Daniel Allott: How Donald Trump seized the mantle of hope and change
“But something quite different happened in Robeson County, N.C., as Donald Trump started to gain traction in the presidential campaign. As Bo Biggs, treasurer of the county’s Republican Party, tells it, ‘People were stealing [Trump] signs to put them in their own yard.’ Trump won North Carolina and its 15 electoral votes by claiming seven rural counties that had voted for Barack Obama in 2012. Among them was Robeson County, the state’s largest county, and one of its poorest and most violent. An easy explanation of Robeson County’s transition from blue to red focuses on economic stagnation and cultural despair. But from another vantage point, one my brother Jordan Allott and I saw during a recent visit to the county, Trump’s 5-point victory had more to do with his ability to tap into the same desire for hope and change that Obama retained in an 18-point victory four years earlier.”