Way back, when Bubba Clinton was "not having
sex with that woman,” the lady across from me at the breakfast table was
outraged. She wanted him out. She thought his behavior demonstrated character
flaws that utterly disqualified him for the presidency, ignoring that any
number of presidents as far back as Jefferson had sexual escapades that were
questionable at best.
Me? Not so concerned. Certainly not outraged. Sure,
Bill Clinton’s hanky-panky with an intern was disgusting, but …
I had a good job. They paid me enough that I didn’t
miss any meals. And my portfolio, oh how it grew during the Clinton
administration. My pocketbook was safe and that was my focus as I roared toward
my fifties. Selfish and short-sighted to be sure, but also perfectly in line
with the political adage that in the privacy of the voting booth people vote
their pocketbook.
James Carville, Clinton’s 1992 campaign strategist,
coined the phrase "The economy, stupid" to focus the campaign to
defeat George H.W. Bush.
It’s still the stupid economy and that’s really what
a lot of us who are left of center missed about the just-completed election
cycle. Coming to grips with my own willingness to overlook Bill Clinton’s alley
cat behavior helps me, in a small way, understand how so many Trump supporters
were willing to overlook his shameful moral proclivities and his hate
mongering. I was worried about my retirement back then. They’re worried about
their jobs and the blindingly-fast changes in the world today.
Mind you, Trump’s wedge campaign — the misogyny,
xenophobia and outright bigotry — did not advance human progress. He ginned
fear and aided and abetted scapegoating. When he made fun of the disabled New
York Times reporter I was outraged. Our younger daughter is disabled. What kind
of a person, especially a candidate for the highest office in the land, makes
fun of the disabled?
By the same token, Hillary Clinton didn’t exactly
conquer the moral high ground when she said half of Trump’s supporters belong
in a “basket of deplorables.” Such a broad brush dismissal hardly is a recipe
for support.
Remember Kim Davis? Last year she refused to
immediately issue a marriage license to a gay couple in her Kentucky county. If
the separation of church and state, not to mention a Supreme Court ruling,
means anything it meant Davis violated the law and her duty as a public
employee. She was wrong.
But her religious beliefs, on which she based her
refusal, didn’t make her deplorable even if I couldn’t fathom the depth of such
devotion. Many of us dismissed her, reduced her to a caricature, according to
Emmett Rensin of Vox in April in a 7,000 word essay, “The smug style in
American liberalism.” What he failed to note was the smugness about Davis was
the same kind of dehumanization Trump used on Muslims and aliens and women and
minorities and the disabled.
Our politics long have been a game of polls and
demographics and bumper sticker solutions. If political opponents talk at all
it’s to talk past each other. There are the fly-over states and the coastal
elites, the educated and the rubes, the religious right and the secular
humanists. Compromise has become dismissal. Political discourse has become
preaching to the choir.
Hillary Clinton never set foot in Wisconsin because
polls told her she didn’t have to. Save the one time he showed up in Fresno,
President Obama never set foot in the Central Valley, even though Stockton was
ground zero for the housing crisis and the pain here was palpable. George W.
Bush came to Stockton twice, but each time he was shielded from even the sight
of those in opposition. When you’re out of sight, you’re out of mind.
Trump tapped into the anger of those who Washington
hasn’t thought about in years. Of course, a forceful argument can be made that
the GOP’s years-long intransigence against the Obama administration on things
like the minimum wage, jobs infrastructure funding, affordable child care,
equal pay and student debt hurt most those who felt left behind.
It wasn’t long after Trump’s win that an internet
campaign began by Californians wanting to secede. The state can go it alone,
supporters argue. It’s the sixth or seventh economy in the world. We don’t need
the great unwashed of Middle America. Politicians, left and right, haven’t
needed them for years, so why should we?
Of course, that idea by liberals is no less silly
than the State of Jefferson movement by north state conservatives who feel
ignored by Sacramento. Rightly or wrongly, both groups feel disenfranchised.
Feeling like an alien in your own land is nothing
new. A whole section of the country felt that way when Lincoln was elected in
1860. In 1968, the most horrific political year of my life saw the
assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, a ghastly riot at
the Democratic National Convention and the election of Richard Nixon, all of it
played out against the backdrop of the carnage in Vietnam.
In Arc of Justice, historian Kevin Boyle quotes
Clarence Darrow’s closing arguments in the 1925 murder trial of
African-American physician Ossian Sweet and eight others. Shots were fired from
Sweet’s Detroit home in an all-white neighborhood when it was surrounded by an
angry, rock-throwing mob.
“I do not believe in the law of hate,” Darrow told
the all-white jury. “I may not be true to my ideals always, but I believe in
the law of love, and I believe you can do nothing with hatred. I would like to
see a time when man loves his fellow man, and forgets his color or his creed.
We will never be civilized until that time comes. … I would advise tolerance; I
would advise understanding; I would advise all those things which are necessary
for men who live together ….”
We’re still waiting. We’re still hoping.
It’s impossible to know where Trump really stands
politically, what he will really do. As Bill Maher said just after the
election, the president-elect has been known to change positions within a
sentence. We do know that his campaign gave license to intolerance. Trump’s
appointment of Stephen K. Bannon as chief White House strategist, an
appointment praised by both the KKK and the American Nazi Party, does little to
allay fears. At Breitbart News, Bannon was provocateur-in-chief, running
headlines such as: “Bill Kristol, Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew,” “Gabby
Giffords: The Gun Control Movement's Human Shield,” and “Birth Control Makes
Women Unattractive and Crazy.”
The nation has survived many political and cultural
spasms. We’ll survive this. It will take time and more understanding than has
been demonstrated by either side for years.
Contact Eric Grunder, former opinion page editor of
The Record, at elgrunder@msn.com. Follow him at
oncruisecontrolafter65.blogspot.com and on Twitter @elgrunder.
#Trump #Clinton #presidentialelection #angrywhitemen #economics #United States #election #BillClinton #intolerance
