The Trump movement isn’t going to just magically disappear
Oct 14, 2016, 5:51 AM
What happens to the Trump movement if he loses?
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump may lose, but he has created a movement, and it will not just disappear.
“So the big problem these folks see is their communities really aren’t working,” J. D. Vance says. “There are rising mortality rates, heroin epidemic, joblessness. And if there is a political story, it’s the feeling that the political elites in Washington don’t care about these problems.”
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Vance wrote a best-seller called “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.” It’s about his experience growing up in Southern Ohio and what’s been happening to the white working class. He says it’s a mistake to dismiss them as racists.
“A lot of these issues are actually real,” Vance said. “And if we confront those issues head on and if we express some compassion and sympathy, you will see a lot of the white working class become more engaged. But until we give at least a little bit of credit to how these people feel, then we shouldn’t be surprised that a lot of people are going to turn to Donald Trump, because nobody else is really speaking to them or trying to.”
But he also says his people have to recognize that not everything is Barack Obama’s fault.
“I think the white working class has to recognize the government hasn’t been totally fair, the economy hasn’t been totally fair, but we still have some control over our own lives and unless there’s that recognition, I don’t think we are going to make a whole lot of progress. And I say that as a white working class person who really feels that my community needs to be a little more self-reflective these days.”
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