COTTSDALE, Ariz. — When Audrey Kaatz and Ashley Wright finally decided
whom to support for president, they kept the choice to themselves.
They admired his business sense and blunt-spoken style. But voting for
Donald Trump was not something the two were comfortable discussing
before the election. Not with their friends. Not with their boyfriends.
Certainly not with their boss, a Democrat who supported Hillary Clinton.
"People were scared to say they were voting for him," Kaatz, 27, said as
she stepped away from the bang of a cash register and the thrum of hair
dryers at the upscale salon in Scottsdale where the two women work.
Even now when people hear she supported Trump, said the 28-year-old
Wright, "They think, 'Oh, so you must be a racist,' and that isn't fair
or true."
Days after the Republican businessman and reality TV star pulled off one
of the most astonishing political upsets in the country's history,
Americans are still trying to sort through the implications.
Trying to understand how it happened. Trying to understand each other. Trying to fathom the yawning gap between two Americas.
To his many critics, Trump is a racist, a bigot, a misogynist and a
clown. The thought of him becoming the most powerful person on the
planet is enough to produce stomach-churning anxiety, to bring sleepless
nights and induce tears.
But more than six dozen conversations with Trump voters across the
country — Democrats, Republicans, political independents — turned up a
thoroughly different perspective.
They see an outsider unbeholden to a corrupt and rotten political system
and brave enough to stake bold positions. They consider him fearless
enough to defy the confines of political correctness. They view him as a
vastly successful businessman, but possessing a common touch: a
workingman's billionaire.
His victory brought euphoria, relief.
Edith Gatewood, 72, felt like twirling across the floor of her home in a
Denver senior complex. Norman Gardner, 67, who runs a mobile home park
in Shelbyville, Tenn., wanted to go outside and holler at the moon.
Joyce Riley, 65, who sells real estate in Florida's Panhandle, hadn't
realized how bad she felt about the direction of the country until she
saw the prospect of things getting better. "This is the first time I've
been optimistic about the country in many years," she said. "I've been
walking around singing, 'Happy Days Are Here Again.'"
Sure, Trump said some vile things during an exceedingly nasty campaign,
sometimes acting in ways they wouldn't want their children to behave.
But for those who supported him, that was part of what made him an
unconventional candidate — he wasn't the typical stamped-from-the-mold
politician.
Trump was misunderstood and maligned by an arrogant and biased news
media, his supporters say, and many of them feel misunderstood and
maligned as well.
Contrary to perceptions, it wasn't all angry white men, terrified of the country's changing hue, who swept Trump into office.
Kaatz, the Arizona hairdresser, for instance, is dating a black man she
expects to marry next April and looks forward to raising their
mixed-race children. Wright lives in a multicultural community in the
Phoenix suburbs and welcomes the Muslim and black children who scamper
through her front yard.
"I don't look outside and think my neighbors are going to bomb me,"
Wright said — though she welcomed the notion of a wall along the border
with Mexico, a three-hour drive from her parents' home in Tucson.
The notion of two Americas, one ascendant, the other convinced it is
slipping ever further behind, has become a staple of the country's
politics and its national narrative as well.
Many Trump supporters belong to the latter America, an America of
dislocation and loss: lost jobs, lost opportunities. A lost sense of
belonging. A sense of no longer mattering.
In Shelbyville, a town of about 20,000 near the center of Tennessee,
Gardner, the mobile home park operator, spoke of the businesses that
have vanished: The company that built fireplaces. The factories that
made pencils. The textile mills.
"Nothing's come in to take their place," he said. "We need to bring industry back and I think (Trump) can do it."
Trump's economic nationalism resonated with Emmett Lawson, an African
American who fled Cleveland for Orlando, Fla., after losing his job in a
steel mill. He blames the North American Free Trade Agreement, which
President Clinton signed into law and Trump derides as the worst bargain
in the history of creation.
Now, at age 58, Lawson drives a semi-truck hauling housing debris across
Florida. "It was bad and Trump exploited it," Lawson said of NAFTA. "He
saw it and spoke about it. That spoke to me."
Trump is "a business guy," Lawson said. "That's the change that's needed."
In Huntington Beach, Anthony Miskulin, 37, used to make six figures as a
loan officer, until the Great Recession hit. Now he toils in corporate
sales, making $26,000 a year. He shares a house with four other people
and commutes three hours by bus, having given up his car. He shoulders
$57,000 in student-loan debt.
"I never anticipated being in this situation," he said, soaking up the
sun — one form of recreation he can still afford — on an 80-degree day
on the Orange County coast. "My vote for Donald Trump, it wasn't out of
bigotry. It wasn't out of hatred. It was about survival."
Miskulin wants a better-paying job. He wants a stronger economy. He
wants, among other priorities, for Trump to deal with illegal
immigration, which Miskulin blames for soaring housing prices and sees
as a drain on public services.
"I've been to the welfare office before, and a lot of people who go
there don't speak English," Miskulin said. "Most of the people who go
there, they're not white. They're not even black. The most people you
see there are mostly Mexican ... . They are illegal and they don't
belong in our country."
Those racial undercurrents were an undeniable part of the Trump wave.
For some, making America great again means returning to a time when it
was whiter, more male-dominated and more in line with what the religious
right and its political allies consider traditional family values.
Margo Miko, 62, a former nurse now living on disability in Ohio, was
among those drawn by Trump's promises to build an impenetrable wall
along the Southern border and to keep out Muslim immigrants.
She blamed her state's governor, Republican John Kasich, for allowing an
influx of refugees that has made her feel like a stranger in her
Columbus neighborhood. She cited an encounter on a hot summer day.
She was out in shorts and a top when she ran into a woman in full Muslim
garb. "She looked me up and down and said, 'You really should cover
yourself,'" Miko recounted. "I told her, 'You need to take some clothes
off. I bet you're really hot.' She was quite nasty."
Tonya Register, a 57-year-old Trump supporter in Fountain Valley, said
she has nothing against Mexicans — they were in Southern California long
before she was, she noted — or the Asian immigrants filling up her
Orange County neighborhood.
It was plainly wrong though, Register said, to see the White House lit
up in rainbow colors to celebrate the Supreme Court's legalization of
same-sex marriage. "That was not cool to me," said Register, whose
disability check helps care for an adult daughter and two grandchildren
living with her. "And I'm an American, too."
To paint everyone who voted for Trump as a racist, or homophobe, or
woman-hater, or to stuff half of them into a basket labeled
"deplorable," to use Hillary Clinton's infelicitous term, ignores and
delegitimizes a deeply held sense of abandonment.
"Everyone who voted for Trump is being called names," said Janet
Flanigan, 54, as she stood outside a Thai restaurant and sushi bar in
the courthouse square in Newnan, Ga., a former cotton town about 40
miles southwest of Atlanta. "We're called redneck, ignorant, racist,
haters."
The freelance writer went on, waving her hands in frustration. "That's
not true," she said. "People voted for Trump because they felt they have
not had representation in Washington for a long time."
Change, of course, entails risk, and many readily concede there is
considerable risk in handing the country over to a man who has never
served in the military or spent a moment in government — something the
country has never done in its entire history.
But there's always risk, they said, and with four years of Hillary
Clinton they figured it was pretty clear what the country could expect:
more economic inequality, more bloated government, more taxes, a
continued loss of respect around the world.
"She has a proven track record," said Nancy Lewis, 58, who works for a
medical answering service in Mendenhall, Miss., "and it wasn't a very
good one."
Many liked what they saw early Wednesday morning, when Trump, apparently
as surprised as most others, laid claim to the White House. He seemed
more serious, they said, more responsible and sober, and they expect
that to continue as the weight of the office settles on his shoulders.
"His mouth gets him in trouble," said Wayne Lee, 64, a truck driver from
Palmetto, Ga., who acknowledged it was somewhat nervous-making to think
of Trump with his finger on the nuclear trigger. "But I think his
behavior is going to change. All these outbursts — they're not going to
happen anymore. I think he's going to take it seriously."
That, of course, won't be known for some time.
It is clear what Trump supporters expect, in keeping with the grand
though often contradictory promises he made during the campaign.
A stronger economy that will produce more jobs with better pay. Lower
taxes. Less bureaucracy. Cheaper and more widely available healthcare.
A reversal of the decades-long decline in the country's manufacturing
industry, and a revival of the struggling coal and steel industries.
Better and safer airports, roads and bridges.
A muscular foreign policy that will deter aggression and make the
country stand taller in the eyes of both friend and foe. A fail-safe
policy that will keep people from entering the country illegally and,
especially, keep terrorists offshore.
"I finally feel optimistic," said Miskulin, who earlier had watched the
Veterans Day celebration in Huntington Beach. "I think Donald Trump is
not only going to be great for the country but also great for the
American people, not a small minority of bureaucrats and labor union
members."
To hear them tell it, Trump supporters want a government that no longer
works to make the rich even richer, offers handouts to the undeserving
and caters to the whims of Washington's army of lobbyists and special
interests.
Perhaps more than anything, they want a president who pays attention to
the half of the country bereft of hope: That, they said, would truly
make America great again.
