As someone who grew up in New Jersey and goes to school in Maryland, I felt like everyone thought Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 presidential election. After all, she shared the core liberal values that most people around me shared. East and West Coast liberals take what we often call "fly over states", or middle America, for granted.
Many east and west coast Democrats assumed that these states don't really matter when it comes to elections. The Democratic party has ignored these states, their issues, and their values for years and it's finally come back to bite them. The democratic party created a monster, and that monster is called President Donald Trump.
Many people make certain assumptions about those people that live in middle America. The assumption is that these people are loud, stupid, bigoted, and angry. Sound like anyone familiar?
In ignoring the middle-class America demographic and calling them "fly over states", Democrats drove these middle Americans to elect someone resembling all of the stereotypes that many Democrats hold of them. Trump is dumb and noisy and angry and prejudiced. He is all of our fears, and the reasons we ignore the Americans in the middle, rolled into one man with a terrifying amount of power.
Trump didn't get elected by accident. He tapped into the fears, some fake and some real, that middle Americans faced. He spoke to them by saying that the mainstream politicians don't care about you, and it was true. The media is spreading lies, he said, and it was false, but it still took some of the heat off of the scandals about him constantly being uncovered.
Trump acted like your friendly neighborhood billionaire that you could sit down and have a beer with. Sure, he is a real estate mogul, but he still got bad haircuts and talked like he was from Nowheresesville, USA. He told Middle America he was one of them and they bought it. Now he's set to sign a tax bill that will give tax cuts to the rich at the burden of everyone else, but that's for another article.
If Democrats learned anything from this election, it's to never underestimate those so-called "fly over states" ever again. When you ignore something, it only gets bigger. And those ignored states' anger at being ignored turned into a President.