It wasn’t just the ‘deplorables’ that elected Trump.
Via NY Post:
America’s political experts got it wrong in 2016 — not because they took too few polls, but because they made the false assumption that American elections are immune to societal change.
They are, in large part, still getting things wrong, not only by failing to understand a new group of voters who put President Donald Trump in the White House but also by ignoring why they voted the way they did.
When explaining the Trump voter, the media usually offers portraits of isolated, uneducated, working-class rubes who are driven by anger, race and nationalism. To the experts and those who didn’t support Trump, it’s hard for them to see it any other way.
And while the media obsesses over the future demise of the president, they aren’t pausing to consider the strength and durability of the coalition that swept him into office.
They aren’t asking why people in the Rust Belt counties who voted for former President Barack Obama twice suddenly switched to Trump.But they should. Because Trump was not the cause of this movement, he was the result of it. In order to fully appreciate his rise to the White House, you need focus on the people who put him there.[…]
When you walk into the Legally Sweet Bakery on Chestnut Street you can barely see Bonnie Smith standing behind the display cases filled with sugar cookies, tea cakes, cream wafers, brownies and mini tarts.
But don’t let her diminutive size fool you. At 63, Smith is a powerhouse. After working her way up from a cook’s job to the role of deputy sheriff at the Ashtabula County Sheriff Department, she is now in her second career as a small business owner.
It is 9 a.m. on a Tuesday, and she has already been up 8 ½ hours baking delicacies to fill her cozy shop.
For years, Smith’s politics reflected her community. She was raised a Democrat, her parents were Democrats, her husband was a Democrat, she worked for the Democrats. She even voted for Bernie Sanders in the presidential primary in March 2016.
And then, suddenly, “I woke up one morning and said ‘I had had enough.’”
Smith says her dissatisfaction grew as she looked around her community. The main-street business district where her bakery is located was sprinkled with closed storefronts. The opioid crisis had ravaged the area, and every news story was about job cuts instead of job creation.
“I am kind of that voter that was hiding in plain sight that no one saw coming. I was right here all along. I’ve seen the job losses here, the rising crime, the mess and heroin problem, society essentially losing hope. Something just gave in within me,” she said.
To her surprise, her husband echoed her sentiments. They both voted for Trump.
Smith’s journey to that point was not an evolution, it was a revelation. And many others in Ashtabula County, Ohio, experienced the same eureka moment: The exact county that gave Barack Obama a 55 percent majority of its vote twice, swung a remarkable 31 points to give Trump a victory over Clinton by a margin of 57 percent to 38 percent.