Trump’s
recent decision to go all-in on a base strategy of whipping up the
white vote has deeply unsettled people from the center-right to the far
left. We haven’t seen a platform of naked white supremacy since George
Wallace a half century ago. I’ve been further unsettled by the
reactions, and two things in particular stand out.
First, the morality. For decades, politeness has been an overriding priority of many Americans. There’s a rationale to this: don’t let things get too heated; let cooler heads prevail. Many pundits and some Democrats are urging everyone to remain polite, and for God’s sake don’t use the world “racist” to describe Trump’s language.
But his attacks fall outside a context in which politeness can be the primary metric. Sometimes a demagogue appears with institutional power and the only choice is stalwart, iron opposition. When a leader begins to turn on his people, especially targeting members of a racial or religious minority, it’s not a matter of the form of politics anymore. Real lives are at stake. They’re now chanting “send her home!” at Trump rallies. While that won’t affect any of the four congresswomen, it will endanger nonwhite immigrants across the country. Condemning this in the strongest terms is not impolite, it’s a moral obligation.
(It’s also shocking to me every member of Congress didn’t stand up for their own during an attack by the executive, but that’s a different post.)
Political tactics are the second issue—particularly the question of “electability.” Here I’ve been shocked by the focus on winning the very marginal working class white vote that may amount to a one percent swing in even white districts. Dems always reflexively want to have a bigger tent, but this is the wrong approach. Dems shouldn’t fear a base election—but instead embrace it. Their base is bigger, and it can be energized by the right appeal. This isn’t a faraway dream, either—it happened 12 years ago.
In 2008, Barack Obama got 69.5 million votes, almost five million more than Hillary did in 2016, and nearly seven million more than Trump. Obama would have crushed Trump, and not just in the popular vote. Take Wisconsin, where the conventional wisdom seems to be going after those nearly mythical pickup-driving middle aged white voters who switched from Obama to Trump. Appealing to them means sacrificing the excitement that animated the Obama vote, hoping there are enough of them to win a narrow victory in 2020. But Obama won Wisconsin by getting 270,000 more votes than Hillary did in 2016, in a state she lost by just 23,000.
The story is the same elsewhere. In Pennsylvania, Obama got 350k more votes than Hillary did, and Hillary lost by just 44,000. In Michigan, Obama got 600k more votes than Hillary did (!), and the margin there in 2016 was less than 11,000. We focus a lot on the slim 80k Trump margin of whites across these states and ignore the 1.25 *million* votes Hillary left on the table.
There’s a moral imperative to oppose and denounce the demagogue in the White House, and there’s an obvious tactical advantage to doing so as well. I don’t understand the Democratic skittishness we’re seeing in some quarters. The silver lining is that Trump isn’t going to be content with the dog-whistle approach this time around. It’s not going to be polite. He’s going so far that everyone’s going to have to pick a side—maybe even pundits who pretended Hillary’s email server was as big a story as Trump’s sexual assaults, racism, tax returns, and financial criminality.
First, the morality. For decades, politeness has been an overriding priority of many Americans. There’s a rationale to this: don’t let things get too heated; let cooler heads prevail. Many pundits and some Democrats are urging everyone to remain polite, and for God’s sake don’t use the world “racist” to describe Trump’s language.
But his attacks fall outside a context in which politeness can be the primary metric. Sometimes a demagogue appears with institutional power and the only choice is stalwart, iron opposition. When a leader begins to turn on his people, especially targeting members of a racial or religious minority, it’s not a matter of the form of politics anymore. Real lives are at stake. They’re now chanting “send her home!” at Trump rallies. While that won’t affect any of the four congresswomen, it will endanger nonwhite immigrants across the country. Condemning this in the strongest terms is not impolite, it’s a moral obligation.
(It’s also shocking to me every member of Congress didn’t stand up for their own during an attack by the executive, but that’s a different post.)
Political tactics are the second issue—particularly the question of “electability.” Here I’ve been shocked by the focus on winning the very marginal working class white vote that may amount to a one percent swing in even white districts. Dems always reflexively want to have a bigger tent, but this is the wrong approach. Dems shouldn’t fear a base election—but instead embrace it. Their base is bigger, and it can be energized by the right appeal. This isn’t a faraway dream, either—it happened 12 years ago.
In 2008, Barack Obama got 69.5 million votes, almost five million more than Hillary did in 2016, and nearly seven million more than Trump. Obama would have crushed Trump, and not just in the popular vote. Take Wisconsin, where the conventional wisdom seems to be going after those nearly mythical pickup-driving middle aged white voters who switched from Obama to Trump. Appealing to them means sacrificing the excitement that animated the Obama vote, hoping there are enough of them to win a narrow victory in 2020. But Obama won Wisconsin by getting 270,000 more votes than Hillary did in 2016, in a state she lost by just 23,000.
The story is the same elsewhere. In Pennsylvania, Obama got 350k more votes than Hillary did, and Hillary lost by just 44,000. In Michigan, Obama got 600k more votes than Hillary did (!), and the margin there in 2016 was less than 11,000. We focus a lot on the slim 80k Trump margin of whites across these states and ignore the 1.25 *million* votes Hillary left on the table.
There’s a moral imperative to oppose and denounce the demagogue in the White House, and there’s an obvious tactical advantage to doing so as well. I don’t understand the Democratic skittishness we’re seeing in some quarters. The silver lining is that Trump isn’t going to be content with the dog-whistle approach this time around. It’s not going to be polite. He’s going so far that everyone’s going to have to pick a side—maybe even pundits who pretended Hillary’s email server was as big a story as Trump’s sexual assaults, racism, tax returns, and financial criminality.
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