Searching for understanding in Trump’s America

“Here in the Bay Area we live and work in a bubble in a bubble in a bubble,” he said. “We have to confront and conquer what I think is a very hard truth, which is that for too many Americans that opportunity has left town.”

The former state senator said he embarked on the journey to grasp what happened during the 2016 election and originally didn’t plan on holding public events to share what he learned from it. But interest from community groups in hearing about his experience brought him to Bay Area senior centers and libraries as far south as Gilroy and as far north as San Mateo, drawing hundreds of residents at a time in some venues.

In sharing insights from his travels, Simitian aimed to help Peninsula residents gain a better understanding of the factors shaping the decisions of those who voted for Trump at a gathering at the San Mateo Main Library Wednesday.

Questions swirling around who Trump voters are and why they voted for him following a contentious presidential election drove Simitian to find out for himself, so he took to the roads with a keen interest in visiting counties that had historically voted for Democratic presidential candidates but flipped to support Trump in 2016. In meeting with local Republican leaders, attending minor league baseball games and visiting farmers’ markets to meet locals, Simitian said he was struck by how anxious people were to share their perspectives with someone from another part of the country.

“Basically, I just invited myself to town,” he said. “It was really that simple.”

Against his expectations, Simitian said he heard little about terrorism, health care policy, social issues and immigration when he spent a week in Robeson County in North Carolina, Cambria County in Pennsylvania and Macomb County in Michigan. But he said he did sense a deep skepticism from some regarding Hillary Clinton’s candidacy as well as whether the national Democratic Party’s values fit with local politics, even in places where Democrats are elected to local offices.

Simitian said he met several voters who said the national Democratic Party’s focus on messages of inclusion toward immigrants felt irrelevant to their own struggles to make ends meet. But what offered perhaps the most clarity for Simitian was the loss of opportunity felt among workers in towns where a bachelor’s degree is a rarity, noting a conversation with North Carolina man who told him his wages have dropped 45 percent from what they were more than 15 years ago, when he held a good-paying job at a textile factory.

“In 2016, there were a lot of folks who felt they had nothing left to lose,” said Simitian. “He knew the month, the hour, the day when his life turned upside down. I couldn’t vote for what for me would be the same old, same old.”

Acknowledging the economic hardships residents in these counties also took on other forms, such as mental health issues and drug use, Simitian said he saw how deeply rooted their challenges were. He added many, including one man who told him the false hope Trump’s campaign promises offered was better than no hope, didn’t think government programs had much of an effect on their situations and expressed their frustration with their options when they voted in 2016.

“They were just determined,” he said. “[They were saying] if after 40 years you people in government haven’t done anything then you can’t be surprised that we decided to shake it up.”

Acknowledging that the reactions to his experiences that he’s received from Bay Area residents have varied from place to place, Simitian said many commonalities among the questions they ask and insights he gains from the conversations surface in each one. He has noticed many wish they could take a similar type of trip in search of answers to what they felt was a baffling election.

Simitian has also seen how the hundreds of conversations he’s had since began his cross-country visits in 2017 have shaped how he approaches his own work. He said he thinks more about parts of California and the country that are not experiencing the economic prosperity felt in Silicon Valley, and spends more time thinking about how job training opportunities and the passage of a federal infrastructure bill could boost the number of opportunities available to residents of those areas.

In response to questions about how Peninsula residents could bridge the perceived gap between the country’s coasts, Simitian encouraged them to listen and write letters to their elected officials or otherwise involved in the political process to understand how Trump’s candidacy spoke to so many with legitimate, yearslong grievances. Noting the warm welcome he received by others with different views from his own, Simitian invited others to join the conversation.

“That desperation to be heard gives me some hope,” he said. “Without listening or understanding, I really don’t think we have a chance.”

anna@smdailyjournal.com

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