Shocked political elites now envision the Trump administration
One month after the election of Donald Trump, members of the political “elite,” including the leader of a political student organization, are still trying to make sense of the head-spinning result.
“He was right,” said McCourtney Institute for Democracy Managing Editor Christopher Beem. “Everyone thought that the fact that Donald Trump was getting so many people at his rallies was not indicative of just how many people were supporting him,” he said. “And we were all wrong.”
Beem said that Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular vote shows both how divided the country is and how close the election was. “Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2 million [votes]. That’s not a trivial thing,” he said, but added, “it has as much to do with where those votes were as it does how many there were.”
“All of the polls-even though they were wrong-said that Hillary was going to come out on top,” said Kevin Salamon, president of the College Progressives. “So Donald Trump winning was surprising.”
Salamon said that he had a preference for Clinton, but adds, “I wasn’t a huge fan of Hillary.”
“I was very surprised,” said Robert Berkman, a political science professor at Penn State.
“Although in retrospect, the warning signs were there that the election could go that way,” he said. “I really did not prepare myself for that outcome. I thought that Hillary Clinton was going to win, and potentially was going to win quite handedly.”
The College Progressives chose not to endorse either major party candidate, and Salamon has no qualms about stating his distaste for both candidates.
“I’m quite afraid of what [Trump] is going to do to the country,” he said, but quickly turned his aim to the left. “I wasn’t as surprised as much as one would expect because the Democratic Party has just not been up to snuff,” he said. “Ever since Bill Clinton and taking on neoliberalism, they just abandoned the working class.”
Salamon said that the DNC ignored a large swath of the population in favor of the wealthy, and joked, “apparently white working class people get really pissed off if you ignore them for a short period of time.”
Salamon also claimed that the public distrust of the DNC was something of the committee’s own making. “[During the primary season] I was working for the Sanders campaign and then you find out that it was corrupt from the very beginning,” he said. “They were backing Hillary and Bernie never really had a shot under their rules.” Sanders garnered 43% of the popular vote in the 2016 Democratic primary, according to election site The Green Papers.
Salamon found the idea of progressives needing to quiet their misgivings about Clinton after clinching the nomination to avoid a Trump presidency to be an unfair burden on them. “If you want to become president, you better damn well be worth it,” he said.
“Hillary Clinton is not an inspiring or even eminently likable person,” he added.
Salamon held an election watch party at this house, and his fellow college progressives were also not happy with the result. “They were all pretty distraught,” he said.
“My goal from the start is that I’m unhappy with the Democratic Party, I don’t think they’re a party of the people and I don’t think they’re a progressive party,” Salamon said, who was formerly the vice president of the College Democrats and resigned in order to run Penn State Students for Bernie, and later the College Progressives.
“My job is to push them,” he said. “I’m not just going to fall in line because they lost this eminently winnable battle by their own faults, and just do whatever they tell me to do.”
Salamon wrote in Bernie Sanders on Election Day. “I don’t regret that decision,” he added.
“Life’s too short to be so boring,” he said. “I’m going to fight for the world that I want, that I envision. I’m not going to compromise my values and play some sort of game with politics.”
Salamon believes that Trump is playing a game, but on his supporters. “He’s already reneged on promises even to his own supporters,” he said.
The Trump phenomenon was so strong that Penn State decided to approve a one-credit course on the then-Republican nominee.
Beem taught the course on Donald Trump at Penn State this semester, and the class met one last time in class after the election and described the general reaction in one word.
“Stunned,” he said.
He found the class to be incredibly informative and wishes to have similar classes in the future. “A lot of people were like, ‘are you sure you want to do that?’ and I’m really glad we did,” he said. “I feel like the students in that class were really lucky.” He adds, “I feel like I was really lucky. I learned a lot in that class, listening to people and hearing their perspectives.”
“We should be doing stuff like this more often,” he said. “Trying to engage important, current issues using the disciplines that all of us bring. I think that’s a good thing.”
One question before the election was whether Trump was fit temperamentally to hold the office, which often spawned the debate of whether he could act presidential.
“Maybe he’s going to redefine what presidential means,” Berkman said, “because he does not act presidential as I’ve always thought of it.”
If his transition is any indication, Berkman is full of concerns about a Donald Trump presidency.
“I’m taken aback by his loose language,” Berkman said. “I usually think of new presidents in particular as being very, very careful with their language. What presidents say can move markets, can move stock prices, can move countries,” he said. “It can move you to war.”
Berkman has seen no change in Trump’s demeanor.
“He’s continuing to behave as if he’s in campaign mode and saying things that would have wild implications,” he said.
Berkman also has some concerns about the president-elect’s relationship with the press, or lack thereof. “I don’t think he respects the role of the media in a democracy. I’ve never heard him talk about the role of the media in a democracy in any way that suggests that he does appreciate the role that they play,” he said.
He also finds the absence of formal introductions to his cabinet to be especially strange.
“He has not bothered, when these cabinet appointments have been introduced, to go out to a podium with them and talk about his objectives and why these people have been picked, and what they will bring to American politics,” he said.
He also noted that Trump hasn’t held a press conference since winning the election, which is highly unusual based on recent precedent, throwing in, “I think his relationship with Breitbart and InfoWars is downright terrifying.”
Perhaps Berkman’s biggest concern with a President Trump is what he calls Trump’s “very frightening relationship to the truth.”
“I have been really struck by the wiliness of those around him, namely Mike Pence and Reince Priebus, to try to explain away as okay his throwing out of conspiracy theories and arguments that are factually not true,” he said. “I think that’s a ridiculously dangerous thing for a president to do, and I think the media is missing the story about why he’s doing some of this.”
Berkman suspects that the cabinet appointments, which he called “extremely conservative,” to be all of Vice President-elect Pence’s making.
“If you look at what’s been going on right now, most of these cabinet picks, they’re coming from Mike Pence. This is a Mike Pence cabinet,” he said. “It’s a highly anti-gay and lesbian rights cabinet. Other than [defense secretary pick James Mattis] I think almost every one of them is strongly anti-gay.”
“He’s Dick Cheney on steroids,” Berkman said.
Soon after the election, Hillary Clinton called for Americans to have an open mind on the president elect, but Salamon is not buying it.
“I’m not so naive to think that he’s going to change his mind and start doing the right thing,” he said. “If there’s something we can work together on, fine. I’ll support that policy. But generally, I assume that we’re going to spending most of our time just fighting against what he’s trying to do.”
“Everyone should fear a Trump presidency,” Salamon said. Last semester, he studied abroad in Chile, and found the climate, both environmentally and politically, to be more pleasant than back home.
“I don’t think anything good is going to come of this. I might just go to Chile again and teach English for a few years,” he joked.
