A country divided: Donald Trump's America and the rest

Tracy Watkins:

OPINION: The first wall of Donald Trump's presidency is already up; the sand filled dumpsters, metal barricades and uniformed police encircling his gold fronted fifth ave tower will likely be there till the the family move to the White House in January.

Trump promised to build a wall but that one was about keeping America safe. This wall is about keeping Trump's fellow Americans out. The angry protests that marked Trump's first day as president elect underscored the depth of division between the two America's - Trump's America and the rest. 

As for the "who" in Trump's America, millions of words have been written so far about young white blue collar men and America's forgotten working classes. 

But Trump voters seem to defy any effort to lump them together as one. He attracted more black, Hispanic and female voters than anyone expected and he did particularly well among wealthier white voters, not just the blue collar ones.

Eduardo Munoz/Reuters

Supporters of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump stand outside Trump Tower where Trump lives, in the Manhattan borough of New York.

Ideology was not what united them, at least not in the conventional sense since Trump's ideology was more of the bar room sort than the traditional left-right debate.

In that way he channelled everyone who has ever tried to fix the world's woes over a few beers. 

Want to sort out the Mexicans? Build a goddamned wall. How do we deal to ISIS? Bomb the s... out of them. Lost your job?Stop importing cheap Chinese goods that take American jobs away. 

People had been saying these things for years and the establishment had sighed and told them not to be so silly, that these things are "complicated".

They would remind them about the Berlin wall, and how that didn't work out so well.  Ask how you bomb the s... out of an enemy who lives among children and the elderly? Or remind them that for every job saved by keeping Chinese goods out is a job lost by the world refusing to buy American. 

Trump was the finger in the air to those who had slapped these ideas down. Whether people even believe in a wall as a practical solution is a moot point; this is about Trump validating their beliefs and values.

The soul searching within a grieving Democratic Party will find there are no easy answers.

Trump also ran on a platform as the anti-PC candidate, an appeal to the deep swathe of America's moral conservatives, who are staunchly opposed to gay marriage, abortion, and gay, lesbian and transgender rights.

There has been a lot of talk about whether Hillary Clinton's opponent and darling of the party's millennials who marched on Trump this week - Bernie Sanders - could have carried them over the line by channelling the same anti-establishment, anti-elitism vote.

But Trump's platform on social issues was a repudiation of everything socially progressive parties stand for.

There was clearly huge antipathy to Clinton, however, even among staunch democrats. But she won the popular vote - by a smidgen - so it was not just that. 

She ran on the wrong platform, pitching herself as the status quo candidate when the electorate was consumed by a mood for change. 

She was also the very epitome of the Washington establishment that people were revolting against; disgusted by its paralysis, dysfunction and entitlement. 

And, like the media, she put too much trust in the polls. Clinton's campaign team were reportedly so convinced of victory they had booked a fireworks display before being talked out of it late in the piece.

The media read the polls, meanwhile, and shook their head about all the wrong steps Trump took along the way.

After Brexit, which the polls also got so wrong, the media also have to ask themselves the tough questions.

The first is whether polls are worth the paper they are written on - if for no other reason that people's trust in them is at an all time low. 

But there are other uncertainties. 

In an age of social media it should be easier than ever to take the pulse of the nation, the reach into peoples' homes being greater and more pervasive than ever - and their ability to participate easier than it has ever been 

Yet the opposite has happened, with more voters now disenfranchised from politics than ever.

The plethora of social media sites, the lines becoming harder to see between news, gossip and fabricated news swirling around the internet.

The rise of these alternative "news" sites fed the Trump phenomenon; while everyone was confounded by his legions of "undercover" voters, who flew under the radar of every poll and survey.

Only Trump supporters were in on the secret - in Florida I met an Iraq war veteran who told me repeatedly there were more Trump supporters out there than they were letting on.

He knew because whereever he went in his Make America Great hat it acted like a secret handshake. They would look at each other and just know.

But the media didn't just rely on the polls.

In fact, journalist after journalist had been out to heartland America and reported the same howls of frustration and betrayal and loss yet still didn't connect that with a Trump win.   

Should John Key be worried? The signs around the world are that voters are revolting against the establishment, and the status quo.

For years everyone has been in search of our own "missing million" voters; the people who are so disenfranchised by the system they don't bother turning out to vote.

The polls showing support for the Key government is unwavering but there is a swirling under current of concern about a rising basket of social ills - inequality, poverty, immigration and a worsening housing crisis, not just for the poorest and most vulnerable New Zealanders but young people desperate for a step on the housing ladder.

What has been lacking, however, is a lightning rod for change.

But after eight years in power (nine by the time of next year's election) Key would have lost his appeal as the anti-politician, which is what helped deliver National to power in a landslide in 2008.

Like Key when he first entered politics, the allure of Trump for many was his wealth; they saw a man who did not need the job for the money so it was easier to believe of him that he was motivated to do what he said, which was fix a broken system.

The risk for Key in going for a fourth term is that the appeal of his back story diminishes with every year; the longer he stays on the more he looks like any other politician, clinging onto power for the sake of power.

Ours is a very different system to America where government has effectively ground to a halt.

And our "revolution" may have already happened, when we imposed MMP on politicians who had refused to listen.

The positives in Trump's presidency are that he has a rare chance to fix it by busting through convention, entitlement and the established order - and his ego might just be big enough to accomplish that.

But his voters trusted in him to do that because he was an outsider - a solution, not part of the problem.

For Andrew Little's Labour then there is no obvious salvation in the lesson from America.

We had our own anti PC eruption in 2008 when voters rejected the Clark government's so called "social engineering"' - a label which has stuck, even if we have moved on since then. 

Of all our politicians, Winston Peters is closest to articulating the mood that gave rise to Trump/Brexit. 

But it's hard to claim a mantle as the anti-establishment candidate as a former foreign minister, Treasurer and deputy prime minister.

That's why Peters' decision to accept the "baubles of office" as Foreign Minister in the Clark government caused such a deep rift within the party.

So if not Peters who? Gareth Morgan? If he stops talking about cats, maybe.

But the lesson from Trump is that we may not even know their name yet.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/us-election-2016/86390618/A-country-divided-Trumps-America-and-the-rest