I walked 170 miles to the RNC to talk to Trump supporters. They surprised me
I walked from Detroit to the Cleveland convention to talk to my fellow midwesterners. The verdict: people simply dont care about Melanias plagiarism when theyre worried about paying the mortgage
Fire! Clouds of teargas! Mass arrests! Armed black power militants facing off with assault rifle-wielding white supremacists! Unprepared and nervous police!
This was what I was supposedly walking towards when I decided to wander on foot the 170 miles or so from my home in Detroit to the Republican national convention in Cleveland, where the GOP would be nominating Donald Trump as their party representative one of the most divisive political candidates since Lincoln.
Ive lived in the industrial now post-industrial midwest my whole life, and much of my family has worked in the industrial economy. I set out walking to hear what my neighbors and fellow regional residents had to say about this man. I wanted to walk because walking is slow and the slowness would give me time to understand. With our ever-churning news cycle spewing quick polls and conjecture, I wanted to get a broader portrait about what it means to vote in the upper midwest in 2016.
I went alone as theres something about the solitary traveler that brings out the maternal instinct in America, that makes people talk and share in an unpoliticized way. I slept on the side of the road and in the gracious homes of those I interviewed, many found through the Couchsurfing website. In my daily life I didnt know many Trump supporters, but I wanted to hear what they had to say, to see if their values aligned with that of the candidate who said Mexico is bringing drugs, crime and rapists to the US. So I conducted dozens of formal interviews, many of them with Trump supporters.
What I found surprised me.
The walk through Detroit was uneventful, but the ghost of the citys fate would hang over the entire trip. Anchored by Detroit and colloquially known as the Rust Belt, our story is broadly one of manufacturing boomtowns, astounding material prosperity for common people, and then a slow and poisonous decline leaving bitterness and uncertainty in its wake.
In every 20-year period since the end of the the second world war, the city has lost half its manufacturing jobs.
Despite rhetorical lip service, both major parties have largely ignored the working and lower middle class for decades and nowhere as much as in the Rust Belt. When once a job was available at any plant, at any time, a forklift driver position at $16 an hour is now a prize to be held onto like a winning lottery ticket.
The most prominent issue for voters of all persuasions was, expectantly, jobs. I heard, more than anything else, bring blue-collar jobs back to America. What was unexpected, however, was how many Obama voters are now voting for Trump.
I thought Obama was going to do a lot of good for the country, but … Terry Mitcham said, shrugging his shoulders outside a motel near Curtice, Ohio. He said hed voted a straight Democratic ticket his whole life. I like more of what Trump is talking about now as to cleaning the government up. Theres too much free money in there for everybody.
Universally, Trump supporters liked his perceived independence from the political class. That Trump is funding his own campaign, shaking the Republican party to its core, and has progressed largely unheralded and even mocked by his own party is seen an asset to his campaign. Voters are looking for change the change they hoped for with Obama and if Trump is the only option, then well, Trump it is.
Whether Trump is actually an outsider or a good businessman, as Ive heard time and again, is up for debate. But this is undeniably how supporters are seeing him. People simply dont care about Melania Trumps plagiarism when theyre worried about paying the mortgage. Supporters seem desperate for something, anything, different.
There were no jokes, from either side, when I spoke with people about his candidacy. Midwesterners, at least, are hurting, and hurting bad.
In southern Michigan and northern Ohio, I met fathers working on the road for weeks at a time, wistfully missing their families because theres no work at home. Auto and steel workers who are afraid of losing their already tenuous and cut-rate jobs. Sons working full time and living with their parents because wages just arent good enough.
There was hope, there was change, it was we can do this, said Charles Lough, 23, in Vermillion, OH. Im looking now and the economy is a little bit better than it was in the recent crash, but its still at the point where anyone whos is not the 1% is making not enough to survive or is working a job they are overqualified for.
Hes working full time at Apple in a customer service position and living with his parents.
Much fanfare and heckling has been made that few big-name politicians agreed to speak at Trumps nomination. But with trust in the American federal government hitting an all time low of less than 20%, who would want to stand next to them?
Ive always made a protest vote … Just as a protest against the two parties. I think its a just giant crock of shit, just a big facade, Said Brian Dodson, in Wyandotte, Michigan. Hes worked at the same steel mill, Great Lakes and then US Steel, as has his grandfather. Hes now transitioned to making independent films and taking odd jobs to support his family.
I always come back to: those two parties are just like big corporations, neither one represents the people at all.
Almost everyone Ive come across has simply wanted to tell their story and to be heard above the static of Washington money and the coastal media explaining blue-collar people back to themselves in a manner that doesnt square with daily experience.
I heard it time and time again during my walk, but it was perfectly encapsulated by a remark I overheard at the America First pro-Trump rally in Cleveland: This race isnt about Democrat or Republican. Its about Donald Trump versus the elites.
