I mean, he never really started pretending he wasn’t racist, when you really think about it. Trump’s entire candidacy was predicated on racism. His first big policy speech was about how Mexicans were rapists. He called to ban all Muslims. He defended his demand that the Central Park 5 receive the death penalty and kept on calling African-Americans “the blacks”. Basically, Trump has always been nakedly and unabashedly racist, and so him continuing to be racist shouldn’t really be a shock.
But (and as a wise man once said, “I like big buts and I can not lie”), for white people, Trump’s particular brand of racism was just toned down enough that Trump could mistaken for their prejudiced grandfathers, who weren’t really racist, but just “grew up in another time”. “Another time” being a time when it was okay to be racist. But whatever. The fact at hand was that for most white people, even white people who claimed to hate Trump, Trump was just on the right side of being a racist that he was still seen as equally racist as Hillary Clinton. How, I’ll never know or understand (Hillary Clinton be peripherally involved with the 90s Crime Bill law was equal to Trump literally calling for the lynching of black men who were later shown to be innocent because reasons), but that’s America for you.
Racist and sexist as fuck. Often both at the same times.
It took at least three years to get to the point where Trump’s gleeful racism finally struck enough of a chord with white people for them to get fed up and start demanding action. Coincidentally, this happened around the same time that Trump, devoid of actual policy goals and bereft of anything else but divisive rhetoric has chosen to not even pretend to be “the least racist person” in the world. He might still say it, but he’s not even pretending to believe it.
The truth is that, while pundits and analyst and Political Twitter all tried to figure out how Trump got into the position he was in, Trump has known all along. Look at his strategy nowadays. Unable to travel the country to ramble for two hours in front of an excited crowds of tens of dozens of people, and cowering away from the daily press briefings that exposed him as a failing clod, Trump’s only real avenue to get his message out is Twitter, where he frequently retweets racists, white supremacists and other villains.
Trump, in a moment of irony befitting only an emperor who not only knows he’s naked, but is basically shaking his junk in America’s collective faces, referred to a planned repainting of Fifth Avenue with the worlds “Black Lives Matter” as a “symbol of hate”. At the same time, he’s threatening to veto any legislation that might tangentially require the U.S to stop naming military basis after losing ass losers who lost, and forcing the Department of Homeland Security to create task forces to protect Confederate statues.
Trump is not doing this on accident. Trump knows better than anybody that the only thing he had going for him in 2016 was being a racist prick in front of thousands of people who agreed with him. That was all he had. He didn’t tap into “economic anxiety” or speak to blue-collar voters or convince people that the man who put meat products in freezers inside Sharper Image that he was going to negotiate fair trade deals because he always makes the best deal.
All Papaya Pol Pot had was the racism, and just enough interference to tweak the election is favor. Trump wanted to fail. He was begging to fail. He never believed for a second he would win, until he was projected to win, at which point he convinced himself that he had always wanted to win.
He wanted the trapping of the Presidency. The fancy dinners, the parades, the pomp and circumstance. He never wanted the actual job of the Presidency.
Now it’s 2020, and his polls suck, and his prospects look bleak. Trump can’t pivot because he has nothing to pivot to. All he has is the racism.
So he’s doubling down on it. He’s convinced the racism is what helped him win in 2016 (and he’s not wrong), and he’s going to tap that well until it’s fucking dry. Given a softball question from Sean Hannity about how his second term would go, Trump couldn’t even form a coherent response.
What he is doing is retweeting videos with his supporters screaming “white power!”. What he is doing is putting out of context videos of violent black people on Twitter. What he is doing is talking about the history of the Confederacy, saying dubious things like “those that don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it”, which…I mean, the Confederacy lost. What exactly is America doomed to repeat in this case? Laying the SmackDown on a bunch of Confederate candy asses?
What he is doing is retweeting photos of Chad and Karen pointing guns at protesters. What he is doing is speaking to the part of the country that he knows are most likely to vote for him.
The racists.
And so Trump isn’t really trying to act like he’s not racist anymore. He’s given up pretending that he is the least racist guy in the world. Trump moving forward is all about gathering his base and hoping enough of them making to the polls can duplicate his narrow win from before.
The problem there being that his “strongly approve” rating from Republicans is down 5 points according to two polls. He’s bleeding support from independent voters.
Incredibly, probably for the first time in forever, it seems as though we’ve finally gotten to the bottom of Trump’s barrel full of racism. He can’t go any lower, and people, even in small margins, are starting to come to grips with what he really is.
And all it takes is enough of those people going from Trump to Biden for him to lose.
The question now is at what point does his base become so thoroughly discouraged by his prospects that they ditch him and call him a loser that they never liked in the first place.
That moment is coming faster than Trump would ever like to admit.
He’s poisoning the well for the GOPers too as his base IS their base.
I won’t go so far as to say that he’s going to kill the GOPers, but he’s made their job 100 times worse.
Throw in the fact that his indecision and stupidity (and thanks to the Kochs and DeVos too because they were so desperate to keep the money flowing) allowed CoVID19 to spread deep within Trump supporting rural areas. He’s also literally killing off his supporters too.
I said it yesterday but I’ll say it again. I still can’t get over the lies about how the White House says it was a ‘scramble’ to locate Trump on the golf course to get him to delete his “white power” tweet. Just admit ya’ll wanted it out there for 3 hours to pander to his lowest base. It’s so easy to prove that’s a lie. Not only is the freaking President always available, say for some CRAZY reason you couldn’t reach anyone on the golf course. You could DRIVE over there in 35 minutes and find him faster than 3 hours.
I hope the DNC (probably too much to hope for) or The Lincoln Project (much more plausible) revives Clinton’s “3 AM Phone Call” ad from 2008. Call it “The 3 PM Phone Call.” And instead of her failed “Who would you want to pick up the phone?” tagline, since a majority of Democratic primary voters said, “Barack Obama,” the tagline could be, “Wouldn’t it be nice if someone picked up the phone?”
[The camera shows a cell phone in close-up, and slowly widens the angle, revealing the figure of an obese orange man, sitting on the toilet, tweeting so furiously he does not realize his phone is ringing.]
No one is more adept at brutal self-owns than Donald Trump is.
At this point “I didn’t take it down because I saw no reason to take it down” would have been a better answer.
trump and his base of deplorables will continue to chant white power slogans, use slurs, say the quiet parts out loud, and still declare they aren’t racist. Because in spite of all evidence to the contrary, they believe in the myth of white supremacy. They think the lies they spew are truths. And how can telling the truth be racist? They rest of us are just too PC, snowflakes and sheeple. Of course they’re delusional and ignorant at best, or psychopaths.
It’s all of the above.
I think the problem is that Trump is actually too racist for a significant percentage of the racists. Let’s call them “casual racists” for lack of a better term. It’s not that he’s saying the quiet parts out loud, he’s screaming the quiet parts at the top of his lungs. And the casual racists are getting embarrassed, because it’s ever so difficult to be casually racist when some orange idiot keeps drawing attention to racism, over and over again.
I have an “acquaintance” from a previous job that friended me on Facebook some years ago. Which was fine, until Obama was elected. Then every day brought new and ever more ridiculous anti-Obama screeds, and I thought, hey, this asshole isn’t even dealing in facts any more. Why is he so vehement? I realized it’s because he’s a racist (I’m white and slow — it took a minute, okay?). Now he’s not out and proud, no, no. He keeps his racism on the down-low, where it’s hard to see. He pretended these were “policy” issues, and they weren’t, because they were mostly stupid. And I blocked him, because who needs that shit? But I didn’t unfriend him, because perversely, I like to keep periodic tabs on assholes. Just in case.
Fast forward to Trump. I checked this dude’s feed a while back, and he’s now posting anti-Trump screeds. And I thought, isn’t that what you wanted? Dude, you’ve got a Fuhrer leading your fucking KKK parade. But I realized that he didn’t really want a parade. See, that shit is obvious. Parades are hard to hide. And when you’re marching in a parade, everyone can see you. No, his brand of racism is redlining and lending discrimination and passing over people of color for jobs and voting against affirmative action, but he can still look like an upstanding businessman and pretend he’s not a bad guy.
Donald Trump has ripped off the scab over “casual” racism (I know, it’s anything but casual). He’s fucking things up for the ones who are perfectly happy to have people of color mowing their lawns and cleaning their houses, but don’t want the same people living in their neighborhoods or attending their schools. Because they’re not racist, you see, they just think “those” people should stay in their place.
That’s the group Trump is losing now. Not every Republican is Stephen Miller. Some of them just want to hide in their gated communities and get their pools cleaned and the floors vacuumed and pretend they “don’t have a racist bone in their bodies.” And Trump is blowing their cover.
I want him to lose Texas.
I mean, if he loses Texas, the race is over. Like, horribly over. Like there’s nothing Trump can do to recover.
I don’t think it’ll happen, but it would hilarious if somehow it did.
…oh, please…I’m not saying it would make up for any of his shit or anything…but just the thought alone put a smile on my face
…can you imagine?
…wouldn’t it be nice not to have to?
…hell, if he loses Texas I might even have to reconsider the whole agnostic thing
He won Texas by 9 points in 2016 and it was one of the many states the Clinton campaign wrote off. I don’t think Biden has done much of anything there either so far and he’s a little behind Trump, and in one poll ahead of Trump (well within the margin of error, but still.) Of course four months is like four decades in Presidential politics so who knows what will happen between now and the election.
I mean the chances of it are so unlikely that it barely bares talking about, and I don’t blame the DNC or Joe Biden’s campaign for not even attempting to try and flip the state. Doing so would likely be a waste of resources that can be put towards flipping PA, MI and WI, which, if the 2016 map stays the same, are all Biden needs to win.
But CHRIST would it feel good if somehow it happened. The fact that it’s even close, even four months out from the election, is so fundamentally insane that it could still be used to make fun of Trump. Trump is such a flailing clod that the possibility of Texas being in play is something we can actually talk about as an unlikely but not entirely implausible situation.
…& it kind of seems like despite the first bit of that being true (too unlikely to be worth plowing serious resources into) everything we know about the man says that it could pay off simply by taking advantage of being able to use the idea to rent space in his head for free without any kind of real outlay in financial or campaign resource terms
…just have people throw the possibility around here & there enough for a few hashtags to pop up & eventually Hannity or one of his “& Friends” (it says so right there in the show title & that’s about as near to the concept as he’s ever been so they might be his best friends in the world) might even bring it to his attention
…of course then he might just stroke out & drown in a bowl of cereal which would make the election a whole different ballgame…what am I saying…he doesn’t eat cereal…but you know what I mean
He could flip Iowa; Trump’s campaign is dropping coin there for ads because iirc in my off and on again reading today, recent polls show biden up a point on Trump. I think?
Trump and the campaign are not very good with The Cyber (the idiot that brought us the 1 million tickets reserved for the Tulsa rally flop was supposed to be a social media genius.)
So what do they do? The Trump campaign is forced to buy TV ads in Houston and Dallas, two of the most expensive media markets in the country, to shore up what should be a gimme. Not to influence Dallas and Houston, but to get the message out to the vast suburban and exurban areas.
Now if the DNC were nimble at all, which it most assuredly is not, they could spend 1/10th of that on various social media platforms and get 100X the reach. The Trump TV ads would reach older TV-watching voters who were going to vote for him anyway, assuming they survive Covid-19. The DNC/Biden social media campaigns could reach everyone under the age of say 65. I’m in my 50s and I’m not “extremely online” but it filters through, even to this fossil.
California used to be reliably Republican. Between 1952 and 1988 they only went for one Democrat for President, in 1964, when they went for Johnson over Goldwater. Then in 1992 they went for Clinton and have been voting Democratic ever since. Texas is behind California but it’s following a lot of the trends. A huge influx of out-of-staters for many reasons. Explosive population growth. Rapid urbanization. The cities (most of them) turning bluer and bluer. I think we’ll see Texas going blue sooner rather than later. Maybe not in 2020, but the day probably isn’t that far off.
The polling for senior citizens has flipped compared to 2016, which is a big reason why Biden is now leading in Florida. My parents say that seniors are very worried about COVID, don’t like politicians who put down masks, and hate the talk about how some people (as in, senior citizens) need to die to get the economy going.
There are still die hard Fox News types, but most seniors watch a lot of TV news from all over, and don’t like what they see at all.
Texas ranks next to dead last in voter turnout. Maybe this year will be different for some reason.