smart businessman and voted for him, or voted for him as a joke. What I miserably began to think was did they have any idea what they've done?
It turns out, according to CNN, that the reason why Trump won was because he touched a larger, mostly-white voter base. He connected with white, middle-class voters, which polls did not seem to account in their modeling. Hilary, throughout most of her campaign did not manage the excitement or enthusiasm of voters such as the white working class or even women. (She fared less than Obama did in 2012). This remarkable turnout of white, working class voters had pushed the election in Trump's favor as Hilary lost key states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and had the Democratic partying searching for answers. (As of writing this blog, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are still counting their votes). One thing was made clear. It was evident that the Democratic Party had become so out-of-touch with working class voters.
Are there other reasons? Certainly, like Russia's interference within the elections when they finally admitted that they had contact with Trump's aids, white women voting majorly for Trump because they identified more with Trump and some of his male, racist supporters than other women, low voter turnout, the democrats pushing away Sanders in favor of Clinton, who some argued won over Trump, the Democratic's party failure to expand their base and only stick with their supporters, or possibly because candidates like Gary Johnson and Jill Stein took away millions of votes that could have gone to Clinton.
While the past is the past now, having poured through countless news, it brought to me a curiosity about how the Trump team was navigating the White House . I wanted to know if this whole election was some sort of a ploy and that the real Trump was somehow hiding a secret weapon in which he proved to the world that he was not such a misogynistic bigot?
Unfortunately, not. Based on media outlets, there seems to be some confusion within the Trump Team as they get caught up to speed in the transition. Trump has proven over and over again that his lack of any political or military experience was evidence of how unqualified he was and given what the media was reporting, I was not inclined to believe or delude myself into thinking that he would suddenly gain some handle on the presidency and turn out to be remarkable in any sense. It's almost laughable that it takes me a PhD and maybe two or three years of post-doctoral work to work in a pharmaceutical company or proceed to the next level of academia, while Donald Trump has absolutely zero experience and he's the leader of the goddamn free world.
Oh, the irony.
But still, his team scrambling to catch up highlighted one thing. They didn't think he'd win.
However, what I do look forward to is Trump having to work with some of the notable women who got voted in to Congress and the House. I think it's almost ironic as well that the very people who he deems incompetent and disregard are the very ones he is going to have to impress upon if he hopes to pass laws and policies. The list of women who made history is shown below.
1. Somali-American Ilhan Omar was elected to the Minnesota House. She made history by being the first legislator in Minnesota's hosue who was a refugee in Kenya.
2. Catherine Cortez Masto became the first Latina senator in US history for Nevada
3. Kamala Harris became the first Indian-American woman to serve for California in the US Senate.
4. Stephanie Murphy became the first Vietnamese-American woman to be elected to Congress in Florida
5.Kate Brown is the first openly LGBT person to win as governor of Oregon.
6. Pramila Jayapal is the first Indian-American woman to hold a seat in the US House of Representative
For now all we can do is observe how Trump will guide the Nation. It is remarkable to note that politicians, to organizations, to world leaders have issued a warning to Trump; that they are willing to work with him as long as he is pursuing policies and laws that hold the ideals of American Values of religious freedom, equality, and democracy and that they would go against should he pursue the opposite.
What are your feelings or thoughts? Let me know!
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