A ‘sinkhole for grievance’, Trump made the men I grew up with feel heard

Last week, as the US election campaign ended, I felt buoyant. Kamala Harris had been brilliant in the 108 days between her unorthodox rise from vice president to Democratic presidential nominee. Having worked for Harris and Joe Biden, I was confident that her well-run, well-funded organising apparatus would be the difference in what experts had repeatedly told us was a close election.

As we know now, though, it wasn’t close at all.

The majority of American men aged 18 to 44 voted for Donald Trump in 2024.Credit: NYT

As a young white man who grew up in America’s rural south, I understand the people Donald Trump was courting – because I’m one of them. I grew up among a backdrop of the forever wars in the Middle East, the Global Financial Crisis and the opioid crisis.

I spent years travelling around the world with the Biden-Harris administration. I was lucky enough to see first-hand what politics should be – the vice president meeting with small business owners in Detroit and using the power of government to rebuild a community. First lady Jill Biden touting the work of USAID and PEPFAR to end the AIDS epidemic in Namibia. Attending dozens of COVID-19 vaccine clinics with second gentleman Doug Emhoff to thank nurses for saving lives. I saw an administration do its best to serve the people.

During that same decade – the entirety of my adult life – Trump and the right-wing media ecosystem around him have been turning the people I grew up around into a profound political force.

And the honest, technocratic work of good government isn’t as good a story as the one Trump tells. As we saw with Barack Obama in 2008, politics is a contest of emotions. Most often, the campaign able to tap into some powerful feeling will be the one that prevails.

In Trump’s case, he has arrested a huge portion of the country with a feeling of anger over hope. Of course, it’s a cynical play for power. But in becoming a sinkhole of grievance, Trump saw the emotion of the day and ran with it. He identified a huge portion of the population who felt left behind and were looking to reclaim a sense of control, and aimed the cannon at the most vulnerable people daring to make their own decisions: women, migrants, queer people.

Though the past week has been filled with pundits analysing what the election means, the truth is this: Trump’s rise is not really about the economy or immigration, it’s about feeding people a sense that somewhere, someone has been unjustly given a better life than you.

His coalition is an uneasy one of far-right ideologues using him to push their own agendas, and the disaffected who have signed onto these ideologies in hope of relief.

For a large cohort of his supporters, sexism and racism are undeniably at play. Though if you say that, the same people will shut it down as “identity politics” – a term this group loves to assign to those on the left-wing, while ignoring the fact that Trump is the leader of an identity politics movement of white men.

For as much as this election was about the economy and jobs to some Trump supporters, it was undeniably about defending whiteness and maleness for others; about ensuring that those who have always held onto power continue to do so.

In the days following the election, some young white men have been seen commenting “your body, my choice” on the social media posts of American women, while African Americans in at least 13 states received text messages telling them to report to “pick cotton” on a plantation just one day after the election.

That taste of power is what draws his supporters in and eases their disaffection, if only for a time. But it’s a false promise. Not only will his concepts of a plan hurt them, it will also result in the devastation of many tens of thousands more.

For the past 10 years, Democrats ceded all territory in talking to these voters. Harris’ month of podcast and talk show appearances couldn’t make up for that. But the party has to continue finding these people and speaking to them, whether that’s with podcasts or Twitch streams. The only way to fight Trump’s story of grievance is to fight back with a better story.

When the history of this time is written, the Biden administration will end with an objectively great economic reality. The story that Trump has told his people is just the opposite. But anger can sometimes be powerful enough to override the truth.

Cory Alpert is a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne looking at the impact of artificial intelligence on democracy. He served in the Biden-Harris administration for three years.

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