The Rise Of Donald Trump: A Change To Melting Pot Theory

Joseph Rubio

Jim Nguyen

Political Science 1

16 February 2017

A Change to Melting Pot Theory When thinking about the 2016 Presidential Election, there are many factors to be discussed regarding the outcome. The topic I will be discussing is the rise of Donald Trump and his take on the populist movements during the 2016 campaign and the connections it has with the rise of white nationalism that is happening in America. Some of the questions in this essay will dive into are, who is Donald Trumps America and where the critical swings votes came from to push Trump past the threshold for the Electoral College. In answering these questions I will show the connections between the rise Donald Trump’s so called populist movement and to the rise of

This strategy took into account that most major cities would traditionally vote Democrat so a focus on rural and working class America was put on the front burner, in particular towards an area known as the Rust Belt. “We travel 1,000 miles across Donald Trump's America - exploring the rust belt states of West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Indiana, where the middle class is shrinking, opportunities are dwindling and people feel that they were left behind in the country's economic recovery.”(Fault Lines) This feeling of being left behind was exploited by the Trump campaign, using the insecurities of people that have feel disenfranchised by a system who over the previous eight years had bailed out big banks and the automotive industries but had failed to alleviate all of the fears that this group of people have about their future and the future of this our

“Trump rose to the top of his party not just by tapping into and exploiting fears and anxieties over immigrants and Muslims, but also by speaking to some of the real economic struggles of a section of the middle class that feels like no one else has been listening to them.”(Fault Lines) and it is these economic struggles that make people who other wise may not have racist tendencies to begin to have a tendency to siding with whoever is willing to listen to their struggle. As stated in The Nation “While I have no doubt (and no one should have any doubt) that there are genuine racists in Trump’s constituency—and the gleeful performance of racism is nothing to shrug off—Thompson suggests we should consider the ways in which racism might not be the core disease of Trumpism but a symptom of a deeper illness.”(McWilliams) and this deeper illness is the social and economic injustices that are running a muck through out American society giving fuel to movements like Trumpism or white