One of the biggest things to come out of the election is the rise of what has been called White Racial Consciousness. This was a narrative that was being talked about right after the election but has fallen out of coverage. It is shameful that through all the polling and incessant data about this election, this idea never got the coverage and the legs that it really needed.

I’m not sure why because it is the biggest thing to happen to American elections since the hanging chad.

Big data has made the demographics behind elections far more obvious old fashioned polling. Using modern technology we can have a conversation about who white men and white women are voting as well as every other race. Using other data, we can begin to deduce why they are voting that way as well. Publications spent most of the 2016 election trying to discover what the story of the election was from different perspectives.

Bernie and Hillary: The Real Debate

The primary debates between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were interesting because while the Republicans were running around trying to understand how politics really worked, the real debate about the course of our society was happening between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Bernie representing the fulfillment of the New Age that the 1960s asked us to consider and Hillary Clinton representing the kind of conscious capitalism that had become popular during her husband’s term in office. She has been a true vanguard of the middle way between socialism and capitalism. That is really where the discussion happened. The debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton lacked substance, as did the entire campaign. However, the debate for the heart of this country had already happened and while Bernie didn’t get the nomination, he won the soul of the democratic party and he won the debate of where this country is going. People are hurting and they want help. But what did Hillary offer besides a watered down version of what Bernie was saying? Did she run with the program in stride? She didn’t and that is partly why Donald Trump is in the White House. That being said, she could have used Bernie as a pathway to reach out to people who feel like America has left them behind for an assort of minorities (the basket of adorables)

Donald Trump and White People Left Behind

The help, at least this time around, came in the form of popular businessman Donald Trump. The Donald Trump brand, before the election was one of the most valuable brands on the market. The very word spoke luxury, high-end and success. Trump and success were practically synonymous. He was a celebrity, he was outrageous. He enlarged in brand on TV as he decided who would or would not be successful on The Apprentice. But his greatest achievement, by far, was his ability to understand the sentiment of the nation. In the last 8 years we’ve seen LGBTQ representation increase, we’ve seen festering racial wounds broken open and there has been massive social change happen in this country. The world of my early adulthood is nearly unrecognizable compared to the world we live in now. For many people, this has been a massive improvement. For others, like many Trump voters, they feel left behind. The rest of the country has moved on and they are left in shrinking towns, with shrinking jobs, and almost no help. The Great Recession was a sock in the jaw from which many Americans have never recovered.

The media missed the biggest story of all, in all this progress, white people had felt attacked and undermined. When you hear Trump supporters say, “we have a guy on our side” they are really saying, “We have someone who is white.” This will effect elections both presidential and otherwise for the next 50 years. White voters have discovered that if they want their voices heard in an increasingly multicultural America it is not simply money that is required, it is getting all whites together and voting in the same direction.

Racial voting consciousness is not a new concept. One of the biggest parts of the civil rights movement after the end of segregation, was the recently-gutted Voting Rights act. Even before the Voting Rights act, how black people voted mattered in elections. After the Farm Workers movement, led by Cesar Chavez, hispanic voting began to matter in elections as well. The voting habits of white people have been tracked by white people tended to not vote in a group. White voters ranged from very liberal in California to conservative in Texas. But 2016 was different. People that usually would have voted democrat voted for a GOP candidate that they did not like.

Why?

My answer is racial consciousness

The Real Appeal of Donald Trump

Donald Trump made immigration a story in this past election. It is very disconcerting, as a worker, when you are working at your factory, doing a good job, and then find out that you’re getting laid off and your factory is being shut down and production is being moved elsewhere.  People are asking questions, they are asking, “Where is my help? Who is here for me? Who is working for me?”

The answer is not tax reform, the answer is not healthcare, and the answer is not planned parenthood funding either. 

The answer is programs for re-education, the answer is investment, and the answer is an economy that works for everyone. This requires regulation and this requires spreading out the tax burden. 

In this election, the media lost track of the story. The world of 2017 and the world of 2008 have very little in common from a practical perspective. 

No one wants to talk about environmental regulations and climate change reforms when they cannot survive and support their families. Most Americans don’t want a hand out either. They want the chance to have the dignity of a job. However, the economy and the country have changed. The jobs aren’t in the small towns that most American’s live in. The jobs are in the big cities and they don’t look like a job used to look and they require skills training and a familiarity with technology. They often require networking and a variety of skills. This is practically a foreign language for people who have lived in a world where, armed with a highschool diploma, they could be in the middle class. Even among the younger generation, the pathway seemed pretty simple. This has progressively been destroyed during the past 30 years and it took The Great Recession to really hit people. It was the type of change that people saw on the news and thought it would never happen to them. Until it happened in their town. Until they were scraping by at Wal-mart at $11 an hour trying to figure out how to pay the bills.

Where was the help for them? Where was the program? Where is the money?

A Better Idea Than the Democrats

It’s easy to help minorities when you have a job and can provide for your life. But let’s face it, survival makes people feel threatened. In the past 8 years, threats have come from all sides. In the last 8 years all sorts of things have changed. Our society has had to question fundamental things like race, gender, gender identity, and sexuality. Groups ranging from trans individuals to indigenous people have seen their visibility skyrocket. Where was the help for the white guy/girl? Where was the ideas for them, who was working for them? Where Hillary saw a basket of deplorable, Donald Trump saw a verdant opportunity.

In this election, White People finally figured out that if you want a voice and you want yours, you have to mobilize and fight for it. Unfortunately, Hillary had been tied too closely to the perception of Obama’s presidency. Not only did anyone over 40 have an opinion about her, damaging enough, but she didn’t offer anything to the disenfranchised white voters who were looking for someone to speak directly to them and their problems and offer help. Donald Trump didn’t need the electoral college and he didn’t need a well-run campaign. All he needed to do was stand on a stage and offer and hand up to people who hadn’t had help in decades.

And that’s exactly what he did. It’s not that Trump voters are racist. I’m sure some of them are, but most of them are not. However, they have figured out that mobilized groups of people get things in this country. Many voters figured that If black people and hispanics can do it, so could they.

And that is the story that the media missed.  There were many factors but the one that will affect elections for the next 50 years is the mobilizing of the white vote as a voting block.