Trump winning support that shames America

Dear OBV readers, welcome to Mary Schlichte, our newest intern from Boston University studying journalism. This is her first week and second story. This time she’s chosen to look at the Donald Trump phenomena, which as she points out confounds its critics, and as unintentionally brought the two national parties closer than ever before to unite against him. Schlichte argues the ‘Trump effect’ is seriously damaging the international view of the USA as a world power.

It’s a very good piece of writing.

Simon Woolley

Over half a million citizens of the United Kingdom signed a petition to ban, what many viewed as racist demagogue- Donald Trump- from entering the country because of his racially charged comments on his 2016 presidential campaign.

This past month Parliament debated the issue and decided against the ban with Prime Minister David Cameron commenting that Trump’s views are “stupid and wrong” but that if he did decides to visit the UK he would “unite us all against him”. The same could be said for the two major political parties in the United States, Republicans and Democrats, who have finally found in Trump –The Republican front runner-an issue to unite against.

The Democratic Party is known for consistently supporting the civil rights of minorities throughout history more so at least than the Republican Party. The two current top-runners for the Democratic Primary vote are Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

Both have shown their support for the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement and are aware of the importance of the black vote in the United States. Both have met with multiple leaders of black communities. And both have spoken out against Trump’s dangerous racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic rhetoric. Clinton’s campaign is heavily dependent upon minority voters and she herself has spoken on “ending systematic racism” and many women’s issues concerning equality for all races and sexes.

If elected Clinton would become the first female president in the United States a feat for gender equality not unlike President Obama’s impact when he became the first black President of the United States.

The real breakout star for the Democratic Party has been Bernie Sanders, whose track record supporting civil rights goes back to his early years as a student at University of Chicago. This past week the Chicago Tribune released a photo from their archives of Sanders getting arrested at a civil rights rally in 1963 at just 21 years-old while he was a leader of the Congress of Racial Equality at his university.

Sanders is constantly working to help minorities, and after ‘Black Lives Matter’ activists interrupted his campaign in Seattle for focusing on economics and not on minority rights he then admitted to The New Yorker that he “should have been more sensitive” towards the Black Lives Matter issues at the start of his campaign. Since then Sanders has worked with the activists and added the fight for minority rights to his campaign.

Sanders’ other proposed policies such as universal healthcare and education reforms are also aimed at minorities in America, who often do not have access to such basic rights because of the institutional inequality which too often locks many BME communities out.

The media at first ignored Senator Sanders as an unlikely winner because of Clinton’s name recognition and his own affiliation with democratic socialism, “socialism” being a bad word in American society. Anthony Conwright for The Huffington Post writes, “There is something belittling about the language of the ‘Bernie Sanders is unelectable’ fallacy – something that is subliminally dismissive.” Dismissing Sanders is dismissing the issues that support minorities, but polls show that public support for Sanders is consistently growing despite media neglect.

The Republican Party, though not known for making minorities a priority, now fears being labelled as outwardly racist if Trump becomes their spokesperson. They are depending on Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz to take Trump’s place in the lead.

Because they have been settled upon in public opinion as the Trump alternatives, Trump of course has attacked both candidates as ineligible for the presidential office. The Constitution states that the president must be a “natural-born citizen”, which Trump argues Rubio and Cruz are not: Rubio because his parents are Cuban immigrants and Cruz because he was born in Canada to American parents.

Although legal scholars have agreed that both Rubio and Cruz are eligible, Trump is known for ignoring the truth and consistently believing his own lies. Back in 2008 when President Obama was first running for office, Trump attacked him for not producing a birth certificate.

As a guest on The Laura Ingraham Show Trump said, “there is something on that birth certificate – maybe religion, maybe it says he’s a Muslim,” claiming that Obama is a secret Muslim and not an American. When Cruz beat him by 3.3 percent Trump claimed he “stole” the votes in Iowa from him. Trump has also lied about seeing “thousands” of Muslims celebrating 9/11 on rooftops in New Jersey.

The problem with Trump is that a surprising majority of people believe his lies and support his racism. It would be nice to think his supporters are all white, male, older, uneducated, and southern. But in reality people from all over are rallying to Trump’s side: male university students in a viral video applauding his lack of political correctness, New Hampshire polls showing him in the lead, and a meeting with a hundred black religious leaders who support him.

Trump bases his campaign in xenophobia under the guise of American nationalism, feeding on the fears of the white majority who view everything other as a threat to their rights. He alienates the rest of the world, both allies and enemies of the United States, putting the American people at a great risk.

Now for the very first time in recent US history both political parties agree that they do not want Trump elected because he will continue creating a shameful legacy for the United States by destroying foreign relations and civil rights. For all its faults the United States is an important world power and as such the whole world is watching and waiting, possibly in fear, for the results of the coming presidential election.

Mary Schlichte