Hanson’s reasoning as to why Trump won the 2016 election, has many positive points. However, Hanson’s points were not as strong as they could have been. America has been advancing socially for years. Racism, sexism, xenophobia, and homophobia have been lessening in America. At the time of this election these four discriminatory thoughts were at the peak of change. Therefore, the possibility of them playing an important role in the election is relevant but Hanson’s argument of Trump wanting to make America successful again is what won his election overall.
Hanson discusses the differences between Hillary’s campaign and Trumps. Hillary’s campaign was focused on being the first woman president, rather than Trump’s campaign whom focused on America and making our country better. Wanting success for America and to create a better life for Americans, is what drew in the working class citizens towards Trump. Crediting those who have been forgotten by former politicians, which is a great deal of Americans allowed Trump’s outcome to be successful. Three swing states, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin helped in Trumps’ success. With these three states voting for Trump allowed him to win the presidency. These three swing states have the so called “blue state-model.” This model entails social media, steep taxes, big government, social liberality, smaller families, sophisticated culture, and high incomes (Hansen 34). This model has been a focus throughout America, the average families, not those who are apart of the cultural elite but those who are everyday, working citizens.
A “cultural elite” has always been in existence and continues to be. This group of people are the ones who control the government, the lands, and mostly everything around them because of their income status. Those who are not considered to be in the cultural elite such as African Americans and Hispanics took over inner city living. Privilege and success were camouflaged by progressive politics, allowing for zoning restrictions and high taxes decimate the middle class and leaving some homeless. If there was an option to allow hillside estates be built and allow middle class citizens to afford a home versus keeping green spaces, the elite metalism always won (Hanson 39). Those who are affected by the cultural elite is whom Trump connected with in his campaign, these are the people who are in the swing states as well as many others. The focus of Trump’s campaign rears out of making the cultural elite more accessible to the lower classes. “Trump certainly felt that making everyone wealthier would make them stronger and happier and thus the country as a whole more unified, safer, and more stable” (222). This goal of Trump’s campaign is the evidence needed to show that the cultural elite does exist in America.
Americans have found it hard to accept the fact that Trump was elected as our president, they say he is discriminatory to all Americans that are not like him. However, Trump did not win the election due to America being prejudice. He won because America needed change in the economy. Citizens needed to be able to afford their lives in America and the government needs to focus on the struggles happening within America’s land rather than foreign affairs.
7 replies on “Short Essay #7”
This is a very well written essay, as your argument is clear and well organized. In the first paragraph, you do a good job introducing both Hanson’s ideas as well as your own. I found it interesting in the second paragraph when you compare Trump and Hillary’s differences in their campaigns. However, you could maybe expand more on Hillary’s campaign and mention the pros and cons of it, and what she could have done differently. The final paragraph nicely concludes your ideas and the overall reasoning for Trump getting elected. A possible suggestion could be to mention if you think this will work again for Trump and allow him to be elected again.
Overall, I thought this essay was well put and included a clear argument. Part of this is due to the correlation of what is mentioned in the introductory paragraph and later mentioning of these ideas throughout. I found it interesting to incorporate Hanson’s point of views along with your opinions on his argument. Despite this though, you fade off topic from your thesis by bringing the discussion of Hillary Clinton into the picture. As a result of this, you could’ve further dived into detail about the election between these two. The final paragraph wraps up your general ideas about Trump getting elected. In order to further advance thoughts on this, you could maybe discuss his campaign ideas for this upcoming election.
I think that overall you essay is well organized and has a good amount of textual evidence to support your argument. I think that you should expand you ideas about Hillary’s campaign more to make the essay stronger. As of now it seems that you are saying she lost because her platform was based on being the first woman president and nothing else. I think if you add more about how the two candidates were different and why Trump won over her. You cold bring in the fact that Trump too advantage of free publicity like social media while Hillary didn’t have a huge positive presence on social media sites, which in turn made her champaign rely on her last name and her appearances at different functions.
I find that you made a strong argument in response to the prompt and did a great job of supporting all of your points with textual evidence. Your thesis did a great job of expressing how Trump’s campaign was successful for positive reasons as it hoped to “make America successful again.” You were able to consistently support this from many dimensions throughout the rest of your essay. In relation to your discussion, as you compare to Hilary’s campaign, you could add a reference to how she did not take advantage of social media such as Twitter like Trump did. I find you did a great job at concluding your paper as you stated that he was elected as America needed a change while also recognizing an important part of his presidency, that many are still having trouble accepting him as our president.
You introduce your argument well in the first paragraph. I agree with the point that Trump was not simply elected because of racism, sexism, and xenophobia. These issues are lessening in society and Trump was a compelling candidate due to his crude nature and plan to “Make America Great Again”. Additionally, you make good points regarding the cultural elite in America. In order to improve your essay, you could introduce what you are going to talk about throughout the essay in the introduction. Also, you could tie all of your arguments together in a better way in the conclusion. Overall, this is a solid essay.
I enjoyed your essay and thought that it was very well written. You took a different approach than some of the other essays. Instead of focusing so heavily on Trump’s presence in the media helping him win the election, you talked about how he was elected because he wanted to help better America’s economy and make America great again. You could’ve mentioned this media presence but it didn’t hurt your essay by not doing so. I agree with the fact that discriminatory thoughts are lessoning in our country but I think they are still prevalent enough to play a role in this election. Overall you formatted your essay very well and used good textual support to develop your thesis.
You presented a strong argument in saying that ultimately Trump won the election not because of persistent racism and xenophobia in America but because of his campaign and the way he targeted it at working towards improving the state of the middle class. Your description of the cultural elite furthers your argument and shows a good connection between ideas presented by Huntington and Hanson. Your usage of quotes definitely supported your argument well, but sometimes using multiple quotes in such a short essay can distract from your own voice, so in editing you may consider paraphrasing so that you can present both your argument and Hanson’s at the same time. However, I think overall the structure of this short essay was strong and I enjoyed reading it.