cancel2 2022
Canceled
Excellent article in the Guardian, it gives a truly in depth look into why Clinton is so hated by so many.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2016/oct/27/middletown-trump-muncie-clinton
From the vantage point of the second floor of Chris Hiatt’s print shop, the prospects for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign do not look so bad. Every two weeks the Citizens of Delaware County for Good Government, a conservative group, meets here primarily to discuss campaigning on local issues.
Nationally Hillary Clinton is ahead in most polls; regionally they suggest she is mounting a challenge in states such as Utah, Georgia and even Texas, where Democrats haven’t won in decades; early voting is on balance looking promising for the DNC. But when I ask the 12 people in the room how many still think he has a shot, they nearly all raise their hands.
The view from Middletown
In this twice-weekly series ahead of the presidential election, Gary Younge spends a month in the mid-western town of Muncie, Indiana – known as Middletown and traditionally viewed as emblematic of middle America. He’ll ask how this small town is dealing with this big moment, and what we can learn about the electorate’s view of the political class from citizens here, who voted for both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the primaries. Gary is interested in what people might think, not just how they vote – and invites you to contribute to, guide and help shape this series.
A reader of this project suggested I contact Hiatt, who told me: “I don’t necessarily think the polls are rigged. But I think there’s a hidden vote and people are giving the PC answer they think people want to hear rather than how they’ll actually be inclined to vote.” Secret Trump supporters are waiting to cause an earthquake, goes the theory. To the CDCGG members present, the alternative – that Trump loses – is unthinkable. “If she gets elected ...” says Judy Campbell and then shakes her head where the end of her sentence might be. “People can’t seriously be thinking about voting for that woman. I mean what in the world ... What can they be thinking?”
“A lot of what he’s done and said is indefensible,” says Jim Arnold. “But when you compare it to what she’s done they’re not comparable.” “It makes me worry about the intelligence of some of these people,” says Margaret Niccum. “Well you can’t fix that,” says Arnold.
More than 50 million people are likely to vote for Trump, even if he goes down in flames. It would be unhelpful to generalise about all of them, reducing them to caricature only to dismiss them. Something is happening here and it behoves people to try to understand it, whether or not they like it. From interviews with a range of Trump voters in Muncie, it’s clear most are not blind to his flaws, even if they wouldn’t necessarily describe them in the manner of his detractors.
The CDCGG was originally set up to repeal property taxes in Indiana which the group argued were exorbitant. After a successful campaign, they gained the ear of the governor and won a cap on property taxes statewide, and transformed themselves into a local group rallying around local issues. Mostly small businessmen and retirees, half male, half female, all white, it feels like a reconstitution of the Tea Party.
Good government, in this context, means small government; with Muncie’s Democratic administration under investigation by the FBI for corruption they feel like they are pushing at an open door and would push harder if the local Republican hierarchy were not so reticent. The atmosphere in the room is cordial; these are not just ideological allies, with a keen sense of civic engagement – two are running for local office and the conversation touches on water rates, sewage rates and teachers’ contracts among other things – but also friends.
Only a couple had wanted Trump to win in the Republican primaries earlier this year. Most preferred Ted Cruz, the Texan who has tried to style himself as a Reaganesque disruptor of Republican politics, or Marco Rubio, the Cuban-American senator from Florida. “I would have been happier with almost anyone else,” says Arnold. “I wanted [Ben] Carson, then Cruz then Rubio. Trump would have almost been my last choice.”
When I ask if they are worried that he will do something embarrassing again they mostly laugh and nod. Dave Jamison, who is retired and voted for Obama twice, says he thought Trump was an “arrogant SOB when he was on The Apprentice”, but his hunting buddies in southern Indiana persuaded him to take a second look and now he’s thinking seriously of voting for him.
Jamie Walsh, who is in her early 30s and training to be a mortician, variably describes Trump as “garbage” and a “word-butcher”. Walsh, who got in contact with the Guardian through this project, grew up in Muncie but moved away because she saw drugs, single parenthood or incarceration claiming her peers on the southside – the white working class part of town – and felt the need to escape. She now lives in the Indianapolis suburb of Brownsburg and probably would have voted for John Kasich, one of the more moderate Republicans in the primaries, if she had registered for a party. “I hated Donald Trump during the primaries,” she says. “He was a mockery.
A Trump and Pence election sign outside a house near downtown Muncie
Walsh has only voted in a presidential race once: for Obama in 2008. She is likely to vote for Trump now, but says of him: “He’s a 70-year-old white man. He’s been supported in bigotry his entire life. He’s been validated his entire life. And people wonder why he acts like this. No wonder he acts like this.” One local senior Republican tells me privately: “Look, he’s a bully. Everyone can see that.” The question of why they would vote for a man of whom they apparently have such a low opinion brings us to something else that connects most of them: their loathing of Hillary Clinton. It is a disdain of such depths that not a single virtue can be salvaged; a contempt nurtured and tended with such animus and anomie over the decades that she has been in the public eye that any redeeming features she might claim have long been stripped away. “Unlike Hillary, he hasn’t done anything criminal,” says Hiatt.
Niccum believes this moment is the culmination of a longstanding plot hatched by the Clintons several years ago. “She’s been planning this since she was in college,” she says. “How do you let all this stuff go?” asks Walsh, referring to things Clinton has been accused of of late. “That’s crazy stuff going on in these emails if you read ’em. This is all the stuff the crazy people have been talking about for years and now it turns out it’s most likely true ... She’s a professional politician. How do you make millions of dollars as a politician? You’re supposed to be a civil servant.” Jamison is rare among Trump supporters I’ve met, in saying he could vote for Hillary, if Trump were “to go off the deep end again”.
But for the overwhelming majority, Hillary hatred is their driving force. What they see as the apocalyptic scenario of Clinton running the country has them reaching for the largest immovable object to stop her. This cannot simply be dismissed as misogyny. Until just a couple weeks ago Clinton and Trump were running almost even among white women, while white women without college degrees still favour him 51-42. “What has she ever done for women?” asks Campbell. “Just look at the kind of women she has standing behind her.” When Trump called Clinton a “nasty woman” at the last debate he not only faithfully reflected their sentiments – he actually understated it. They do not only think she is dishonest, they think she is a criminal, scheming, cheating snob who will sell America to the highest bidder and pocket the proceeds.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2016/oct/27/middletown-trump-muncie-clinton
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