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Originally Posted by AltaGuy
While I agree with the idea, this has very little to do with Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bill and Wall Street and the elite, which was the actual situation this election. This is shoehorning an explanatory narrative of yours onto a situation where it doesn't fit.
Perhaps if the Bernie crowd were the ones in control of the Democratic Party you'd have a point, but they're also being duped.
Identity politics, while an interesting topic sometimes, is not the story of this election. Nor is it the narrative/driving force behind Brexit and other similar movements. These movements are about economics and leaving behind a large swath of the population in the wake of globalization.
It's been pointed out many times that many Obama supporters in the Rustbelt switched to the Republicans: not for cultural reasons, but for economic reasons. They didn't vote for Trump because they're mad at the liberals for regressive leftism, they did it because the elite wing of the Democratic party is perceived as ignoring their economic needs. And Trump was the Molotov Cocktail at the dinner party.
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If anything, Clinton is a lot less interested in identity politics than a lot of her supporters. However, I think that the way parts of the mainstream media used identity politics to portray everyone that voted for Trump as stupid, sexist, racist, etc contributed to some of these people deciding that now was the time to throw a wrench in the system instead of in 4 years when someone better came along.
But they definitely voted against regressive leftists and for immigration reform. Immigration was a huge part of Trump's campaign and he said he would keep out the Islamists and Illegals, and liberals defending Muslims who share none of their core values against rational criticisms is what the term regressive left was coined for.
Edit:
Without the resentment built by decades of identity politics (including religious identity as used by the republican elites), there's a very real chance that republicans would have elected someone more level headed in the primaries. This person may not have been any better, but Trump has a lot of people that voted for him because 'he says what he thinks'. Only for a politician can this be an admirable thing and even then, it's only admirable when politicians repeatedly say the right things and then completely ignore them once elected. So while I agree that a deliberate protest against identity politics isn't the reason for trumps election, I think that it's usage over the past decades by republican candidates was a huge part of why people were willing to vote for him vs someone who was more level headed in the primaries