NYT columnist: ‘Is America a failed state and society?’
As election results pointed to a stunning victory for Republican president-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday, defying polls, New York Times economist Paul Krugman said journalists and experts underestimated the power of a silent voting bloc.“It turns out that we were wrong,” he wrote. “There turn out to be a huge number of people — white people, living mainly in rural areas — who don’t share at all our idea of what America is about. For them, it is about blood and soil, about traditional patriarchy and racial hierarchy.”Urban voters, journalists, and experts predicted a victory for Democrat Hillary Clinton, but underestimated the power of a silent voting bloc, Krugman said. White, working class voters turned out in droves to elect a man who was “manifestly unqualified for high office, so temperamentally unsound, so scary yet ludicrous.” What will happen next, he says, isn’t clear. But millions across the nation who hoped to see a woman take office and felt assured that Trump’s gaffes and lack of political experience would keep him from the White House find themselves in shock at the choice their fellow Americans made at the polls. “I don’t know how we go forward from here,” Krugman wrote. “Is America a failed state and society? It looks truly possible. I guess we have to pick ourselves up and try to find a way forward, but this has been a night of terrible revelations, and I don’t think it’s self-indulgent to feel quite a lot of despair.”Read the full piece in the Times here.
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