Will love truly trump hate? The jury’s still out
Hillary Clinton will need to find something more than a message of love and optimism if she is to defeat Donald Trump’s seduction of fear-filled Middle America.
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Hillary Clinton will need to find something more than a message of love and optimism if she is to defeat Donald Trump’s technicolour portrait of a dystopian, brittle America.
Sitting in the depths of the arena of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania this week, it’s easy to be swept up in the beauty of hope.
There’s swirling confetti and balloons, a star-studded slate of speakers and cheering Americans with a bright-eyed vision for a future to believe in.
It was an arena where two Clintons and two Obamas brought the house down with charismatic, rallying calls to optimism and hope that were the stuff history books delight in.
But, with just over three months left to convince the American everyman that they too should join Ms Clinton’s vision of the world, there was a yawning gap between that gloriously heaving Philadelphia arena and the suburban homes littering America where hurting families are instead singing from the Donald Trump song sheet.
The truth is, there is a deep current of fear coursing through the veins of Middle America.
Through swathes of the country, where families are still writhing with pain from the GFC on Obama’s watch, their hearts are beating to the drum of panic.
They fear ISIS. They fear immigrants. They fear Islam. They fear racial warfare.
The fear and the hate is real and it exists, even if the threats are not proportionate to the anxiety.
And with every Orlando, Nice and Dallas, that drum beat gets louder.
This is the climate in which this historic American election battle takes place: an entirely different world to 2008 when President Barack Obama swept to power on his own campaign of hope.
It’s this very fear that has allowed Trump’s repudiation of political correctness to summon an army of supporters. Last week, when Trump declared to a packed arena in Cleveland, Ohio that “we cannot afford to be so politically correct anymore”, the crowd went wild.
Trump’s rejection of political correctness and his pledge to tell it like it is helps him work his way into the subconscious of those middle Americans bearing the burden of fear. He repeats their nightmares to them, validates them, stokes them, tells them they aren’t alone and promises to fix them.
This week, when Obama turned to Clinton’s ability to defeat ISIS, he took a jab at Trump’s aggressive approach: “I know Hillary won’t relent until ISIL is destroyed. She’ll finish the job — and she’ll do it without resorting to torture, or banning entire religions from entering our country,” he said.
A fine message met with cheers in Philadelphia, but one that may not carry into the suburbs where that drum beat has them wanting a fiercer approach.
After Trump’s declaration America was in crisis, the Democrats proudly cast the fight as one of love versus hate. “Love trumps hate,” they cried in between musical interludes of songs like “What the world needs now is love sweet love”.
It was uplifting, optimistic — beautiful even — but whether that’s a message that can carry into angry homes remains to be seen.
There was, though, one glimmer of a different strategy that could speak to those disenchanted voters being scooped up by the Trump machine.
Barack Obama started it in his day three speech, and Hillary Clinton ran with it yesterday: beat Trump at his own “make America great again” game and paint the billionaire himself as un-American.
Americans are proud. They love their nation with enthusiasm.
And so, while Trump paints that nation as under threat he is empowered.
Clinton and Obama instead used the past 48 hours to shine the spotlight on a man who didn’t understand America’s greatness.
“Don’t let anyone tell you that our country is weak. We’re not. Don’t let anyone tell you we don’t have what it takes. We do,” Ms Clinton declared.
In the final two days of the Democrats’ convention, their Donald was a guy who had never worked a hard day in his life. A guy who made his merchandise offshore instead of investing in hurting Middle American cities.
A guy who believed he was greater than America.
“Don’t believe anyone who says I alone can fix it,” Ms Clinton said, adding Trump was forgetting troops, police officers, doctors, nurses teachers.
It was a turning of the tables — an “America is already great” approach that speaks to a patriotic enthusiasm that might be stronger than fear.
The Trump versus Clinton polls are tight. Clinton won’t know for days how her convention played, but Trump got a clear bounce from his. Trump gets more powerful with every jolt of fear Americans feel and the fight of hope versus fear will only get more fierce as November looms.
Anna Caldwell is a News Corp Australia journalist on location at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia
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