Trump vs. Clinton: A Danish Perspective

The following article from the Danish outlet B.dk features an account of a young Danish woman who came to the USA and worked for the Clinton campaign during the election.

Many thanks to Tania G for the translation:

Danish Nilly is shocked by the Clinton campaign’s arrogance: “It was unpleasant to experience the self-satisfaction”.

Nilly Taheri experienced a strong reluctance to understand Trump-voters when she worked in Hillary Clinton’s campaign office. A reluctance that shows the large gap between the cultural elite and the ordinary voter, she says.

It was when Danish Nilly Taheri knocked on the doors of voters in Miami that she first met the defeated Americans.

Behind door after door she encountered, to her own surprise, the same lowered eyes during the three weeks she traveled around in different states.

Those Americans were the cause of Trump’s victory, she says. The young woman is chairman of the Social Democratic Youth of Copenhagen, and is a law student — and she just got home after campaigning for Hillary Clinton.

Back on Danish soil Nilly Taheri is still shocked by the conceit she met amongst the Democrats working in Hillary Clinton’s campaign office in New York.

They refused to understand the motivation of Trump voters. They refused to open their eyes to what was about to happen.

“The Trump voters I met supported him with open eyes, and they knew what they were doing. They were very reflective. They were neither racist nor stupid. At the campaign office it hit me at 180 kmh how much difference there is between self-perception among the Democrats in Manhattan and reality among Americans out there. It was very arrogant that the people in the office, who had never experienced losing, rolled their eyes at those who supported Trump. It was uncomfortable to experience the self-satisfaction,” she says.

Nilly Taheri has written about her experiences in a column for the Internet publication “Pio”. Here she talks about a meeting with a man named John, an unskilled white factory worker who lives in North Carolina. He had lost his job because he had been replaced by “one of those smart robots”.

In him Nilly Taheri saw the doubts about the election that haunted many other Americans. Hillary was power, and Donald Trump was crazy. But the latter would shake up the whole thing, was John’s reasoning.

Back in New York Nilly Taheri tried to discuss the issue and raise awareness with people at the campaign office about why some Americans would vote for Trump. But the question roused no interest.

“They would not accept that people outside New York had real concerns about their future. But insecurity can lead people to do things they ordinarily would not do. Trump voters saw the established politicians as people who had failed them, and I felt that that feeling overshadowed all the bad things and critical stories circulating about Trump. If what he said was right or wrong did not matter. He became a symbol of change,” she says.

While everyone has been busy trying to understand why Trump was elected, it is Nilly Taheri’s personal analysis that it was the elites themselves who secured the final victory for Trump. It is therefore the elites who should turn their gaze inwards and learn more about themselves.

Another lesson of Trump triumph’s is that a feeling of insecurity is a key driver of the voters’ final choice.

“It gets people to vote for a man who is not going to do anything good for them. As a politician you have to get people to believe that you are going to create a daily life and a better tomorrow. I also hope that our own politicians learn from this,” she says.

In Denmark, the distance between Christiansborg [government] and ordinary voters is also much debated. Nilly Taheri believes, however, that despite everything, we should be happy that the distance between the two is not as vast as the distance she experienced in the United States.

“When I went there, I had naively imagined that I would meet the hope and optimism that we saw in Obama’s campaign. For me personally it was indeed inspiring with a possible female president, but it was not important to voters, as it turned out.”

33 thoughts on “Trump vs. Clinton: A Danish Perspective

  1. “It gets people to vote for a man who is not going to do anything good for them.

    She certainly read the people very well. This sentence, however, presumes what so many in Europe think: that Trump is only a huckster and that Hillary was the real deal. So she drank the Kool-Aid, too.

    • I thought exactly the same thing and had copied that quote to comment on it.

      It was interesting for me to talk late last week with an Australian woman who had taken a several week US motor home road trip with her mother. She said she was unsurprised by the Trump win because every small town they visited was full of people who supported him and who despised Hilary and the media for their contempt of them. She said these ordinary Americans opened her eyes to the truth about Hilary. They also frequently asked what people in Australia thought of Trump. She admitted the majority saw him as you describe, a huckster, but told them ‘they can’t help it – it’s only because Trump is painted that way by the media’.

      I quite admired how this Aussie lady (who I suspect is a ‘leftie’) was able to come to a calm, reasoned view of things and ‘allow’ American voters their right to vote for whoever they please without blowing her stack – so many can’t. They’ve drunk the Kool-Aid too.

      • I think Trump will surprise a lot of folks who see him as a mere huckster.

        Trump is intelligent enough to realize that in the past he had to play to the cameras for reality TV and the media perception of him as a person and a businessman.

        If his speeches, especially his victory speech, are any indication, Trump is much more sober and thoughtful than the persona the media created for him.

        I think Trump has the chance to surprise a lot of people.

        • I am hopeful that you are correct. Nevertheless, I worry about Trump as POTUS. He has been disdainful, with no evidence of real thought on his part, about matters such as free trade and environmental matters. No, global warming is not some conspiracy manufactured in China. And while I think the US has not driven a hard enough bargain in its free trade agreements, to unilaterally reverse agreements like NAFTA would seriously undermine the US economy.

          • While Global warming was not a conspiracy manufactured in China, it is nonetheless a conspiracy hatched by the left for redistribution purposes. Global warming has also exposed the corruption in grant-writing and the people who play the game must kowtow to the granting agencies. We all want a cleaner atmosphere but with common-sense applications to achieve it.

          • “Disdainful!!” TRUMP has been disdainful?

            You take my breath away; how then would you describe Obama?

            As for the global warming/rising seas scam–just that, a scam; and a way to extort huge amounts of money to be given to that most useless of continents–Africa.
            The earth is doing what it has done since the last ice-age. There are changes now and then over a period of years, which reasonable people live with, but somehow a large number of scurrilous people keep insisting they, and they alone, can fix the ‘problem’ .
            For money, of course!

          • COMMENTS

            You worry about Trump because you see evidence for his being “disdainful”?

            How about a “contrast and compare” with the previous eight years of Obama’s signature disdain? Particularly for the people he was elected to serve. Not to mention his open disdain for the rule of law, and his claim that the Constitution should not be a guide to making decisions in the Executive branch? How about his arrogant and cynical disdain both houses of Congress? Remember when Congress first met with BHO? That’s when they learned how his administration would be run. Bottom line: it was for them to learn that the sum total of his “cooperation” was to remind them he’d won. Obama does not play well with others. Never has.

            Trump is brash and impulsive, but he LISTENS. Obama never did.

            And the “manufactured conspiracy” of global warming?

            AGW is a huge fraud: a bunch of trumped-up “facts” were largely manufactured within the ivied halls of academe, whose denizens push for grant money to study this Henny-Penny-the-sky-is-falling scam. Meanwhile, the legacy MSM has promulgated “scientific” “proofs” that humankind is responsible for every natural disaster. Few hurricanes this last season? Anthropogenic Global Warming. Too many hurricanes in a given season? AGW again.

            So where’s the cui bono? The thoroughly discredited perfect storm among academe<-->media<--> government bureaucracy “experts” who are busy milking the taxpayers’ cash cow. There are billions to be made by all of them. And their “proofs” are, at best, misdirections. See here, from three years ago:

            http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2013/11/12/the-coming-revelation-of-the-global-warming-fraud-resembles-the-obamacare-lie/#21c23fd61660

            It’s wonderful that Trump has promised to roll back that huge mess. He’s begun with his decision to appoint a strong skeptic to head the EPA. Many of us are agnostics; we don’t believe in the received doctrine of AGW. We are certainly not members of The One True Church of Man-Caused Climate Change. Even the founder of Greenpeace has left the Holy Church to join the rest of us skeptics who’ve learned to live out here in the wilderness.

            As for your opinion about NAFTA, many would disagree with you. Here’s just one dissent –it lists six reasons NAFTA is a disadvantage and not all of them concern the U.S. But we should know if treaties damage other signatories, too:

            https://www.thebalance.com/disadvantages-of-nafta-3306273

            Could you give us a list of reasons why NAFTA is good for America? I’m not being snarky here; it’s a hinge point for many Americans and both pros and cons should be delineated. Trump has voiced his disagreements with this treaty. We ought to enter into agreements with others knowing the full list from both sides. I’m not so interested in why it might be good for other states/signatories; my concern is that anything involving our economy and trade ought to be looked at periodically.

    • If Trump sticks to his word and stops the US importing thousands upon thousands more Muslims then he will certainly have done something good for them. He will have saved thousands of them from being raped, for a start. The USA can avoid the rape epidemic that European countries have experienced simply by keeping out Muslim migrants. That alone was reason enough to vote for Trump.

    • Yes. Nilly Taheri seems to have drank the “Clinton Kool-Aid”. – I’m a
      Southern woman, and I have had ENOUGH of the corrupt Clintons.
      I had voted for Carter, once early on. When REAGAN ran, he told me
      America was a shining city on a hill, while Carter blamed ME for the
      “malaise” we were bogged down in while running his mouth at every
      turn. CARTER was the only “malaise” I saw! We were working every day
      that the Lord sent. We voted REAGAN and never looked back! We
      STILL have not, as far as I’m concerned, had either a BLACK or a WOMAN as President.

      No human being is totally perfect and capable of governing a nation.
      I believe when Christ returns to govern; it won’t be a “democracy” or a
      “republic”. He will rule and reign in perfection and in TRUTH; and we
      will like it.

    • you can call him whatever you like, all we did is change the sheets. one would have to WANT a change to even see the US needs a Miracle not a change. WALL wont be built nor will Immigrants go home. SEND them all home. We need our Companies and jobs back, dismantle the Federal Reserve, so much needs done. This is all in Scripture

      • To be fair to Obama: He created A LOT of jobs. Many people have three or four jobs these days. How can that be so bad?

        • I am sure this is “tongue in cheek”. Particularly since all those jobs obama”created” are part-time. A person needs 3 or 4 part-time jobs just to live.

  2. ‘a man who is not going to do anything good for them.’ Really? Is she a clairvoyant as well as bigoted?

    The behavior of the snowflakes and the bitter power elites demonstrates once more that the Left is mentally ill. They insist on holding beliefs that defy reality simply to give themselves a sense of identity. They are insufferably sanctimonious, conceited and full of condescension, like their Emperor Obama and the wicked Queen who lost her crown, the corrupt, venal, unhinged Hillary.

  3. So in essence she learned nothing?

    What does she think it would have changed if the campaign elites had tried to understand the motivations and the fears of those who were going to vote for Trump? They certainly were not going to change their policies, but maybe they would have lied about how they would change them more convincingly?

    Such is the naivete of youth…

    • She did learn something, though it is subliminal and will always be denied. She learned that Socialism (which is to say corruption and human misery) can only carry the day through the use of ever more creative and outrageous lies and suppression of opposing arguments/facts. It’s not that the ideology is bad but the marketing is inadequate. Victory through better marketing and mob authority. The Dem’s have internalized this as well, which is why we already see so many calls for abolition of the Electoral College and agitation to violence. To echo the GEICO insurance commercial: She’s a socialist, it’s what they do.

      • Tell folks who dislike the Electoral College system that they must also dislike their senators who are also representatives of a geographic region. It is impossible to logically be against one and not the other. In fact the senatorial system is purely geographical.

        • That’s because at the Founding the states were universally recognized as sovereign political entities in their own right, to have a voice in decision making, rather than mere administrative satraps of the Empire. So the socialists had to remove that impediment, ergo the 17th amendment delivering the Senate to the mob and ideological factionalism. with the 17th amendment in place all that is required to rule is to win 52 elections over a six year period, not hundreds over the same period.

  4. Well, she figured out exactly WHY people didn’t vote for Hillary (representing more of the same) and voted for someone politically unknown.

    Trump’s not perfect. Far from it. But he’s the only one who managed to defeat the traps that “the system” has in place against someone who wants to make real changes getting elected. Which, really, is quite impressive.

    Whether he’ll be able to deliver beyond that, we don’t know. At worst, it’ll probably be more-or-less the same as it would have been with Hillary. At best, it could be another “Reagan moment”.

    I’m hoping that some serious pushback might set Islamism back 50 years.
    Just that would be a huge plus, not just to the USA, but to the world.

    • Hillary was NOT going to “push back” at Islamlism. Too many
      Democrat votes from the Muslim “migrants”. Hillary was “in bed” with
      that dynamic, as is Hussein Obama. (When you live behind high walls &
      have armed bodyguards, you tend to turn up your nose at us “little
      people” out here in flyover country.) TRUMP said, “Hey, I hear you!”
      when we got sick & tired of our citizens being blown up by JIHADISTS!

  5. “Behind door after door she encountered, to her own surprise, the same lowered eyes during the three weeks she traveled around in different states.”
    Huh? I have trouble understanding why some door-to-door solicitees lowered their eyes. Shame at voting for someone? For whom?

    More surprisingly, it is revealed here that the Hillary campaign hired furriners — and not fellow North-American Mexicanos, but exotic Yuropeens. Is that even legal? Well, at least they’re “doing the dirty work that Americans won’t do.” Hillary, if you were going to hire foreigners, why lily-white Europeans, not dusky Pakistanis? Racist!

    • > I have trouble understanding why some door-to-door solicitees lowered their eyes. Shame at voting for someone? For whom?

      I don’t think it was shame; more likely, it was fear to admit voting for Trump . . . fear that their homes and property will be vandalized by the SJW fanatics and other leftists if they did so..

      • Not just the street thugs.. er… I mean activists. No one on either side believes that the administrative state is neutral. People fear audits, student loan problems, possibly EPA issues, EEC scrutiny if they own a small business, etc. A large portion of the population is rapidly manifesting the behavior of citizens of a police state. Keep the door closed, don’t make noise, ignore or shun your fellow citizen because anyone can be an informer; in an administrative state the citizen is guilty until they can prove their innocence, or conformity to Good Think. I think many people voted for Trump because they feel it is their last chance at throwing back the creeping darkness, even if they can’t articulate the sentiment.

    • Hillary hates blacks. So her place in Chappaqua won’t have black gardeners, or Japanese gardeners, either. I read several blogs recently that documented her hatred for blacks. Her venomous treatment of Donna Brazzile (or is it Brazille?) for having screwed up the rigged debates is a noteworthy instance. On election night, after Trump was announced as president-elect, she went on a drunken tear at her staff, physically assaulting people and throwing things at them. She had to be restrained by the staff and Secret Service. Not a nice lady. She chewed out her two lead campaign managers, John “Spirit Cooking” Podesta and Robby Mook, in language that would make a sailor blush. The woman is clearly unhinged upstairs, and her new Russian “reset” button, were she in office, could very likely be the “launch” button. Photographs have emerged of her over the last few days. She looks like hell. There are bruises on her face and her eyes are tensely lifeless. Her face is puffy and not nice to look at. A lifetime of working and wishing to reach the Oval Office has gone poof. End of life for her. No more foreign donations, no more $300,000 speaking fees. And no more Huma Abedin, either, since she’s effectively unemployed because her boss now has no career.

  6. “…imagined I would meet the hope and optimism we saw in Obama’s campaign.” Such is the thinking of a new ‘Dane’, (Persian, I think) who like most of her ilk is a ‘lefty’.

    Much the same in Norway, where the previous leftist government actually had the monstrous gall to appoint a Pakistani woman as CULTURE minister!

    Nilly Taheri will undoubtedly push her way into a future leftist governing clique, the arrogance and ‘pushiness’ of the ‘new Europeans’ is breathtaking! On the other hand, just possibly, her eyes might have been opened enough for her to see she is currently on the wrong side….

  7. The name Nilly Taheri does not sound native Dane to me. Anyone have a photo of this ideological tool of the Left?

    After reading Taheri’s thoughts on the American General Election it occurred to me that what is reflected in most of the commenters thoughts above is probably the same kind of thinking that the Allies had to contend with when Germany surrendered in 1945 and the undefeated Nazi doctrine became so very evident to those who were tasked with ensuring that there would be no further violence from the general German population, particularly among the young, and who had mostly grown up under National Socialism.

    In a way, Trumps victory, and that is what I would term it as, over the Nazi/Communist ideology that has taken hold of the West since the end of the Second World War is more a reflection of that earlier time. I just wish that we can finally put to rest, once and for all time, the destructive ideology that is now consuming many who protest Trumps victory on the streets of America today and has its roots in higher education that nobody seems to be taking much notice of.

    • It’s true. The name sounds Iranian to me, and a quick Google Images search confirms this. “Danish”.

  8. So many visitors to the US realized that Clinton supporters “drank the kool-aid” but they should also not forget it was the media who served the drinks. Those of us who characterize ourselves proudly as “Depolrables” swore off kool-aid years ago & with that “on-the-wagon” approach never read the popular media in the US with anything but a large degree of skepticism!

  9. I think the reasons are so vast that when you start to describe why you can forget other reasons. You can write a book but you can’t offer a concise reason.

    Did we ever include social media in the immigrant vetting process?

    A party that wants to bring ebola patients to the United States for treatment where it could get into the wild doesn’t deserve to be in power. Remember the guy who threw up on the street?

    Fast and furious. We forgot about that.

    I don’t put it on just Obama but the democratic party.

  10. Hucksters eventually get outed because… well, they’re hucksters… frauds…fakes…full of [it]. Trump is a man, certainly, with a carefully cultivated brand behind him, but you don’t achieve his level of business acumen by being constantly full of [it] and then being called on it by the very people you are doing business with… these are called charlatans. For all his warts and missteps, OUR President is not a charlatan but a man who truly believes in his country and its people. And “Social Democrat” (read demon rat) is really all one needs to take from this. Enough said….

    • “Our President….” Not really clear, but one hopes you refer to Mr Trump and not the incumbent in the ‘white mosque’.

  11. In one area where it was mainly Bernie country, then Hillary/Stein country, maybe there were a few Hillary bumper stickers and that was it….

    One yard in the middle of an older, smaller homed neighborhood I call ‘little Mexico’, had the white neon “TRUMP” sign firmly planted that would glow in the night, with two more signs of “Trump 2016” on both sides, and a “Hillary for Prison” sign alongside.

    A blue colored flag with ‘TRUMP’ in big, capital white letters waved above it all, when the wind caught it right.

    Brave soul I thought…and maybe a bit crazy…He must have a bunch of outdoor cameras for security, along with that home security sign I see, standing tall, right behind the entrance gate in the low wired fence.

  12. Colombia is one place where the equivalent of the “mainstream media” tends to reign supreme, hence the real surprise when the vote was “No” on the Santos-FARC “peace plan”. One couldn’t blame people for not understanding why anyone in their right mind could consider the admittedly imperfect Trump as preferable to Hillary. One Colombian friend was disturbed enough that I decided that we had better not talk about it any more. Then, after the election, she had a very different attitude. The reason was that one of her aunts, who lives in California and has been a U.S. citizen for a number of years, wrote her an email explaining why, after voting for Obama in 2008 and 2012, she voted for Trump in this election. Her reasons were quite similar to mine, but she was a better communicator. Also, I could not say that I voted for Obama, I just didn’t like his policies.

Comments are closed.