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Trump’s nativism has always been his weak spot, and apparently he believes in it – hopeless. He COULD have gotten himself out of this mess by disavowing the policy and pointing out that it had its origins with Democratic legislation and began in the Obama Administration.
But he didn’t. He doubled down on it, like he always does. This time, I think, he’s really going to pay – because there is finally something he has actually done.
I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness - yeah, and a little looking out for the other fella, too.
dpbrewster said… (original post)
I call BS. You are correct as to the WHY, and I don’t disagree. But there was a good deal of actual racist dialogue, as opposed to merely oppositional, from the right. Quite frankly, speaking of the world as it is, I find it amusing that you ignore it or blithely sweep it away. And Trump continues to use such dialogue to his advantage. There is a very ugly undercurrent still at play in US society. And we ignore it at our peril.
Call what you like, The fact is that Barack Obama went from being an obscure Illinois senator in 2002 to becoming President in six (!) years, beating the ordained candidate of the hero of the Democratic Party and winning one of the most decisive elections in recent US history. In his entire career, he never lost an election or even suffered a career disappointment. Some victim of racism.
Also, since 2010, the rejection of Democratic attitudes and values has been one of the most striking phenomena in US political history. The Republicans now hold majorities in both Houses, control the Presidency, the Supreme Court, and 2/3rds of the governorships. That wave of rejection obviously has nothing to do with Obama’s race. In fact, he was the only winner in the pack, in 2012, against a relatively strong Republican candidate. If he suffered from bigotry, you’d expect him to fail worse than the other Democratic candidates, with all that baggage and race besides. But he didn’t. He outpaced them.
He lost popularity in 2009-10 for a simple reason. Having run on a platform of ‘hope and change’, he proved once in office to be one of the great establishment Presidents of our time – first embracing the financial establishment, then the Democratic establishment, in lending his popularity to the enactment of a medical coverage overall that was NOT one of the issues of 2008, and in a template that had been decisively rejected for decades. Worse, the sausage making was done in public. The Right exploded, and he was stuck with the Tea Party. That was a principled opposition, not racial. He didn’t deliver ‘hope and change’ – he didn’t even try.
I’m sure race mattered to a fraction of the voters, but the number of African-American voters who went his way out of racial loyalty had to be many times that. (I don’t blame them for that – I vividly remember the way Catholics supported Kennedy in 1960.) There is also that fraction of other voters who voted for him on a Mafic Negro basis – I know more than one. Race to the extent it mattered helped Barack Obama far more than it hurt.
The reactionary obsession with race and gender is killing the Democratic Party, as well as its snarky attitude toward American power. The one great issue of our time is the wealth divide. Rather than recognize that persons on the wrong side of it, whatever their race, have far more in common than not, they persist with their seating chart. Trump is both the best and worst thing that has happened to them. He is so obnoxious that they might pick up protest votes. But rather than acknowledge how much has gone wrong with the Party message, they obssess on Trump and double down on snark. Believing that race had any significant role in opposition to Obama is a symptom of that.
I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness - yeah, and a little looking out for the other fella, too.
