America still hasn't recovered from Trump's shocking win
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SALENA ZITO
STERLING HEIGHTS, MICH. — There’s still a sharp pain in Sarah Moberly’s gut. The hurt and disbelief she felt watching the presidential election one year ago remains ever-present.
In fact, it has escalated.
“Honestly, I feel absolutely worse today than I did last year and it just keeps getting worse every day,” she told The Post. “The moment that Hillary conceded, it was a feeling of complete doom. That’s the only way I can put it. I went to bed, I put the covers over my head. I woke up the next morning, I put the covers back over my head, and I didn’t want to get out of bed for like a week,” she said. “I kept thinking, this is a dream and that I’d wake up. Nope, that wasn’t a dream that really just happened.”
America still has not recovered from the shocking victory of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton on Nov. 8, 2016. And while past presidential elections have always led to disagreement between friends and relatives and neighbors, this election has ripped the nation in two. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey of 5,000 adults, the country’s partisan divide has widened even further under Trump, especially on key issues like climate change, race and immigration. There is now an average 36 percentage point difference between the two parties — more than twice the 15 percentage point difference first measured in 1994, the study said.
As a result, people across the land are feeling fractious, fatigued and very angry.
That’s true especially in Michigan, which voted for a Republican president for the first time since 1988. Pundits had largely expected the state to swing blue, but Trump had other ideas. While Clinton assumed the Rust Belt was in her pocket and did minimal campaigning there, the Republican challenger visited the Midwest multiple times, concluding with a massive rally in Michigan on the last day of the race. His strategy worked — he won Michigan by roughly 13,000 votes, helping him seal his Electoral College victory.
In the Detroit suburb of Sterling Heights, residents still haven’t processed the upset. Moberly is seated at a table at Leo’s Coney Island restaurant next to two other Democrats who voted for Clinton: Liz Sierawski and John W. Smith.
Directly opposite them sit two Republicans who voted for Trump: Jamie Roe and Candius Stearns.
The table is stacked with comfort food — mashed potatoes, burgers, french fries, eggs and bacon — but it’s offering little solace. Moberly fidgets and can barely make eye contact with the Trump voters, even when they try to engage with her.
Sierawski, a local politician, should in theory feel more resentment than most Democrats. “I had a very unique situation. I had just run for a Macomb County commissioner seat and I lost by 15 votes in a 30,000-vote-count election,” she said.
Her opponent, Joe Romano, was a friend of hers. According to Sierawski, he was not expected to win and was asleep in bed when she called to concede.
“So, for me, it was a double whammy. I was absolutely shocked that I lost by such a close margin. It was .001 percent. It was the closest margin ever in Macomb County in any election to lose or win. I lost to, thank goodness, a friend of mine, [who] still is a friend today, so there wasn’t animosity toward him specifically. But my personal loss was due to the Trump wave. People voted straight ticket,” she said. (Macomb County voted 53.6 percent for Trump to Clinton’s 42.)
In an ironic twist, she was appointed to the city council seat Romano vacated after he beat her in the commissioner’s race.
Suddenly Moberly turned to Stearns, an insurance agent and female Trump voter, and spoke: “It’s hard for me to look at another woman who voted for him, with the misogyny that has been involved in this whole process. I don’t understand how you voted for him.”
Shrugging, Stearns politely smiled. “I can agree to disagree. I’m one of those kind of people.”
After that, the conversation heated up. Roe, an area Republican strategist, said he is thrilled with Trump’s deregulation orders, his decision to leave the Paris Agreement and the election of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. Sierawski, the director of nursing at a home-health agency, argued that the president has accomplished nothing. Then Smith, a key politico in his county, really let loose: “Firstly, I hate the son of a bitch. I think he’s going to be the worst president this country ever had. That’s the way I feel personally, OK? And he’s doing nothing but filling his pockets. I felt that way last November, and I feel that way this November.”
Suddenly the table went quiet, the tension thicker than Leo’s mashed potatoes. It was Stearns who leaned in and broke the silence.
“When we talk about these really heated issues that are very sided, I think it’s important to remember that we’re all looking for what’s best for my kids and your kids and for our communities,” she said. “You have to put aside some of this visceral attack that you feel.”
At last Moberly smiled and admitted she voted for a Republican in a local race. Roe said he always prays for the US president to succeed. “Every Sunday when I’m at church, we pray for the president, just like we did for Obama. I was sincere about it then, and I’m sincere about it now.”
A rapprochement is found, at least for now.
Four-hundred miles southeast of here, in Cumberland, Md., the story is different. While the state voted overwhelmingly for Clinton (she earned 60 percent to Trump’s 35), the electorate has moved on.
Every person I interviewed here was asked: “Do you know who your co-workers or friends voted for?” And no one had a clue.
This is perhaps because Maryland isn’t a battleground state that helped swing the nation’s surprise result. Since 1960, Maryland has voted for a Democratic president every election year except in the landslide wins of Richard Nixon in 1972, Ronald Reagan in 1984 and George H.W. Bush in 1988. Candidates don’t stop in this state except to raise money in Baltimore. There are almost no campaign ads on local television or radio. The state’s 10 electoral votes still count, but they don’t have the decisive power of Michigan’s 16.
In fact, voters in this small rural county of Allegany, where sweeping vistas lead into the Cumberland Gap, actually pulled the lever for Trump, though it had little impact. Clinton swept the state with an advantage of more than 734,000 votes.
“We are pretty forgotten out here,” admitted Melissa Clark, the associate director of a community health organization. She is one of six people seated in a circle at the chapel of the Union Rescue Mission and the only one who voted for Clinton. Another woman didn’t vote. And the rest — nurse Andrea Ziler, her husband Pastor David Ziler, businessman Bruce Irons and the Rev. Paul H. Demers — all voted for Trump.
“Until today, despite how close all of us are, none of us knew who voted for who,” said Pastor Ziler, who organized the group with his wife. “The truth is our vote doesn’t matter to swing an election. The other truth is people from Cumberland have too many battles to fight together . . . that we put it behind us the day after the election.”
It’s true that signs of decay are peeling at the edges of this region that was once a pivotal home of commerce and transportation. Job losses and the opioid epidemic have had their corrosive effect.
‘We have just as much carnage, just as much opioid problems, just as much job loss as they did’- Bruce Irons
“It’s not because our city is in less need than many of the Rust Belt areas that were showcased during the election,” said Irons, whose family’s Cumberland lineage dates back to the 1750s. “We have just as much carnage, just as much opioid problems, just as much job loss as they did.”
“We just can’t place our relationships in suspended animation or we won’t get anything done,” added Pastor Ziler.
The problems Ziler speaks of can be witnessed in the room next door, where 60 or so men, women and children are seated at folding tables eating cheese sandwiches and sipping from bowls of vegetable soup. Upstairs 62 beds are reserved for any homeless man who comes to the door of the mission. Women and children are offered places to sleep next door.
“We are nearly always at capacity,” said Ziler.
Rev. Demers said Cumberland is a unique place. “I come from a very rigid New Hampshire town. When I first moved here, I was blown away by the yearly family reunions that lasted days and carnivals and charities that helped local people. They don’t have much around here, but what they have they are willing to share when anyone is ever in need,” he said, wiping away a tear.
The sixth member of the group, Cara Carpin, 31, who moved here from Clarion, Pa., a couple of years ago, agreed. “I think when it comes to politics, we don’t let who you voted for divide us. I’ve never thought twice about having a discussion with someone because I disagreed with their choices,” he said.
The sense of peace and hope here is reassuring and also a reminder that while America is truly divided, we also have a tremendous capacity to heal. More time is needed, especially in places like Sterling Heights that suddenly turned into battlegrounds during last year’s election. But even where conflict rages, small pockets of understanding can be found.
At the end of their discussion at Leo’s Coney Island diner in Michigan, Stearns leaned in to the group. Looking into each person’s eyes, she calmly made a final point: “We are all more alike as Americans than we are not alike.”
No one at the table could disagree with that.
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