US voters must now capitalise on disbelief and demand the impossible
It might sound odd to the rest of the world, but Americans are still trying to decide whether to take Donald Trump seriously or not. Most of us took him seriously as a xenophobe, racist and misogynist. We took him seriously when he said he wanted to build a border wall and when he threatened to incarcerate women who had abortions. But nobody – not even his own supporters – took him seriously when he talked about winning the election. His campaign seemed to feed on this disbelief, to nourish itself on the fact he was considered a laughingstock for so long and by so many people.
In this sense the 2016 presidential election presented us with an inversion of the Tinkerbell effect. We keep Tinkerbell alive at a performance of Peter Pan by clapping our hands to prove our belief, but Trump’s campaign fed on the opposite of that – our disbelief in his campaign not only gave it strength but made it victorious. As loathsome as John McCain and Mitt Romney were, they seemed like legitimate contenders for the presidency. It seemed like a war-hero with a long track record of public service or a wealthy, well-connected former governor would make an appealing presidential candidate. On the other hand, the Trump campaign seemed embarrassingly ludicrous and doomed from the start. From his laughably awkward descent down an escalator to announce his candidacy, to his feud with the parents of Humayun Khan (a Muslim-American soldier killed in Iraq), to the tape of him bragging about “grabbing women by the pussy”, to the moment during a debate when he called Hillary Clinton a “nasty woman,” each new gaffe and incendiary pronouncement made him seem less electable. As a result, Democrats and Republicans alike became infected with a sense of cynical disbelief about his chances of winning.
However, the more that Trump was mocked and derided for his stupidity, cruelty and vanity, the more inevitable his victory became. His candidacy was a punchline for late night comedians and for serious news anchors alike, but whether it was the dismissive laughter of George Stephanopoulos or Alec Baldwin’s impersonation of him on Saturday Night Live, the basic premise of all their humour was that Trump would never be president. It is extraordinarily painful to revisit those jokes now, not only because of how wrong they were, but because of the sneaking suspicion that our very laughter was somehow an endorsement of Trump. As we laughed in disbelief at his ridiculousness, we affirmed the cynicism that was animating his campaign, making it stronger and more irresistible.
The American right became intoxicated by the Quixotic absurdity of his campaign from the very beginning. They were energised not only by his race-baiting and misogyny, but also by their certainty that he would lose. The dismissiveness of Democrats and journalists paradoxically reaffirmed conservative America’s lack of faith in and commitment to his candidacy. Trump’s supporters correctly recognised that the reason the Republican establishment was distancing itself from him was not because of his malicious and mostly unfeasible policy proposals, but because they did not believe he had any chance of becoming president. The fact that Republican insiders disowned him only emboldened the disbelief of the people who ultimately voted him into office. While pollsters had been predicting that Trump’s unsuitability for the presidency would depress turnout (especially among reliably conservative voters unimpressed with his credentials), he mustered nearly two million more votes than Romney received in 2012. Even the “Never Trump” Republicans that were supposed to sit this election out still showed up to vote for him – in many cases because they assumed that he would not win and that their vote really would not matter.
This is why it is extremely unwise for those of us who oppose Trump to assume that his supporters will turn on him when he fails to “make America great again”. It does not matter to the people who voted for him whether or not he can build a wall, deport millions of immigrants, or resurrect the American manufacturing sector. Trump does not have to fulfil any of the promises he made as a candidate, because his campaign was always organised around disbelief. A disbelief in facts, in science, in the personhood of women, in justice, in genuine human decency – but especially a disbelief in the possibility that he would win.
We cannot be satisfied with the cynicism that handed Trump the White House. The lesson we should learn from this election should not be that the American left needs to reach out more effectively to the enigmatic “white working class voters” who supposedly put Trump in power. Nor should we tolerate the pundits that are trying to shame the college-educated, millennial, hispanic, black, or, white women voters who refused to support Hillary. Instead, we need to exploit the power of this disbelief itself by demanding the impossible – the abolition of the death penalty, the end of mass incarceration, forgiveness of student loan debt, free university education, free early child care, equal pay for women, a living wage for workers, a maximum wage for executives, the end of pollution and our reliance on fossil fuels, and an end to the payday loan industry. We must demand these things – not recommend them as policy proposals, not try to explain their benefits to a disinterested public, not package them in Clintonian or Blairite rhetoric – simply demand them. Now is the time for the left on both sides of the Atlantic to make a coordinated effort to demand what is right in the face of even our own disbelief.
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