Of course there were racists, etc. voting for Hillary. Americans come up in a fucked up culture; xenophobia, bigotry, sexism is all part of the environment we're raised in. No matter how progressive we (think we) are, usually some of that lingers, maybe at the fore, maybe in the background, but it's rampant in gentrification, in the way we handle schools and medical care, in foreign relations, etc., etc., etc.
And I'm not saying that the link between each of Trump's platform points and some major problem was apparent to most - it's not. Lower taxes?! That sounds great! I want to pay less in taxes. Don't we all? Except if you dig any further than "yay, more money in my paycheck," and actually look at how taxes and the government operate, lower taxes results in fewer public services, and who gets harmed there? (In this case, many of the people who voted for Trump themselves, even.)
Here's a list of major platform points. Some we can write off as obviously racist or xenophobic, like the wall, like banning Muslims, like taking oil. Repealing Obamacare rather than trying to fix (or even expand) is deeply, obviously troubling; people finally began to realize that, too, so we can probably ignore that one. The trade partnerships and tariff points are where it starts to get tricky. Manufacturing jobs, too. But all of that is grounded in the baseless assumption that America is better just because and we deserve things just because. That's palatable without voters having to think deeply about it because of xenophobia, when in reality, imposing some of the proposed tariffs on, say, Mexican imports? Would drive food costs through the roof, not to mention impact many other things.
Possibly the only one of these that is free of underlying links to the problems we're talking about is leaving Social Security alone, but the GOP won't care and it was just a gambit anyway. Oh, sure, you could also argue that about bringing manufacturing jobs back, but there's really no way to do that without actually causing hurt - either through lowering wages or raising prices. I mean, it could be done if execs would take pay cuts, but this is America, breh - we have a god-given right to fuck everyone else over to make that extra million.
