Following Republican nominee Donald Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention (RNC) from July 18-21, media writer and NYU Shanghai Professor Clay Shirky took to Twitter to warn liberal voters about how their complacency could cost them this election. Warning of the “majority illusion”, he urged liberal voters to realize that they are a minority in America and that the possibility of a Trump victory is very likely. OCA got the opportunity to talk to Prof. Shirky about his views on this election season and the two candidates.Shirky says what inspired him to write the series of tweets was the response of his liberal friends to the RNC, who tweeted about the disaster the event had been, how unconvincing it was, and how it is going to be bad news for Trump. “And I just thought to myself”, Shirky commented, “this is such a mistake. I grew up in Missouri, which has actually become more conservative over the last thirty years because of the general polarization of the United States, and also because a lot of liberals have left camp for the coast. This is what is called the great sort, where liberals move to be next to liberals and conservatives move to be next to conservatives, and many of the liberals that I see don’t understand that half the country, more or less, is going to vote for Trump.” His Twitter rant thus sent two messages to the liberals: first, the democrats have lost the majority of the white votes in every election since the Civil Rights Act was signed into law, so don’t get complacent about the number of white people for whom Trump represents the possibility of a restoration of white supremacy in its lowercase form. Second, white liberals in the United States are a minority, and thus it would be better for them to understand that and organize themselves as a minority. The election, thus far, has been a catastrophe according to Shirky. The two candidates have some of the lowest approval or likeability ratings in any candidate in US history, and a rhetoric has developed not about the candidate's’ position on issues but rather their suitability for high office. This has led to a largely content-free election season, and it seems likely to remain that way for the next forty days. What has made Trump’s campaign so powerful has been its political use of white rage. “White people and particularly white men, especially my age and older, grew up in a world where being a white Protestant male was the default. Everywhere you looked, political, cultural, and economic decisions were all being made by white Protestant men.” This phenomenon is well-captured in the quote “When you are accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression,” which Shirky also used in his Twitter stream. There exists a large group of people for whom an America that is not centered on white Christianity and men running society is not a good America, which leads to “white rage” that is being politically activated by Trump’s campaign. On the possibility of a Trump victory, Shirky acknowledged two interpretations of the election cycle that could affect that outcome. One point of view essentially indicates that a Trump victory or loss is not up to the white people, but rather the turn out in the African American and Hispanic communities of the United States. According to the second view, however, white people are still the majority in the country and the white voter turnout is still disproportionately responsible for political outcomes; this gets a little less every electoral cycle but it is nonetheless true. Voter suppression by Republican states on the left and poor voter turnout in the Democratic states could very likely result in the victory of Donald Trump. Shirky added, “I think any liberal that starts the conversation with “We’ve got this in the bag” as their base-line assumption does not understand where American politics is going.”Voter suppression, however, can be combatted in two ways: the first is the debate on the constitutional nature of voting rules. The death of US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has left The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) deadlocked on the Voting Rights Act. If there is a 4-4 deadlock in SCOTUS, the decision of the Appellate Court stands, which is trying to strike down the suspension of voting rights. The question of the constitutional nature of voting rights will not be decided upon until the addition of the ninth judge of SCOTUS, which will only be after the election of the new President. Thus, the legal challenges of voting rules are working to combat voter suppression more effectively than initially expected. The second way to combat voter suppression is by literally driving people to polls – just walk around the neighborhood in a kind of get-out-and-vote operation, or fund such operations. One of the most difficult things to imagine at this point of the election season is a concession speech by Donald Trump should his competitor Hillary Clinton win. Previous concession speeches, such as Al Gore’s in 2000, admit that they will abide by whatever lawful decision has been made by the American people. But this is especially difficult to imagine for Donald Trump: “What Trump has unleashed is telling people who have this “make America white again” mental model that not only are they right and their opponents wrong, but also that they are moral and their opponents immoral,” commented Shirky. “One of the unstated rules of American politics is that you can go after your candidates but you do not go after Americans. You do not label a group of Americans, even if it is true…it is hard to imagine Trump giving a concession speech that says to his supporters that for the good of the country, we need to set aside our differences and come together.” When Bernie Sanders lost the Democratic nomination, he unsuccessfully tried to convince his voters to vote for Clinton; in Trump’s case, along with the ability to control his supporters, what needs to be seen is whether he wants to make the attempt in the first place. On Trump’s supporters, Shirky commented, “Trump’s campaign will restore America to a kind of white hegemony, so if that does not work out it will be a crushing disappointment for many and the way they act out is going to determine a lot of what comes next.” Ironically, despite the fact that Clinton is making history by being the first female Presidential nominee for a major party, no one seems to be factoring this into the conversation. Despite individual beliefs, the national conversation right now is headed in a direction where people are taking Clinton’s presidency for granted. Shirky finds it alarming to see that most young women were actually voting for Bernie Sanders rather than Clinton, at least in liberal states. “In a way, she has been around so long that she almost does not get credit for being as important as she is just as a figure, separate from being a politician.” The effect of this election on multicultural and diverse environments such as NYU Shanghai, or NYU in general, will be interesting in many ways. “There will be a profound re-examination of what America is and what it stands for if Trump gets elected, and in addition to being confused and upset and worried, we will all be mystified. The conversation at the NYU campus will kick off and the kids over there from Kenya and India are going to be asking the kids from South Carolina and Wisconsin how did Trump become President? I hope NYU has the sense to host a conversation about this election, because whatever happens will be absolutely momentous no matter what.” For the specific case of NYU Shanghai, Shirky stated, “It is interesting because we are a community, we don’t have a single national position. Obviously the interesting conversation at NYU Shanghai would be, given the publicized Chinese preference for Donald Trump and the number of nationalities represented at NYU Shanghai, what would either of those Presidents mean for the world?” Americans at NYU Shanghai have a duty to vote but also to spread the message to other citizens: “Even a Trump victory would be better if more people voted, because the size of the voter turnout serves to legitimize the outcome, and a legitimate outcome is more important than a good outcome; bad outcomes are bad outcomes but illegitimate outcomes can weaken people’s faith in the program. You can recover from a bad outcome, but governments have a really hard time recovering from loss of legitimacy. And for Americans at NYU Shanghai, helping to get out and vote would be the one thing you should do as a citizen. A legitimate outcome is more important than a good outcome, and a good turnout is the greatest legitimator of a good democracy.”This article was written by Lathika Chandra Mouli. Please send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Illustration Credit: Gabriela Naumnik