Last week, as the US election campaign ended, I felt buoyant. Kamala Harris had been brilliant in the 108 days between her unorthodox rise from vice president to Democratic presidential nominee. Having worked for Harris and Joe Biden, I was confident that her well-run, well-funded organising apparatus would be the difference in what experts had repeatedly told us was a close election.

As we know now, though, it wasn’t close at all.

As a young white man who grew up in America’s rural south, I understand the people Donald Trump was courting – because I’m one of them. I grew up among a backdrop of the forever wars in the Middle East, the Global Financial Crisis and the opioid crisis.

I spent years travelling around the world with the Biden-Harris administration. I was lucky enough to see first-hand what politics should be – the vice president meeting with small business owners in Detroit and using the power of government to rebuild a community. First lady Jill Biden touting the work of USAID and PEPFAR to end the AIDS epidemic in Namibia. Attending dozens of COVID-19 vaccine clinics with second gentleman Doug Emhoff to thank nurses for saving lives. I saw an administration do its best to serve the people.

During that same decade – the entirety of my adult life – Trump and the right-wing media ecosystem around him have been turning the people I grew up around into a profound political force.

Loading

And the honest, technocratic work of good government isn’t as good a story as the one Trump tells. As we saw with Barack Obama in 2008, politics is a contest of emotions. Most often, the campaign able to tap into some powerful feeling will be the one that prevails.

In Trump’s case, he has arrested a huge portion of the country with a feeling of anger over hope. Of course, it’s a cynical play for power. But in becoming a sinkhole of grievance, Trump saw the emotion of the day and ran with it. He identified a huge portion of the population who felt left behind and were looking to reclaim a sense of control, and aimed the cannon at the most vulnerable people daring to make their own decisions: women, migrants, queer people.

Though the past week has been filled with pundits analysing what the election means, the truth is this: Trump’s rise is not really about the economy or immigration, it’s about feeding people a sense that somewhere, someone has been unjustly given a better life than you.