Donald Trump is quite the hot issue of the U.S. presidential election these days. The billionaire is a political outsider but he is supported by a large number of citizens as a Republican candidate for president. However, he is very different from the traditional candidates and rather eccentric. Trump is not afraid of giving a speech that includes racist tones, exclusive disjunction, military, and many other controversial issues. Still after all that, the fever does not seem to be going down. Why is Donald Trump receiving such massive support and what does this situation mean?
We may find the answer in the socioeconomic crisis in the U.S. After the advent of the global market, the world seems to turn its attention to the international level, adopting many foreign laborers and exporting factories to other countries. Some companies became very profitable and the economic polarization widened giving the middle class a sense of relative deprivation more than ever. The dissatisfaction of society expresses its symptoms in different ways and one of them is shown through political results. The Donald Trump phenomenon could be seen as an extreme form of these expressions.
     The rage from established politicians plus expectation of changes has resulted in what we see now in the U.S. presidential election campaign. Many Trump supporters are Caucasian blue collar workers who have suffered the most from the global system. Many of them lost their jobs and the despair of their current situation has turned to immigrants and minorities such as Hispanics and Muslims. While other politicians care for foreigners and not American citizens, Trump came up with very different pledges. His prompt reactions with ‘unordinary’ promises - stripping away immigrants and Muslims, building a huge wall to block Mexicans coming to America, etc. – made people go crazy in support of him.
     The solid image of Republicans with big businesses and the wealthy-elites made the middle-class conservative voters turn their back on them. Middle and lower middle classes do not trust the elites since the uncertainty era of the 2008 recession. People are now ready to have a new form of class warfare by getting their jobs back and putting themselves in a better situation. The rage from deprivation has brought an unprecedented voting rate for Republicans, showing that within the Republican group, people are looking for radical changes.
     The problems of this social crisis are not only restricted to the U.S. since globalization, capitalization and neo-liberalism are advent in most countries all over the world. The U.S. has been a leading country in these movements and it seems to work very well for a while, however, the social insecurity within the country explains there are still a lot more problems to solve under these ideologies.
     The good side of this 'Trump Phenomenon' shows that the American democracy still plays a role in the society as it reflects what people want. Though some of what Donald Trump has said makes other people have deep antipathy to him, he is still running as a candidate with his supporters behind him. The equality of opportunity offered Trump as a candidate whether his party agrees with him or not. The number of votes indicates that there are people out there who support him and want to make him the president of the U.S.
     When the election started, no one expected Donald Trump to get this far but he is the hot issue of American politics these days resulting in high voter turnout. One of the interesting points is that at the early part of the election, Trump supporters, came out to vote and created the ’Trump Phenomenon’ but now it seems people who want Trump to fail are voting against him. As a result, in the state of Wisconsin, the voting rate reached an all-time high and Ted Cruz overwhelmed Donald Trump. In the state of New York, however, Trump ran over Cruz. The election is unpredictable since different candidates are continually winning over another. Whoever wins, the president-elect should consider all classes of citizens and make the society more balanced economically and socially.
 

By Kim Hae-in, Guest Reporter