Can Anything Good Comes Out Of Trump's Ugly, Vicious Racism?

Lack of diversity-- count the ways

UK neo-fascist-- and Trump ally-- Nigel Farange praised Señor Trumpanzee's "go back" comments to AOC, Ayanna, Ilhan and Rashida as "genius... He’s remarkably good at what he does. He does things his way. But he is a remarkably effective operator." But not all rightists are as enthusiastic. Yesterday, Reid Epstein and Jonathan Martin, reporting for the NY Times, wrote that "Trump’s entire approach to people of color-- his attacks on political leaders, his campaign’s social media strategy targeting the black electorate, his ability to fuel black opposition but also demoralize some black voters-- is one of the most extraordinary political dynamics of the Trump era. No modern president has ever vilified black Americans or sought to divide people along racial lines like Mr. Trump, while also claiming to be a champion of their economic interests... Even as the president sows racial disharmony, telling four Democratic congresswomen of color to 'go back,' and saying 'no human being' would want to live in the 'rat and rodent infested' city of Baltimore, his re-election campaign is spending money on social media to put Mr. Trump before the eyes of black voters. The objectives are twofold: First, to try to win over a handful of black voters. The campaign intends to highlight low rates of African-American unemployment and the criminal justice overhaul the president signed, a measure that is already a subject of his campaign’s Facebook advertising. But the more clandestine hope, and one privately acknowledged by Trump allies, is that the president can make black voters think twice about turning out for Democrats or expending energy on trying to change a system some African-Americans believe is unalterably stacked against them... The risks for the president are that suburban voters who fled the Republican Party in the midterm elections will come out in force for the 2020 Democratic nominee, and that black and Hispanic voters in cities like Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Phoenix will turn out in far larger numbers than they did in 2016."

A Quinnipiac poll released last week shows that a majority of Americans now understands that Trump is a racist (although only 46% of white votes see him as a racist, many knowing full well that if he is, they are). According to Nancy Cook, writing yesterday for Politico, "Trump has regularly defended himself by saying 'I am the least racist person there is anywhere in the world.' He told reporters recently that scores of African Americans have been calling the White House to thank him for his work. 'What I’ve done for African Americans, no president, I would say, has done,' Trump said this week from the White House lawn, as he left Washington for an event in Jamestown, Virginia, that all of the state’s black lawmakers boycotted."

"I'm the least racist person there is anywhere in the world" by Nancy Ohanian

Trump won 8% of black votes in 2018, down from the 11% George W. Bush earned in his reelection bid. Washington Post reported Dan Balz wrote that Señor T "commands rank-and-file support in a remade Republican Party, but there are plenty of other indications suggesting that many Republican officials and strategists fear the effects of his disruptive behavior and tactics. Having attacked the four young House females, he spent last week attacking Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-MD), who is African American, and running down the city of Baltimore. Republican officials worry that, the longer the president continues down the path of nativism and of stoking racial division, the more the GOP is at risk of seeing its coalition shrink, eventually to become a party almost exclusively for and of white voters and particularly of older men."

One of the things I learned when I was working in a corporate situation was that diversity isn't just politically correct-- it made for better outcomes. A bunch of old white men meant failure. The freshness of an executive division with men and women, people of different ethnic and economic backgrounds and of different ages will mean more diverse perspectives and more success. So... as the Republican party gets whiter and older and more male, it will spiral into failure. Then will allow the Democratic Party to become more conservative, the way the party leadership wants. And that will allow for a more progressive wing of the Democrats to break off from the Republican wing and have a real working class-oriented Democratic Party. Soon.

The GOP isn't diverse, and says it needs more women. Yet, next year their congressional delegation will have even fewer women than it does today-- and no blacks, no Hispanics, no Muslims and no Asians