Two days ago we saw Donald J. Trump inaugurated to the highest office in the land.

Many laughed, many cried and many people were left scratching their heads as to how all of this happened. How had this random person, who wasn’t even a politician, get elected president?

While others may choose a slew of factors to explain their reasoning, I choose to blame the Democratic Party as the primary cause for the rise of Donald Trump. In this article I will attempt to explore the rise of Trump and the fall of the party for which I once rooted.

To understand the downfall of the Democrats, we must first look at culture in the US and how both parties built their campaigns around the social and cultural context of the country. Over the last few years, the progressive movement in America has grown exponentially. We have seen many laws pass that have strengthened equality and provided rights for the LGBTQ community.

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While I personally believe this is a step in the right direction, this has somehow led to a vocal minority of progressives bred with values of entitlement and smugness. So much so that the Democrat candidate called all Trump supporters “a basket of deplorables”. I am not arguing whether or not this was fair, Trump has made his share of insults, but are we stooping to his level?

This one thing is what has divided a whole country in half. This wouldn’t have been a big problem if the outcry for progressive issues was reflective of the number of people who were for progressive movements. It is only because of websites like AJ+, Buzzfeed and Now This and their constant bombardment of the progressive agenda on social media, like Facebook, that it seems a big deal. In fact, these issues are not representative of what the majority of Americans care about. Even progressive media outlets such as Vox has called out these websites for “distorting how partisans understand the world”.

All the focus has been on groups like Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community, while we tend to forget that these are minority groups and therefore are a minority in the US. I am in no way reducing women’s or racial issues, but in this day and age, I think most people believe in their hearts that equality of gender is important, but not the most important thing on their minds. Most Americans are still white, middle class who want to provide for their families and pay their dues, and Trump’s message fits better with them.

That the Democrats do not understand how the middle class works says a lot about a party that is supposed to be more liberal and the party of the people. Democrats, how far have we strayed that Hillary Clinton is the person who gave speeches to Wall Street elites and said that a person should have “a public and personal persona” in her leaked emails, the person involved with the Benghazi scandal and a person who is so far from the idea of the middle class that everything she does to try and connect with modern Americans seems to induce cringes from all the people listening.

How did we get here? More importantly, where was Bernie Sanders? The anti-establishment candidate who got millions of teens and middle class people to donate to his cause and gave the Democratic Party a breath of fresh air – something which the Democrats have sorely missed. We have somehow reached a point where the Democratic Party is so blind to its decisions that it works against the candidate who works better with Americans by having the whole party campaign go against him for a corporate stooge in an election that needed an anti-establishment candidate.

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The question is where do we go from here? What requires a change is the severe disconnect that the Democratic Party has with the voters. We must understand that progressiveness is an important step, but it is only the tip of the glacier.

From the beginning of the election, neither Republicans nor Democrats have talked about their foreign or domestic policies. It was a lot of flash and scandal with no substance. If the Democratic Party had been able to listen to its voters and try to understand the struggles of working class Americans, we would not have had Trump for president.

At this point, the best thing that Democrats can do is accept the reality at hand and not lose hope. Continue fighting the good fight and show the working people of America that this party will stand for the people and embrace liberal values.

 

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Kenneth is a 17-year-old university student who loves comic books, Dota 2, movies, political science and history. You can reach him at @kenneth2098 on Twitter.
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