Voters thoughts in 2016
So what, roughly, was the story of the world that many of those 2016 voters told themselves? They had a powerful sense that things weren’t as good as they had been in their parents' day, despite the fact they worked hard and paid their taxes; they knew it was the fault of the politicians, who were corrupt, with their expense accounts and incestuous connections to lobbyists and bankers; they knew that no matter who they voted for, it never seemed to make a difference; they knew that if Trump got in, there might be an Apple factory opening up some time; they knew that if we stayed in the EU a million Turks would come a-swarming; they knew that last month, when their little girl was sick, they’d waited six hours at A&E and there was a large family in front of them who didn’t even speak English and how was that fair?; they knew the opioid addict two doors down lived on food stamps and shopped in Macy’s, and that those food stamps had been paid for by their own hard toil and time; they knew the left didn’t care for them any more, that they were over-educated elites who hated working folk, that the only people they gave a crap about were the minorities who were given all the handouts and were able to cut in line in front of them … and they knew that here, on the TV and on the internet, was a straightforward, no-nonsense businessman, who kind of looked like them, and kind of sounded like them, and seemed to understand their problems. He was promising to restart their stories, to restore the forward motion they’d lost so many years ago.