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.
And in case you’re wondering what Republicans have to say about Trump’s strategy, Dana Milbank examines their response:
The silence is deafening.
President Trump has gone in the past several weeks from racist dog whistles to an all-out Confederate bugle call with a rebel yell — and yet his Republican enablers in Congress continue determinedly to cover their ears. [...]
The silence, often attributed to cowardice, is really complicity. As I’ve noted, racial resentment has become the primary driver and predictor of support for the Republican Party, a trend that has accelerated under Trump. If Republican lawmakers continue to “fret privately” as Trump bases his reelection on clumsy racist demagoguery, they must be held to account for condoning the redefinition of the GOP as the new home of the white power movement. Their silence isn’t just enabling Trump; it’s also enabling white supremacy to hijack a major American political party.
At The Week, Damon Linker looks at why this strategy of racism and incitement won’t work:
One possible explanation for Trump's failure (so far) to inspire and lead a backlash is that much of the country is so angry at Trump for his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic that people have given up on him altogether. If that's how large numbers of Americans now feel about the president, there may be nothing he can say or do to improve his prospects.
Another possibility, pushed by many on the left, is that there's been a massive leftward shift in public opinion over the past few months. On this view, Trump hasn't been able to foment a backlash because most Americans support the protesters, their aims, and their tactics — and the prospect of people who view the world as they do taking over the government in January 2021 is seen as a bonus rather than a liability.
Philip Bump at The Washington Post breaks down polling on Trump’s base, which shows that many believe they are victims of “reverse racism” and fail to acknowledge the breadth of racism against the Black community:
Trump unquestionably believes that he’s been unfairly accused of racism; Trump also unquestionably believes that there’s a double standard on race that disadvantages whites. (See this tweet, for example.) As presented during his speech on the Fourth, he believes what the media describes as racist is simply a defense of the history of the United States. That Trump fails to see how that can overlap with racism is, of course, part of the problem.
On a final note, at The Los Angeles Times, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar takes a broader look at how to maintain momentum for the anti-racism movement:
The cry for civil rights is like a rubber band: Intermittent passionate public support stretches it forward, despite those anchored in the past pulling it backward. It stretches and stretches until that support starts to drift away to something shinier and newer — then it snaps back. The stretching has made it slightly longer, so there’s some progress — three steps forward, two back is still a step forward — but it’s nowhere near what was promised. And we await another horrific act to bring the unaffected back to help us pull forward again. [...]
There are things we can do, benchmarks we can insist on, to keep the freedom train moving ahead. Over the past few weeks I’ve heard excellent suggestions for reform in our systems of justice, policing, healthcare, education and economic security, all of which give preference to white people. We have no shortage of good ideas. Now what we need is a way to measure improvement, ideally through a website to monitor proposals, manage progress, identify obstacles and centralize information for everyone to access. A user could go to this site to see what legislation is proposed to prevent police brutality, who supports it, who opposes it. We could stay informed on the implementation of solutions and know when to apply pressure. Such a website could mobilize action and focus attention on practical solutions, providing a thermometer to measure the health of social justice.
The moral universe doesn’t bend toward justice unless pressure is applied. In my seventh decade of hope, I am once again optimistic that we may be able to collectively apply that pressure, not just to fulfill the revolutionary promises of the U.S. Constitution, but because we want to live and thrive.