Abbreviated pundit roundup: Trump clings to racism as he tries to revive flailing campaign
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We begin today’s roundup with Jamelle Bouie’s analysis at The New York Times of Donald Trump’s latest campaign strategy — riling up his base with a “culture war”: Donald Trump made his name in Republican Party politics as a “birther,” a trAbbreviated pundit roundup: Trump clings to racism as he tries to revive flailing campaign
We begin today’s roundup with Jamelle Bouie’s analysis at The New York Times of Donald Trump’s latest campaign strategy — riling up his base with a “culture war”: Donald Trump made his name in Republican Party politics as a “birther,” a true believer in — and an evangelist for — the racist conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was a foreign-born, illegitimate president. Having stoked a wave of white grievance and resentment, Trump rode it, first to influence — let’s not forget that Mitt Romney came to receive Trump’s endorsement in person during the 2012 presidential race — and then to the summit of power as president himself. [...] [A]s he sees it, the path to re-election lies with the instincts that brought him to power in the first place. With enough racist demagogy, Trump seems to think, he’ll close the gap with Biden and eke out another win in the Electoral College. But it is one thing to run a backlash campaign, as Trump did four years ago, in a growing economy in which most people aren’t acutely worried about their lives and futures. In that environment, where material needs are mostly met, voters can afford to either look past racial animus or embrace it as a kind of luxury political good. When conditions are on the decline, however, they want actual solutions, and the politics of resentment are, by themselves, a much harder sell. Read more