What would have been unfathomable only a few days ago is now a part of history – Donald Trump is the President-Elect of the United States!
With such a surprising – yet decisive – win, both parties will most likely be heading back to their respective drawing boards in search of explanations for what happened!
Donald Trump defied almost all expectations. Like what happened in the days leading up to the Brexit vote, the mainstream media and political pundits misread the people, choosing rather to assume that the bubble they live in represented the feelings of the average voter. As a result, they were caught off guard, as what they deemed improbable became history.
During the live election coverage on The Daily Wire, conservative talk show host Ben Shapiro said something caught my attention,
“When Donald Trump says “Make America Great Again,” I don’t think he knows what that means… To me, that means going back to the Constitution and the founding principles, whereas to him, it’s something to do with building towers…” (paraphrased).
What I found curious about that statement was that while Ben Shapiro holds a proper conservative point of view on what “Make America Great Again” means, many Americans have a different opinion tonight, and that is Trump’s version of “Make America Great Again.”
I have a lot of respect for Shapiro and agree with him that the greatness of America is in its founding philosophy. However, I find that often in business, sports, and politics, there is a difficulty in seeing the world outside of the “bubble” one might find themselves in. It’s a sort of group mentality that forms when one is surrounded mostly by like-minded individuals with like-minded ideas.
I’ve seen this bubble many times in the business world when a company starts to think their ideas of what’s great is something customers just “need to accept.” It is evident in conversations between salespeople, they often talk about how “stupid” a customer is for not wanting to buy the “great deal” they offered, without stopping to research whether the offer was even a good deal, to begin with. They forget that, in the end, it is the customer that makes the final decision about whether or not your deal was any good. You see it in the political world when political pundits assume their opinions are the opinions of the public. It is evident in the accusations of “racism,” “sexism,” and the use of terms like “deplorable” for anyone who doesn’t unequivocally agree with their opinions.
There is a concept you learn quickly in the world of sales; it is the concept of listening to your customer. It’s the idea of keeping a finger on the pulse of what keeps you in business; listening to what your customers are looking for. It is one of the foundational concepts of running any successful venture. Yet somehow, it is something both conservatives and “liberals” overlooked in this election cycle. For the Clinton campaign, this was a Billion dollar mistake.
So often there is this assumption that we know what our customer base or voters want. As a company or a political party, we narcissistically assume that they want what our company has to offer, exactly as we designed it. Donald Trump showed his business acumen when he showed the world that he knew what the American voter wanted, and promised to deliver it.
I think that is what the voters showed on November 8, 2016! They showed that their livelihoods, food on the table, and gas in the tank of their car were important. Far more important than the offended Republican sensibilities and the Democrats identity politics.
So, while Republicans fumed at Trump’s vulgar behavior, and Democrats hissed about the racism and sexism that were the only obvious answer to why someone would vote against Hillary Clinton, the Trump train picked up speed.
I don’t know how much of Trump’s success can be chalked up to cunning and how much was dumb luck. But think of how he turned the usually blue states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, by speaking to what they really wanted: bringing jobs and factories back, a promise to try to bring back the economic boom of the 1940s and 1950s, a chance at regaining their ‘middle class’ lifestyle and in making their part of America great again!
Were Trump’s promises of economic recover a part of his core values that coincidentally aligned with the desires of so many millions in those states, or was this was a shrewd play by Trump’s campaign? Either way, he sold them their dream, and they bought it happily.
If Hillary Clinton had appealed more strongly to the very popular Bernie Sanders crowd and had the emails showing the Democratic National Committee’s rigging of their primary not come to light, she might have had a very different result on election night! Had the mainstream media and Democratic elites kept their fingers on the pulse of the American people, they might have toned down their vicious attacks on regular Americans. Had the charges of sexism and racism not been thrown about so freely in so many elections prior – even when they had no merit – we might have seen a very different result.
The Republican establishment has to answer the same question: are they in tune with what Americans truly want? Or are they so busy in their bubble in Washington, DC, that they don’t remember what it is that matters the most to the individual?
What appealed to so many about Donald Trump? How did he managed to defy all predictions and not only win but win bigly!
I believe it is because he appealed to the average person. He let them know that if they had him as President there would be a direct effect on their lives. He would bring back jobs, he was not backed by Wall Street, he was against the special interests and lobbyists that have made life hell for decades for many Americans, he appealed to the anti-war crowd by implying that he would stay out of unnecessary wars overseas, and focus on making the country itself great again. America first! That’s what people have wanted for decades, thats what they wanted from both Bush and Obama, thats what they had waited for, and finally, they’d had enough. For many, Trump is a roll of the dice; a chance to give a big middle finger to the elites and the status quo.
See, everyone hates a salesman in the same way that everyone hates a politician when you know they are only saying what they need to say to make the “sale.” But every once in a while you encounter a salesman who doesn’t just tell you what you want to hear. Instead, he gives you the confidence that he knows exactly what you’ve been looking for, and he can deliver it. We’ve all had that experience where we left the store or car lot, excited at our purchase and barely able to contain our joy with how satisfied we felt. That’s the feeling many have tonight, the feeling that they’ve just made a great purchase!
Though there are still doubts in the back of our collective minds, I believe we are hoping that we’ve made the right choice – a good purchase – one that we won’t regret for the next four years. Donald Trump is a great salesman, so let’s see if he can be an equally great president!
Arthur Cleroux
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