Trump bet everything on racism — and lost

Discussion in 'Politics' started by FryDaddyJr, Nov 12, 2020.

  1. FryDaddyJr

    FryDaddyJr Well-Known Member

    It says something about our politics when the loser gets more attention than the winner. It’s been nine days since Election Day. It’s been five since learning Joe Biden won. For all that time, most of our focus has been on whether Donald Trump will concede instead of what election results mean to the future of the United States. Something none of us has had time to talk about while wondering if the president were mounting a coup was this plain fact: Trump won the white vote, and lost.


    Again, with feeling—he won the white vote, and he still lost. It wasn’t close either. The president won 58 percent of white voters, a demographic that constituted 67 percent of all voters, according to Edison Research exit polling for the Times and other news outlets. Yet the president-elect flipped states in the upper-Midwest. He flipped two red states (Arizona and Georgia). He won more votes than any challenger since Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. He won 5 million more than Trump. (I think he’ll double that.) The counting continues. Bottom line: Trump bet everything on racism, and he lost.




    Virtually no one is talking about this. All of our attention, mine included, is on Trump. It’s understandable! None of us has experienced what’s now happening. No president has refused to concede. No political party, to my knowledge, has gotten behind a president’s refusal to admit defeat. No one has had to imagine the dread of witnessing two people claiming the title of president of the United States. And yet here we are.

    That dread, thank God, seems to be waning by the minute. The president knows he lost. The Republicans know he lost. Trump knows the Republicans know he lost. All that remains, it seems, is figuring out a way to save face amid 72 million Americans who voted for him. (That’s the highest ever vote share behind Biden’s). Saving face, for Trump, means never ever—ever—admitting defeat but leaving in a loud huff anyway. Will he run again in 2024? No one knows. More certain is the Republican Party has no incentive to reform itself. Victory requires even more stoking of even more white rage against the slow muddle of American modernity toward greater equality and justice.

    Which is why we should appreciate this moment for what it is. As a reminder of where we started, allow me to quote at length from Jamelle Bouie. He’s at the Times now, but in 2016, he was at Slate. In a post-election piece called “White Won,” Bouie wrote:




    More than anything, Trump promises a restoration of white authority. After eight years of a black president—after eight years in which cosmopolitan America asserted its power and its influence, eight years in which women leaned in and blacks declared that their lives mattered—millions of white Americans said enough. They had their fill of this world and wanted the old one back (my italics here). And although it’s tempting to treat this as a function of some colorblind anti-elitism, that cannot explain the unity of white voters in this election. Trump didn’t just win working-class whites—he won the college-educated and the affluent. He even won young whites. Seventeen months after he announced his candidacy, millions of white Americans flocked to the ballot box to put Trump into the White House. And they did so as a white herrenvolk, racialized and radicalized by Trump.



    Bouie put 2016 in the stream of history. He thought, as I thought, the major parties agreed there was no going back to the politics of explicit white supremacy. Racism didn’t go away, of course, after the civil rights triumphs of the 1960s. It didn’t go away after the triumph of 2008. There was a sense, however, that a multiracial democratic republic had become a permanent fixture. “I thought this meant we had a consensus,” Bouie wrote, with a heavy heart. “It appears, instead, that we had a detente.”

    Perhaps it was, but the results of the 2020 election give us reason to reconsider. It’s true the president won the lion’s share of the white vote. But the other 41 percent of the white vote teamed up with huge majorities of Black voters and voters of color, overwhelming polling places, running up the popular vote to heights never before seen, making a statement that no one is seeing but should. Cosmopolitan America did assert its power and its influence in 2008. Having gotten its fill of the old weird racism, it did it again. It decided nothing was going to stop it from taking back the country. You don’t need a detente when you’ve demonstrated the power to continue winning.

    https://www.rawstory.com/2020/11/trump-bet-everything-on-racism-and-lost/
     
  2. Mopar Dude

    Mopar Dude Well-Known Member

    Well lookie there. It is a photo of me! And oh my goodness. Why my daughter is BLACK!! Oh dear heavens. That cannot be, can it??

    I have watched this whole racial debacle grow these previous four years and you know what? This fuse was lit on the left. Every chance one of you liberals had, you shouted it from the mountain tops. This is a monster and you sir are Doctor Frankenstein along with the rest of your ilk. Well, you accomplished your goal so how about shut up now so we can get down to some real healing here. I am sick to death of hearing about this mess that you made. I am willing to help clean it up. But you have to SHUT UP first.

    16363478-B4B6-47C4-996F-1496EA31DA85.jpeg
     
  3. FryDaddyJr

    FryDaddyJr Well-Known Member

    More than anything, Trump promises a restoration of white authority. After eight years of a black president—after eight years in which cosmopolitan America asserted its power and its influence, eight years in which women leaned in and blacks declared that their lives mattered—millions of white Americans said enough. They had their fill of this world and wanted the old one back (my italics here). And although it’s tempting to treat this as a function of some colorblind anti-elitism, that cannot explain the unity of white voters in this election. Trump didn’t just win working-class whites—he won the college-educated and the affluent. He even won young whites. Seventeen months after he announced his candidacy, millions of white Americans flocked to the ballot box to put Trump into the White House. And they did so as a white herrenvolk, racialized and radicalized by Trump.
     
  4. FryDaddyJr

    FryDaddyJr Well-Known Member

  5. JohnHamilton
    Pensive

    JohnHamilton Well-Known Member

    Is “racism” why Trump supported long term funding for Black colleges and pushed for prison sentencing reform?
     
  6. Mopar Dude

    Mopar Dude Well-Known Member

    As long as they feel they can get your goat, John.... These guys will holler racist at us from the highest mountains. All the while creating more and more damage along the way. But that isn’t their concern. Putting you and I “in our place” as it were is their only concern. Fixing a problem is furthest from their minds. This is all about creating chaos. Liberals thrive in chaos.
     
  7. JohnHamilton
    Pensive

    JohnHamilton Well-Known Member

    You will notice that @FryDaddyJr has mostly been talking to himself. Those who follow the issues know the truth. Those who are political hacks mouth the same cheap responses. Charges of “racism” have become a Democrat cliche.
     
    Last edited: Nov 15, 2020
    Mopar Dude likes this.
  8. FryDaddyJr

    FryDaddyJr Well-Known Member

  9. Mopar Dude

    Mopar Dude Well-Known Member

    He does a fine job of amusing himself.
     
  10. FryDaddyJr

    FryDaddyJr Well-Known Member

    A woman comes face-to-face with Donald Trump at a rally (Reuters)


    In a column for the Daily Beast, Jay Michaelson suggests Donald Trump “dead-enders” will never accept that the president lost his re-election because they are not psychologically capable of letting go of their deeply held beliefs.

    As Michaelson writes, Donald Trump has spent the last four years distorting reality to serve his own ends and his rabid followers have lapped up his lies because they comport with their own beliefs and cognitive dissonance rules their world.




    “Human beings will do just about anything to resolve contradictions between our deeply held beliefs about the world and the reality of the world itself. Cognitive dissonance is so unpleasant, so disordering and catastrophic for the ego, that no amount of absurd, tortured reasoning is worse than reality contradicting a deeply held belief,” he wrote before adding, “All of us try to resolve cognitive dissonance, but the Trump movement has been a years-long exercise in it. Election denial is its latest manifestation. But before that came COVID denial, science denial, climate denial, ‘alternative facts,’ the inability of Trump’s most devoted fans to see him for the obvious con man that he is, and, at the movement’s very core, denial of the social and demographic changes that are transforming America.”

    ON THE PODCAST: Election Day 2000... all over again?


    As the columnist notes, supporters of the president who have been buffeted by reality are increasingly reaching for far-fetched conspiracy theories which helped along groups like QAnon.




    “Cognitive dissonance is also a primary reason that people resort to conspiracy theories, which Trumpworld increasingly resembles, not only in fringe manifestations like QAnon but in the allegation of widespread fraud in the presidential election, which, of course, has no factual basis whatsoever and is, at this point, simply a conspiracy theory writ large,” he explained. “In this light, QAnon isn’t some weird, fringe phenomenon with no connection to populist politics. It’s a logical extension of the populist worldview. If ‘the people’ are actually the majority, then a sinister minority—Jews, ‘coastal elites’, the media, the Satanic pedophiles, whoever—is actually in control. It’s a short jump from that to full-blown conspiracy madness. And when the anointed messenger of ‘the people’ turns out to be a buffoon chiefly interested in his own enrichment, well, that must all be a ruse. Or a media conspiracy. Or whatever.”


    https://www.rawstory.com/2020/11/th...s-wrong-with-trumps-supporters-brains-report/
     
  11. Mopar Dude

    Mopar Dude Well-Known Member

    And I am the one resorting to conspiracy theories? Let me see if I can put this in a manner that you can understand..... HAHAHAHAHA
     
    toughcoins likes this.
  12. toughcoins

    toughcoins Rarely is the liberal viewpoint tainted by realism

    You’re right about all of that MD, except for the use of the word chaos. Chaos is omnidirectional disorder, hurting all . . . No, the malevolent energies of liberals are unidirectional, hurting only those opposing their agenda . . . That is not chaos, it is disruption . . . And they truly believe conservatives, hobbled by a foolish concept of honor, are incapable of employing the same.
     
  13. JoeNation
    No Mood

    JoeNation The ReichWing Abuser

    I think it is a canard to accuse Republicans of racism. I have met plenty of people that are Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and pretty much every political leaning out there that could be accurately described as having some racist beliefs. I've seen it all and some of it is innocent and some of it is highly intentional and still some of it is just people not really thinking.

    Now if you ask me about racist policies and institutional racism, my answer wouldn't be all that different from the types of people I pointed out above that participate in a system designed for them. You simply don't have slavery, Native American genocide, The KKK, The Trail of Tears, Lynchings well into the fifties, Jim Crow laws, Tuskegee, The Tulsa race massacre, Segregation, redlining, and all the other government sanctioned atrocities this nation has wrought on minority populations over the centuries and believe that racism isn't a lasting part of this country's fabric. You can give up trying to convince me otherwise. History is replete with countless examples.

    So I do not believe that witnessing Donald Trump giving a wink and a nod to white supremacy from the Oval Office on more than one occasion that we have put the institutional racists out of business. If anything, they are far more emboldened than ever by pretty much every statistic kept on the problem. Real racists are not that much of a concern on their own. Start encouraging them seated behind the Resolute Desk and you'll find this country swimming in their ranks. People that would never consider themselves racist will find themselves allied with stone cold race warriors. It is not even a stretch from here to there.
     

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