Trump drums fear, anxiety

South Florida is perhaps not the best place to be in if you are attempting to make sense of the Donald Trump phenomenon. Or, perhaps, it is. Here is a scene that played out during early voting at one of the polling stations in Parkland, a tiny, well-nestled city in Broward county. A Muslim couple walks in, eager to have their say in the election. Unsure about the process, they look around. Help arrives in the form of a candidate who is running for mayor. As Christine Hunschofsky, who would later go on to win the mayoral election, helps the couple, a woman from Israel, who has made Parkland her home, shouts angrily: "You are a Jew. Why are you helping Muslims?"  "It is not what she said that worries me," Hunschofsky tells me later. "It is that she felt emboldened to say what was on her mind. And loudly at that. This is what America has become."

This, in a county where white, black and different shades of brown meet in a giant embrace, where multiculturalism is a way of life, and not a badge of honour.
Many have given up trying to make sense of the verdict, but to dismiss the unlikeliest election result in American history as a fluke would be a mistake. To say that it was a vote by disillusioned voters against the establishment would, at best, be a half truth. In America's deep racial divide, Mr Trump saw a chance, and he jumped at it. He wouldn't be President otherwise. It did not seem that way as he blundered through three political debates, ranted and raved at opponents on twitter, and faced allegations of sexual assault, but he knew what he was doing, all along. He sounded crude, indecent and often vulgar during the process, but the man made sure people heard him. He didn't mind being all over the news, even if it was bad news most of the time.

The "laughably unqualified" candidate, as one prominent newspaper described him, knew he had only one way to the White House, and it wasn't by holding forth on policy issues or being politically correct. Going off-script and speaking his mind during the campaign seemed like political suicide, but in hindsight, it helped bolster the image of the ultimate outsider taking on the establishment. The business tycoon had the backing of white working class America all along, but his instincts told him that wasn't enough. Hate mongering was a deliberate tactic, one that helped him coast through the presidential primaries and paint Ms Hillary Clinton as a conventional politician who shies away from speaking about inconvenient truths. Not surprisingly, he had the backing of the Ku Klux Klan. By speaking repeatedly about Islamic terror and promising to ban Muslims from entering the country, Mr Trump pandered to a growing section of Americans who equate the religion with terror. Ranting against immigrants and Hispanics, and virtually blessing attacks on blacks during election rallies, was his way of cozying up to white nationalists, who had had enough of life under a black president's rule.

Quite some strategy, but even that wouldn't have been enough, if Mr Trump was dealing with an opponent more capable of firing up voters than Ms Clinton was. Ms Clinton's supporters will continue blaming FBI Director James Comey for her defeat, but there was far more to the result. For all her political experience and policy expertise, Ms Clinton didn't have the charisma to galvanize voters the way Obama was able to do. With the mainstream media predicting an easy victory for her, the Democrat candidate also had to deal with complacency creeping in among her supporters. According to some exit polls, 63 percent of white men voted, not surprisingly, for Trump. What wasn't quite as expected was his approval rating among women; 53 percent of white women voted for the man who has a record of insulting, stereotyping and sexually objectifying women. 

The real head-scratcher, however, was how 24 percent of Latino women voters decided that he was their man. His job done, the working class White American is back to his daily grind, perhaps with a smug smile on this face. Largely silent and conspicuously absent on social media, he doesn't care much for the expression of disbelief, shock, grief and rage that is playing out on the streets and on social media. The fear and anxiety are, however, for real. At some point of time, the protests will flame out, but "Not My President" has become much bigger than just a social media hashtag. Unable to come to terms with living in a country under Trump rule, people are considering moving to safer, less racial environs, as the sudden spike that caused the crash of the Canadian immigration website on election night suggests. Muslims, looked upon with increasing suspicion in recent times, now fear being thrown out of the country.

The LGBT community dreads being targeted, and having their political gains reversed. So, what does the billionaire businessman do, as he faces the most hostile reception an American president has ever received? True to style, he alleges a conspiracy. Back on twitter after an election-induced break and firing away as usual, he takes aim on people venting their anger, labelling them "professional protesters, incited by the media." Post victory, Mr Trump has said he would be a President for all Americans, but he would need to back it up with action. His action plan for the first 100 days, however, hinges mainly on undoing what his predecessor has worked on during his eight years on office. Mr Trump may well make good on his promise to build a Mexican wall to end illegal immigration. Removing more than 2 million "criminal illegal immigrants' and canceling visas to foreign countries that won't take them back will, however, prove harder to do. Getting rid of ISIS, as he has promised to do, will take some doing, but the hardest promise for Mr Trump to keep would be repealing the Affordable Care Act "very, very quickly."

Obamacare has its drawbacks, but even detractors cannot wish away the fact that the programme provided health insurance coverage to more than 20 million Americans who were earlier without coverage. In spite of premiums going up considerably this year, more than 100,000 people signed up for coverage the day after the country elected Mr Trump. The biggest challenge for the country's oldest President ever to be elected to a first term lies not in fulfilling poll promises to his faithful. Mr Trump will be judged on how well he is able to reassure a country that he is not the man the world saw on the election trail.

(The author is a journalist with Florida Sentinel)