Divided we stand, united we rise

It’s morning in America. Riots have erupted in urban streets following the election of Donald J. Trump to the highest office in the land—the President of the United States. Last week, Duke University was in a state of shock, reverberating with horror over the prospects of the next four years. It’s not easy to stomach what these prospects could mean for so many in our community—deporting undocumented cousins, barring thousands of a major faith from entering the country, outlawing abortion—and these are just potential consequences from Trump’s most oppressive social stances. Millions more of our loved ones could lose the affordable health insurance they have only gained access to under President Obama, and the economy risks spiraling into the fiscal abyss, a pit we found ourselves in merely eight years ago. But these are pent-up fears from the liberal bubble of Durham. Hillary Clinton won our county with 79 percent of the vote.

In my childhood home region of Blair County, Pennsylvania—two hours east of Pittsburgh and three hours west of Philadelphia—Donald Trump captured 72 percent of the total vote. In neighboring, heavily unionized Cambria County to the west, where Barack Obama won with a plurality in 2008, Donald Trump snagged 67 percent of the 2016 vote. It’s no secret that changing voters like the ones seen in Cambria County are the underlying cause behind the shifting electoral map, the destructors of the Democratic “Blue Wall.” 

In the eyes of these people, Trump’s election was a giant middle finger to an elitist society that laughs at them—college kids who prioritize political correctness, a media that skews the average viewer against white America, and Democratic politicians like Hillary Clinton, who pandered extensively to the Obama coalition of minority voters and millennials, but who seemingly forgot about them. These Trump voters wrongly confuse the left’s push for minority equality as the takeover of their America by the aforementioned groups. Obama’s recovery hasn’t been particularly tangible to this set of voters, who have not witnessed real prosperity in their professions since the last millennium. They have reaped little-to-nothing in the United States’ transition from a manufacturing economy to a service economy. 

By voting for a corporate tycoon masked as a populist, a misguided white working class overwhelmingly chose something that would change the system now. Whether Trump’s rhetoric was all talk and no substance, they believed it. He said what was on his mind and he never apologized—the ultimate masculine caricature. I’m not defending anti-intellectualism; rather, I’m simply trying to understand the thought processes going through the other side. These Trump voters in central Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and all over the country are jubilant for the path ahead, while we collegiate liberals contemplate the future of our democracy and whether it can stand. The discord between Duke and home is astounding.

As college-aged students, we have never seen more division in our lifetimes. Our electorate is severely polarized. A majority of Hillary Clinton’s supporters struggle to respect Trump’s backers. Empathy for the other side would serve Trump advocates and Hillary supporters a world of good. At the same time, Trump has a lot of rectifying to do to mitigate our fears; his call to end the post-election violence incited by his supporters is a good start. His appointment of Breitbart’s Stephen Bannon as a top adviser is not. His affirmation regarding the Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage is a great clarification. His refusal to protect the legality of Roe v. Wade is a major red flag. While a Trump presidency at best seems unpredictable, we cannot sulk for long. Liberals must be open for compromise that benefits working America and our most marginalized citizens, but we must remain united against the hateful, divisive rhetoric that propelled Mr. Trump to the Oval Office. 

Based on the last seventeen months of campaigning, I can’t help but remain highly skeptical that Trump will change in the way America needs; I’ll give the chances of a successful Trump administration the same low odds that I gave him to beat Clinton.

With that being said, Donald Trump has the luxury of working with a Republican Senate and House. At least for the next two years, the Republican Party and Donald Trump will be held accountable for American progression or regression. Liberals must repair a party that can no longer nominate globalist moderates who are more conservative than Richard Nixon and still expect to compete nationally. We must stop down-ballot bleeding in state legislatures, which has cost Democrats nearly one thousand seats since Obama’s inauguration in 2009. We must fight for inclusive progress everywhere, because, as the late Ted Kennedy famously proclaimed after losing to Jimmy Carter in the 1980 primaries, “the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”

Kyle Gornick is a Trinity sophomore. He is a member of Duke Political Union’s social media and outreach committee.