If progressives want to win back political influence in
America, they may need the support of the people they see as racists.
PHILADELPHIA—They marched defiantly down John F. Kennedy
Boulevard, carrying signs that said “White violence is silence!” and “Dykes
against the Klan!” They were young, mostly female, some with blue and
shock-blonde hair shaved up the sides. They were black women, brown women, gay
women, trans women. They were there to protest the election. They were
self-described feminists, fighting back.
As Washington slowly hobbles back toward normal, with
talk of transition teams and cabinet appointments and the first 100 days,
progressives are still reeling. Late last week, several hundred people gathered
for multiple rallies in Philadelphia, but this hasn’t just been happening in
Pennsylvania. Thousands of protesters
outside Trump Tower in New York. Students
walking out of class in Oakland. People
occupying New York Senator Chuck Schumer’s office in D.C. This is not just
“small groups of protesters” coming together, as Donald Trump put it
last week.
Trump is preparing to become president, and liberals in
America are facing a decision about how to deal with what’s ahead. Like other
progressives across the country, Philadelphia’s protesters were angry, scared,
sad, and disappointed. They had many critiques of Trump, but above all, they
rejected his statements toward women, immigrants, and people of color. “Racist,
sexist, anti-gay!” they chanted, pumping their fists. “Donald Trump is KKK!”
This is the paradox progressives at all levels of politics
must grapple with as they figure out what to do next: They see Trump—and by
extension, his supporters—as violating basic principles of decency and
morality.
And yet, this is what democracy wrought. Across all
levels of government, America is about to be run by Republicans. They hold both
chambers of 32 states’ legislatures, compared to 13 controlled by Democrats.
They are the governors in 34 states. They dominate both houses of the United
States Congress. No amount of protesting can change the fact that 60.5 million
Americans voted for Trump. He will still be president, and many of those who
elected him will still think in ways radically different from progressives.
Protesters in Philadelphia and elsewhere seem to be mobilizing a political
resurgence. But first, they’ll have to decide how much they’re willing to
engage with Trump voters in a bid to win back their votes—even though many
progressives think, as 21-year-old Mary Sarbaugh put it, “all of them are a
little bit racist.”
At the protest in Philadelphia, one microcosm of the
larger progressive backlash against Trump, many people seemed oriented toward
taking action: “After we feel our feelings, we have work to do,” one of the
organizers shouted through her bullhorn. A number of the protesters were new to
the political scene.
“I regret not being more active in the Hillary Clinton
campaign,” said Kathryn Graves, a 23-year-old from Virginia who identified as a
queer woman of color. She felt comfortable under Obama’s presidency, she said,
and “because of that, I was able to be complacent. … It gave me a false sense
of security.”
Trump’s election changed that. “I do feel an element of
personal responsibility in how little I was active before now,” Graves said.
“My friends and I have resolved to attend every town hall we can find, local
elections—basically anything where we can show up and get involved.” Many of
the protesters talked about the importance of donating money to groups like the
American Civil Liberties Union and organizing coat and food drives. “I’m going
to protest every day I can,” said Assad Khafre, a 23-year-old from Philly.
Others echoed the need for engagement with local
politics. Ted Bobik, 29, said he was going to start “paying attention to every
election, from the biggest to the smallest—making sure that votes count in all
election cycles.” The two-party structure of American politics caused this
election’s outcome, he said. “I want to try and vote third-party in smaller
elections and try and break up this two-party system that way.”
At the party level, Democrats are already turning toward
2018, when they might have a chance to win back some seats in the U.S. House
and Senate. But they will be starting with a hurdle: Democratic voters
generally don’t turn out in midterm elections. “I’m terrified that people’s
anger now, they’re going to cover it because they can’t handle it, and not do
anything,” said Katie Caulfield, a 27-year-old south Jersey native. “I’m
planning to write myself about how angry I am. … It’s going to arrive at my
house the day before midterms, just in case future me has decided to stop doing
anything.”
But if these protesters decide to make good on their
plans to become local activists, they’ll have to decide whether and how they
want to engage with Trump supporters, including trying to win their votes.
Especially in politically homogenous, liberal cities like Philadelphia, that
could be challenging.
“I don’t think I have anything in common with a Trump
supporter,” said Melissa Fernando, a 33-year-old Indian woman from Philly—something
a number of protesters said. Others, like Caulfield, said they could identify
with Trump supporters who felt politically and economically disenfranchised,
and who were voting against the current political system. But “with the other
breed of Trump supporter—someone who voted for him because of his platform of
hate…” She paused for one beat, then two, then three. “I don’t know. I don’t
want to say no because I don’t want to write off a part of humanity.”
Voters from both parties feel they have irreconcilable
differences with the other side. It’s not just that progressive activists feel
a sense of ideological distance from Trump supporters. Some people felt like
their values are fundamentally in conflict. “The divide is so big—even the
geographical divide—that we may not be able to start those conversations,” said
Elisa McCool, a 32-year-old teacher originally from Texas. “I’m worried that in
the current climate, saying something entrenches people in their position.” To
this point, Hal Martin, a 27-year-old from Georgia, thought the political work
has to start at home. “As a white person, thinking about talking to our
families and friends—that’s the best way to go about it,” she said.
In that crowd, Martin seemed to be in the minority. The
protesters were angry and looking to be provocative, not conciliatory. One
woman in a pair of automechanic overalls proudly held up a sign bearing a
massive, glittering sketch of a vagina. “You are the GOP, not God,” the sign
read. “Keep your paws and your laws off my pussy.”
It had only been a few days. The protesters’ pain was
palpable; Caulfield cried as she described to me how the rest of the world must
see the United States in this moment. People told me they were there to figure
out what to do next, to express their hurt, to be visible in this moment.
“Not my president!” they chanted—the very phrase people
feared hearing from Trump supporters, should they have lost. “I know it’s not
going to change things,” said Amy Nassar, a 33-year-old new mom who attended
the rally. “But it makes me feel better.”
_________________
Islands of Blue In a Sea of Red
Needed to Win: 270
Hillary 232
Trump 290
Donald Trump Won 7.5 Million Popular Vote Landslide in
Heartland
Donald Trump won an overwhelming 7.5 million
popular vote victory in 3,084 of the country’s
3,141 counties or county equivalents in America’s heartland.
Fifty-five point seven million out of the 109.3 million
Americans who cast their ballots in those counties voted for Trump, while only
48.1 million voted for Hillary Clinton, according to the latest county by
county election results reported at Politico. The remaining 5.4
million voted for other candidates.
Trump’s 7.5 million popular vote landslide in America’s
heartland, a resounding 7 point victory in those 3,084 counties over Clinton,
51 percent to 44 percent, gave him a 306 to 232 Electoral College landslide.
(On Monday night, the director of elections in the office of Michigan’s
Secretary of State said that Trump had won the state’s 16 electoral college
votes by a narrow margin of 13,107 votes.)
Hillary Clinton, in contrast, had an 8.2 million vote
margin in a narrow band of 52 coastal counties and five “county equivalent”
cities stretching from San Diego to Seattle on the West Coast and Northern
Virginia to Boston on the East Coast. That narrow band included two major
cities–Washington, D.C and Baltimore, Maryland–included in the five “county
equivalent” cities, and three major cities–Philadelphia, New York, and
Boston–which are included in the 52 counties.
Clinton received 70 percent of the 18.4 million votes
cast in these 52 elite coastal counties. Donald Trump, in contrast, received
only 25 percent of the vote in these counties. The remaining 5 percent went to
other candidates.
In elite coastal county after elite coastal county,
especially those in Washington, D.C. and its Virginia and Maryland suburbs
where so many federal government workers and federal contractors live, Clinton
won by margins ranging from four to one to two to one.
Votes cast in the 52 elite coastal counties where Clinton
dominated accounted for only 14.4 percent of the estimated 127.7 million total
votes cast in the country.
In contrast, the 3,084 counties in America’s heartland,
where Trump dominated with a healthy 7 point margin, accounted for 85.6 percent
of all votes cast.
Clinton’s 671,066 popular vote margin across the entire
country, 61,047,027 votes to Donald Trump’s 60,375,961 votes (according to Politico’s election results website as of Tuesday morning)
arose from this huge advantage wracked up in these elite coastal counties.
Clinton received 47.7 percent of the estimated 127.7 million votes cast nationwide, while Trump
received 47.2 percent of those votes. Five percent went to other candidates.
Trump campaigned very little in the 23 elite coastal
counties in the West Coast states of California, Oregon, and Washington, and
only vigorously campaigned in five Northern Virginia counties and Philadelphia
on the East Coast.
It is worth noting that virtually all members of the
mainstream media reside within this narrow band of elite coastal counties.
Clinton won the 161 electoral college votes in nine of
these ten states, as well in the District of Columbia. Among these ten states,
Trump won only Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral college votes.
But these nine states experienced the same kind of
bimodal divide seen in the rest of the country.
In eight of these nine states (all but Massachusetts)
Trump was tied or slightly ahead of Clinton in the popular vote in those
counties outside the coastal elite.
Here is the full list of these 52 elite coastal counties:
(California: Alameda, Contra Costa, Humboldt, Los Angeles,
Marin, Mendocino, Monterey, Napa, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, San
Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano, Sonoma,
and Ventura; Oregon: Multnomah and Washington; Washington: King and Snohomish; Virginia: Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William
(and the cities of Alexandria, Fairfax, and Falls Church); Washington, D.C.; Maryland: Baltimore, Charles, Howard, Montgomery, and
Prince George’s (and the city of Baltimore); Pennsylvania: Delaware and Philadelphia; New Jersey: Essex, Hudson, Mercer, Middlesex, Passaic, and
Union; New York: Bronx, Kings, New York, Queens, and Westchester; Connecticut: Fairfield, Hartford, and New Haven; and Massachusetts: Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, and Suffolk.)
