For many women voters in the states Hillary needed to win, like Michigan or Pennsylvania, the issue could be largely financial. Industry in these states has declined and Donald Trump has promised to bring back the jobs. Whether he can do it remains to be seen, obviously, but he spoke to their pressures and concerns.
Additionally, white women, particularly those with a husband or without a college degree, may have felt that there was no room for them on a Clinton agenda focused on so many other identity groups.
Late on election night a distraught friend had a Facebook post wondering what to tell her kids in the morning. I commented that we should keep it simple and make sure not to worry them, especially if the children are small. One of her friends responded to me: “Doesn’t sound like your kids are brown-skinned immigrants. This is a bigger deal for some of us.” And just like that I didn’t belong in the anti-Trump club. As a Never Trump Republican, I had spent the last year and a half agitating for Trump not to be the Republican Party candidate and then not to be the president. But my whiteness disqualified even my opinion on parenting. Never mind that my kids have two immigrant parents or the election had been a whirlwind of anti-Semitism for me in my Twitter mentions, complete with gas chamber references and sending me “back” to Israel. The line was drawn and I as a white (albeit Jewish) woman with white children was on the other side of it. How many white women in places like Michigan or Pennsylvania felt like that?
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