Donald Trump’s Appeal

Abstract

Scholars have expounded in diverse ways the rise of former US president Donald Trump. One proposition has been that his appeal to white middle-class people was successful. This concept connects to whitelash—the idea that there was a backlash against political liberalism, inclusiveness, and progressive politics from white people. However, this article demonstrates that whitelash does not provide an adequate explanatory framework to understand Trump’s electoral victory. Rather, whitelash is merely one phenomenon leveraged by appealing to voters’ whiteness through what is more accurately identified as right-wing populism. Moreover, relying on the concept of whitelash to explain the rise of former US president Donald Trump tends to ignore other issues regarding American democracy and the presidential elections of 2016. These include Trump’s upper hand in election strategies, the poor record of the Clinton family, voter turnout, and wider critiques of democracy itself. While there is some value in using the concepts of whitelash and whiteness to assess Trump’s presidency, replacing whitelash with different interpretive approaches extends a more robust and broader understanding of Trump’s electoral victory.