5 Unpopular Realities Of America's Working Class And How They Led To Trump’s Win

The businessman turned politician's win has been likened to Brexit, which came as a major surprise to many as most pollsters predicted that Hillary Clinton would beat Trump to the White House.

His stark honesty and highly criticised candid comments and statements completely coloured his campaign trail, with tonnes of not only Americans but also people from other parts of the world bashing him for his views.

He beat Clinton by 61 electoral votes - 279 in total against the democratic candidate's 218 electoral votes. Not only did Trump win the presidency, he also secured the majority in the US Senate (51 votes against 47) and House (236 votes against 191), putting the Congress under complete Republican governance.

While Clinton may have won in the terms of popular vote by just 0.1% with 59,236,903 individual votes at 47.6%, the 2016 US President Election map looks otherwise. It looks like little spurts of blue in a vast sea of red.

There will be major changes ahead as Trump's policies and promises are highly different from that of Clinton's or even former US President Barack Obama's.

With all these ahead, just hours after Trump won, students held up placards that read, "Not my president", while people in Oakland, California ended up smashing windows and setting fire to garbage bins. The bursts of anger continued as Wednesday night saw tonnes of people taking to the streets in various parts of country including Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle and New York protested against their president.

One of the most controversial statements came in the form of a leaked video of Donald Trump speaking to television personality Billy Bush of "Access Hollywood" back in 2005. In the video, Trump was heard talking about women, making lewd comments that included, "I moved on her like a bitch" and "Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything."

Soon after the video became a viral, Trump released an apology video, expressing deep regret and admitting that it was a mistake.

"I've never said I’m a perfect person, nor pretended to be someone that I’m not. I’ve said and done things I regret, and the words released today on this more than a decade-old video are one of them. I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize," said Trump.

He said that his travels during his campaign to bring change to America, has made him a changed man and promised to be a better man and not to ever let Americans down.

"Let's be honest — we’re living in the real world. This is nothing more than a distraction from the important issues we’re facing today. We are losing our jobs, we’re less safe than we were eight years ago, and Washington is totally broken. Hillary Clinton and her kind have run our country into the ground."

"I've said some foolish things, but there’s a big difference between the words and actions of other people. Bill Clinton has actually abused women, and Hillary has bullied, attacked, shamed and intimidated his victims. We will discuss this more in the coming days," ended the apology video.

The New York Times released an in depth analysis on 'How Trump Reshaped The Election Map' and here are some key pointers from it that may help you better understand why Trump won the elections:

1) Trump was said to have the most number of votes from rural American areas, beating Clinton's urban supporters. 62% of voter from rural areas, 50% in suburbs and 35% voters in cities voted for Trump.

2) Most of his support came from counties in the industrial Midwest with whites without a college education including former President Obama's strongholds. President Trump won 194 out of the 207 counties that voted for Obama either in 2008 or 2012.

3) An article by Washington Post said that, on average these counties that voted for Obama twice were mainly whites at 81%.

4) Most of the Trump's votes also came from counties with voters that only have a high school level of education and in the counties that he won, 36% of voters had no college education, on average.

Looking at some of these statistics, it's safe to say that a large number of Americans that voted for President Trump are white men that are mostly from rural areas, with a major chunk of them that have no college education.

An excellent piece titled,'How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind' on Cracked by David Wong, author and the Executive Director of Cracked explained how and why the people who voted for Trump did what they did - it has little with do with just white supremacy and racism.

First and foremost, most analysis articles on Trump's 2016 US Presidential win pointed out that some of the biggest divide between Trump and Clinton's supporters are the differences in the wealth, education level and social standing of the voters.

"Make America Great Again" was Trump's election campaign slogan and he has promised on many occasions that he was determined to prioritise Americans, restructure and strengthen the economy and create more job opportunities. Americans have the same concerns as the rest of the world - better career prospects and a healthy economy, two things that pretty much determines how we live.

One of the main policies that put Trump in the White House were his trade policies. After almost a decade of Obama's democratic trade policies, Trump wants to change it to ensure that it serves Americans first.

Some of the key changes he plans to implement are:

1) "Reform the tax code and trade policies to make it easier to hire, invest, build, grow, produce and manufacture in America."

2) "Stop China from stealing our jobs, renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), cut unneeded regulations and make America the best place in the world to do business. Putting America first - and not globalism - will keep jobs and wealth in America."

3) "America has lost nearly one-third of its manufacturing jobs since NAFTA and 50,000 factories since China joined the World Trade Organization. President Obama predicted that the trade deal with South Korea would increase our exports to South Korea by more than $10 billion – resulting in some 70,000 jobs. It has killed nearly 100,000."

While the world, especially countries that are part of America's free trade agreement, may highly benefit from the trade deals, it certainly puts a dent in America's job market.

Production and manufacturing companies that are based in countries like Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, China and India take away job opportunities from thousands of Americans.

An article on The Guardian, titled, 'Millions of ordinary Americans support Donald Trump. Here's why' by political analyst and historian, Thomas Frank, explained that the white collar professionals view free trade policies as a beneficial boost to the economy. However, the impact on most Americans, especially the blue collar workers, is very different.

A video that surfaced earlier this year, showed a Carrier air conditioning officer telling the workers that they are going to shut down the company in Indiana and move the plant to Monterrey, Mexico. They were going to lose their jobs - all 1,400 of them. The workers can be heard shouting, "F*&k you!" at the officer, and he just asks them to quieten down so that he can finish the "announcement". That is the reality in America - people losing their jobs, their means to put food on the table due to trade agreements that are singed for the greater good.

As of today, the video has over three million views.

It was also reported that counties that ended up voting for Trump are places that are doing poorly in terms of economy.

"Many of Trump’s followers are bigots, no doubt, but many more are probably excited by the prospect of a president who seems to mean it when he denounces our trade agreements and promises to bring the hammer down on the CEO that fired you and wrecked your town, unlike Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton," read the article.

Frank referred to a study by Working America, a political organizing arm of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO), which revealed that most white working-class voters (including Democrat supporters) in the suburbs of Cleveland and Pittsburgh, were rooting for Trump because of his blunt "attitude".

The study also found that "good jobs/economy" are what these Americans are most concerned about. Immigration came third.

"'People are more frightened than they are bigoted', is how the findings were described to me by Karen Nussbaum, the executive director of Working America. The survey 'confirmed what we heard all the time: people are fed up, people are hurting, they are very distressed about the fact that their kids don’t have a future' and that 'there still hasn’t been a recovery from the recession, that every family still suffers from it in one way or another'," added Frank.

Frank also spoke to Tom Lewandowski, the president of the Northeast Indiana Central Labour Council in Fort Wayne. According to Lewandowski, these Americans who support Trump "aren't racist, not any more than anybody else is".

Neoliberalism blends liberal political views with economic growth, where government interference in the operation of free markets is limited. It suggests things like limiting subsidies, making tax reforms, reducing deficit spending, and opening markets up to trade.

Juan Cole, a Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan defined neoliberalism in his article, 'Why the White Working Class Rebelled: Neoliberalism is Killing Them (Literally)' as "putting the market in charge of social policies and encouraging industries to move abroad for higher profit margins".

Explaining that the move will leave fewer industrial jobs in the countries that practice this policy model, Cole stressed that this greatly impacts the white working class. He cited a study from two Princeton University economists, Anne Case and Angus Deaton that revealed how death rates have been inclining steadily for white Americans between the ages of 45 and 55.

Why are the death rates rising rapidly for Americans in this group?

According to the study, the death rates have been rising because of the use of drugs that lead to overdoses, liver diseases from too much alcohol consumption and suicide cases. Cole said that the people that are most affected by these problems are rural whites with only high school education or even lesser than that.

The reason for this was pinned on the lack or complete loss of manufacturing jobs. On top of that, Cole said that another study by the Commonwealth Foundation found that more and more white working class people are starting to have lower incomes, fewer are employed and even fewer are married.

For the past eight years, neoliberalism policies have taken the lead with Obama's democratic government in power. Author George Monbiat wrote a piece on The Guardian, 'Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems' which spoke about how neoliberalism just fuels competition among people. Some of the main things that neoliberalism policy does is deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing and creating competition in public services.

In turn, these neoliberalism policies have left countless people with no jobs, which not only affects their lives but also leaves the possibility of a bleak future for their children.

"Freedom from trade unions and collective bargaining means the freedom to suppress wages. Freedom from regulation means the freedom to poison rivers, endanger workers, charge iniquitous rates of interest and design exotic financial instruments. Freedom from tax means freedom from the distribution of wealth that lifts people out of poverty," read the article by George Monbiot.

Back to the article by David Wong on Cracked about Trump's rise to power, it brings our attention to another unpopular yet widely known topic about the bleak lives of people living in the rural American communities.

Wong talks about how most of these people's livelihood relies completely on a major company like coal mine or a manufacturing company in the area.

"When it dies, the town dies. Where I grew up, it was an oil refinery closing that did us in. I was raised in the hollowed-out shell of what the town had once been. The roof of our high school leaked when it rained. Cities can make up for the loss of manufacturing jobs with service jobs -- small towns cannot. That model doesn't work below a certain population density," said Wong.

Wong also mentioned how the lack of opportunities in rural America make things worse. "In a small town, there may be no venues for performing arts aside from country music bars and churches. There may only be two doctors in town -- aspiring to that job means waiting for one of them to retire or die," he explained.

Trump has promised to solve all these by creating more jobs, elevating the life standards of middle class Americans by either revoking or renegotiating all the free trade agreements that America is a part of now.

Cracked’s author Wong, talks about how the working-class whites that live in these rural areas have a set way of of doing things that they live by. He compares how city folks would just call up a plumber if their pipes were leaking but people in rural areas would just fix it themselves.

He says that working people are expected to do things for themselves and that they take pride in it.

"The rural folk with the Trump signs in their yards say their way of life is dying, and you smirk and say what they really mean is that blacks and gays are finally getting equal rights and they hate it. But I'm telling you, they say their way of life is dying because their way of life is dying. It's not their imagination. No movie about the future portrays it as being full of traditional families, hunters, and coal mines. Well, except for Hunger Games, and that was depicted as an apocalypse," added Wong.

Greek philosopher Heraclitus aptly said that "change is the only constant in life", but when it comes down to it, change is also one of the most difficult things to embrace. With Trump promising to "Make America Great Again" for Americans, Wong opines that the people voted in the hope that things will go back to the way they were.

"It was a vote of desperation."

Americans, have given a chance to Democrats in the past - the country's first African American president, Barack Obama, won two terms of presidency.

They have never quite seen or had a president like Donald Trump, and perhaps that's all they wanted - a fresh start with someone that has promised to fix things with new policies.

Trump has four years to prove himself to Americans and live up to his promises. If he doesn't, things will most probably change again and that will continue happening in true democratic fashion.

All is certainly not lost. Even Obama has moved past the defeat of Hillary and is focused on the future of the country.

"I want to emphasise to you, Mr President-elect, that we now are going to do everything we can to help you succeed because if you succeed, then the country succeeds," said Obama after he met Trump for a 90-minute meeting yesterday in the Oval Office, 10 November.

Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 45th American president on 20 January 2017.