I cried when Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 – but here’s why I’m now voting for Trump
I cried from Canada when Hillary Clinton lost the election to Donald Trump in 2016. My boyfriend at the time seemed unable to relate to my visceral reaction, which only made my snotty-nosed despair worse. Oh, the misogyny of it all.
Despite having dual citizenship, I had never lived in America, nor voted in an American election. That year was no exception, but Clinton was a shoo-in, I’d figured. “Who would vote for such a vile buffoon as Trump?” I thought.
Apparently, many millions.
Trump’s win that year shocked legions of progressives and feminists like me, who trusted the media, their algorithm and their friendship circles, which had painted Trump in near-universal reports as a detestable racist, sexist and bully, whereas Clinton was the deserving, respectable heir.
We were so wrong.
Once I recovered from my anger at the unfairness of democracy in action (and my regret at having not registered to vote in the US), I began to dig deeper in an attempt to understand what I had not prior to the vote. This is, one would think, what any critical or curious thinker would do. There must be a reason so many people voted for Trump.
Living overseas myself, now in Mexico, I realise the easy answer for many Left-wingers looking on from abroad is to write off half the population as racists and misogynists – people who had “lost their moral compass” – resorting to emotionally-driven political choices like a hatred of women, and faced with Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate this year, people of colour too.
By now, though, having witnessed the unprecedented Trump triumph, we should have all learnt that things are never so simple.
It became clear to me that neither social nor mainstream media was offering the full story. They hadn’t represented the Trump voter fairly – if at all – in their quest to propel Clinton to victory. So I sought out alternative voices and information, and found that the Democrats’ loss went far beyond the “woman factor”, and that support for Trump was rooted in a very real and valid sense of marginalisation felt by rural working-class Americans. Those who were tired of urban elites dominating the conversation and the political game – a game Trump wasn’t playing.
This year, things are playing out similarly, but many of us now know better than to trust what mainstream media and the Democrats tell us about Trump, which is the same tired story, albeit ramped up to desperate measures: he is a fascist, a liar, a misogynist and an immigrant-hating racist. He will refuse to concede the election if he loses and if he wins, he’ll never let go. This conclusion is impossible because the American system will not allow for it, but never-Trumpers seem not to be thinking very rationally.
Leftist Brits appear to have bought that narrative and are even less connected to real-life Trump supporters, rendering them unable to understand reality beyond narratives pushed by much of the mainstream media.
There are very important policy questions at play in this election, past the fact that expecting people to vote for a party that labels Republicans “deplorables” (as Clinton described them in 2016) and “garbage” (in the words of Joe Biden this week) is delusional. A party that shows no respect for them, nor any interest in understanding their concerns.
Democrats and liberal media alike went to great lengths to paint Trump supporters as ignorant bigots, blinded by their hate and stupidity. But the truth is that Democrats and their supporters are the ones reacting emotionally, without considering the issues leading people to vote for Trump in this election.
While the Democrats continue to appeal to identity politics and fear-mongering – telling Americans they are in danger of losing their democracy, claiming women will lose their rights and saying to anyone who will listen that Trump is going to instil a fascist dictatorship – regular working-class people want to know about their jobs and how to feed their families. People want to feel safe in their own cities, which means moving past “harm reduction” and open-air drug markets, and women like me want their free speech rights protected and their sex-based autonomy back.
These are not small things, and they are all issues that the Democrats have made significantly worse.
Over the past four years, the Democrats censored people who dissented against Covid-19 mandates, who insisted that men could not change sex and that women deserved protection for their sex-segregated spaces, and who argued against the transitioning of children. Sex trafficking has skyrocketed under the Democrats’ watch, including the trafficking of migrant minors. Addiction and crime has run rampant as “defund the police” activists appear to have gotten their way, and violent criminals are left to their own devices. The Covid-19 edicts ensured millions fell into poverty and that children fell behind socially and academically. We saw Democrats move to “censor” Covid-19 dissidents and online content challenging government-sanctioned narratives during the pandemic – including information about the vaccine – and have yet to see any accountability for that.
Title IX, a 1972 law prohibiting sex discrimination in schools that receive federal funding and represented a huge win for women’s rights by second wave feminists, was effectively destroyed, along with protections for female sports. Meanwhile, men are being transferred into women’s prisons to prey on some of the most vulnerable in the country. The lives of countless young people are being destroyed via so-called “gender medicine” and sex-change surgeries. And male predators are permitted to waltz into female changing rooms knowing that nothing can be done to stop them.
Concern about these issues does not amount to bigotry – they have created immense harm for millions of people and were caused by the Democrats. I know this better than anyone, having been on the other end of endless cancellation campaigns and protests since 2015, for speaking out about the dangers of gender identity ideology — particularly as it impacts women and girls.
The question of men in women’s sport is of particular note in this election, having watched male athletes beat and even injure female counterparts, unimpeded by a Democratic Party who insists it is the right of boys to compete as girls if they desire to. Under the Democrats, women have had to take matters into their own hands, and female athletes such as Brooke Slusser, the co-captain of the San Jose State University Volleyball team, have joined a lawsuit against the Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) by citing Title IX. The so-called “women’s party” have not only expressed zero concern for the girls fighting this on their own, but the Biden administration was responsible for adding “gender identity” to Title IX law, eroding women’s sex-based protections in colleges and universities.
In a recent town hall, Trump was asked how he would handle sport’s “transgender issue” as president, responding: “You just ban it. The president bans it. You just don’t let it happen.” This might sound like the obvious solution, but the Democrats have offered the opposite. How they continue to claim to be the party supporting female empowerment and women’s rights, I do not know. Why people are buying it I understand even less.
Issues and policy aside, Harris is viewed as an incompetent leader and a phoney individual, flailing terribly in media interviews and seemingly unwilling or incapable of answering basic policy questions. Trump, by contrast, is viewed as someone who is real, bolstered by his perhaps impolite commentary on Democratic politicians and the “deep state”. He is seen as a threat to the traditional political power establishment. Let us not forget that he was the target of more than one assassination attempt in the build-up to next week’s vote.
Of course, Trump is not perfect – who is when we’re talking about American politicians? But practically, to many of us, he offers hope for a strong America, with protections for free speech and democracy, and a restoration of women’s rights. He offers unpopular, uncouth truths and a humanness that we aren’t used to seeing in politicians – refreshing to many.
No, I have not “lost my moral compass”. If anything, I have expanded it, and I am appalled to see those who claim they care the most about downtrodden people treating those like me with such derision because I’ve come to decide the best option for America, for women, for children and for the working class is a Trump presidency.
Meghan Murphy is a Canadian and American writer living in Mexico