© Joshua Roberts / Reuters
Student Trump supporters wear letters spelling his name before his speech at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.
A week after Donald Trump won the presidency, many students on the University of Delaware campus were still devastated. Professors at the blue-state public school where Vice President Joe Biden is an alumnus canceled classes, helped organize marches, and held discussions so that students could process their feelings and fears.
But the UD students who voted for Trump were thrilled. It's not just that their candidate won, but that the Democrats' reliance on "identity politics" failed. Hillary Clinton's campaign bet on the votes of women, minorities, the LGBT community, and other groups whose political positions are often shaped by the way they identify. But the Clinton campaign didn't just fail to get out the vote — it also alienated white people who don't like being told they're bigots.
Trump didn't win the election thanks to college graduates. The majority of them
backed Clinton — except for white college-educated voters, who went for Trump by a narrow four-point margin. Nevertheless, Trump voters on campuses across the country
view themselves as underground rebels fighting a corrosive epidemic of political correctness. Just don't expect them to wear their "Make America Great Again" caps to the dining hall.
"It's the new counterculture," said Jared, an undergraduate who wore a suit and tie to a recent meeting of the UD College Republicans. "It's the equivalent of being a hippie protesting at Kent State," he said, apparently referring to the 1970 Vietnam War protest that ended with National Guard troops shooting four unarmed students to death.
Comment: Another police office was was critically injured on Thanksgiving not with a gun, but with a skateboard: See also: Four police officers shot in series of ambush style attacks in several US states