Now that the dust has settled, it's no longer difficult to understand how Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump catapulted their candidacies above their rivals. They did it the old fashion way, by engaging in the crudest form of retail politics known to mankind. Clinton and Trump used tried and tested sales and marketing techniques to target their markets. Once each candidate had identified their prospects, those prospects were whipped up into a frenzy and pitted against one another. When the Dog Whistle Political campaigning entered the process, the outcome was inevitable.
Hillary Clinton played the angry Black voter like a finely tuned stradivarius. Poor, marginally educated and angry, Clinton was well acquainted with Black issues and knew just how to exploit them. Embracing Black pain with promises to repair their devastated communities due to decades of economic and social injustice, Clinton gave Black voters an opportunity to vent their pent up anger and frustration. With stories of police killing Black people reaching epidemic levels, incarceration rates off the charts and high school graduation rates going in the opposite direction, Clinton gave Blacks her ear. And all of a sudden, Black Lives Mattered. Although Sanders tried to address Black issues, Clinton had already cornered that market.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, played the angry White voter with equal skill and cunning. Designing his message to attract the marginally educated, lower middle class White demographic, Trump gave voice to those who want to see America White again. With stories of Mexicans bringing drugs across the border for Blacks to sell to White women and Muslims sneaking into the country looking for opportunities to kill White people, Trump took the opportunity to voice everything angry White Americans are thinking but fear to utter themselves. And all of a sudden, angry White people didn't have to be so politically correct anymore. Since Trump was insulting every minority under the sun, he had the angry White market cornered.
To think Clinton embracing the Black Lives Matter Movement wouldn't trigger a knee-jerk response from the KKK or other White nationalist organizations supporting Trump in this political environment is naive. And there's nothing naive about a skilled politician like Hillary Clinton or a cut throat businessman like Donald Trump. Both campaigns intentionally fought on the margins of society in order to generate energy, albeit all negative. Why go for negative energy one might ask? Negative energy festers longer.
With full knowledge of what they were doing, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump used Black fear of Whites and White fear of anything non-White to fight their battle for them. With full knowledge of what they were doing, they both used Black and White anger to drive Blacks and Whites to the voting booth. With full knowledge of what they were doing, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump used the pain, anguish and disillusionment of those forgotten and left behind, to create a path for themselves to the White House. And it was with full knowledge, they both knew this srategy would achieve the desired results.
Bottom line: When you pit two angry groups against one another, neither group will think rationally enough to realize they've both been played. And while all the attention is focused on the anger, little if any is focused on solutions. Since America's media was far more interested in the commercial value of a subliminal race war, cable news outlets capitalized on the perfect duality. Hillary Clinton panders to Black anger, while Donald Trump harnesses White rage. Everything else we've seen along the road to the White House in 2016, has been purely for entertainment purposes only. Podcast below!
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