Last night capped off a truly awful election season, filled with racism, hate speech, outright Islamophobia, threats of sexual assault and downright nastiness unseen in any American election. Hillary Clinton came into Election Day heavily favored to win by virtually every poll, endorsed by almost every single news outlet (except the coveted KKK, which Trump had locked up) and backed by star power, current and former presidents and nearly all domestic politicians from across both sides of the aisle.
Yet, she lost, And it was brutal and painful and devastating to half of the country. As we sit here, some of us at work, some at home, we are unpacking what exactly went wrong. Who did we miss? How could polls be so wrong? What exactly did Trump tap into, besides the obvious hate.
CNN's Van Jones gave an amazing analysis. The video is truly powerful and I encourage you to watch it. Here is the transcript:
"I have enough class and I was raised well enough to say when you outdo expectations, good for you. But there’s another side to this.
People have talked about a miracle — it’s hard to be a parent tonight for a lot of us. You tell your kids, ‘Don’t be a bully.’ You tell your kids, ‘Don’t be a bigot.’ You tell your kids ‘Do your homework and be prepared.’ And then you have this outcome and you have people putting children to bed tonight, and they’re afraid of breakfast. They’re afraid of how do I explain this to my children. I have Muslim friends who are texting me tonight saying, ‘Should I leave the country?’ I have families of immigrants that are terrified tonight.
This was many things. This was a rebellion against the elites, true. It was a complete reinvention of politics and polls, it’s true. But it was also something else. We’ve talked about everything but race tonight. We have talked about income, we’ve talked about class, we’ve talked about region. We haven’t talked about race. This was a white-lash. This was a white-lash against a changing country. It was a white-lash against a black president in part, and that’s the part where the pain comes. And Donald Trump has a responsibility tonight to come out and reassure people that he is going to be the president of all the people who he insulted and offended and brushed aside.
Yeah, when you say you want to take your country back, you’ve got a lot of people who feel that we’re not represented well either. But we don’t want to feel that someone has been elected by throwing away some of us to appeal more deeply to others. So this is a deeply painful moment tonight."
White-lash. Exactly.
