What I Heard from Trump Supporters
I moved to San Francisco from a <i>very</i> rural area (was working remotely from my father-in-law&#x27;s farm), and there are a few things the liberals I work with simply do not understand about what&#x27;s happening in &quot;small-town America&quot; (Disclaimer: I did not vote for Trump, and I don&#x27;t consider myself a Republican).<p>1. People <i>hate</i> Hillary Clinton. <i>Haaaate</i> her. No, you think I&#x27;m saying they disagree with her politics, but you don&#x27;t understand; many literally think she is an evil person, and they want her to burn in hell.<p>2. Most people don&#x27;t really like Trump. They are bothered by his comments, his style, his bombastic way of living, etc. But they also don&#x27;t think consider him racist or particularly sexist.<p>3. They are <i>so fucking tired</i> of identity politics. Oversensitivity, calling everything &quot;-ist&quot; to win an argument, trying to tie racism into everything, debates over &quot;privilege&quot;, etc. I would be so bold as to say that if the left doesn&#x27;t tone down the identity politics Trump will win a second term. Full stop.<p>4. They are tired of being spoken down to, told that they&#x27;re not part of the America that matters, and they have a serious chip on their shoulder. It seems to them like they&#x27;re being told there&#x27;s only one &quot;right&quot; way to view the world, and it&#x27;s not theirs. But they like their way of life, they don&#x27;t want yours, and want politicians to generally leave them alone and let them be.<p>4a. The <i>worst</i> way to exacerbate that all of these things? To insinuate that people who vote for Trump are doing so because they&#x27;re -ist or dumb or ignorant. Hillary Clinton did just that, and I saw more on Facebook about Hillary&#x27;s &quot;basket of deplorables&quot; comment than about anything else in the election. I sometimes wonder if that was the tipping point to Trump for many middle-of-the-road voters in rural America<p>4. They are sick of &quot;coastal elites&quot; running their lives and pretending like everything is OK. Small towns are hurting. A lot. Realize the median household income in the town I came from is &lt;$30k and the average number of people in each house is 6, and you&#x27;ll understand why people are livid about Obamacare increasing insurance costs (after so many promised it wouldn&#x27;t do so). Things are <i>tight</i>, taxes are <i>scary</i>, and when the seemingly rich, out-of-touch people are hand-wavy about increasing the single biggest expense by 50% when you&#x27;re barely making it (food&#x2F;housing is cheap) you get the hatred for Obamacare.