Digby — bless her — has her usual sensitive fingering of the fevered pulse of our current politics.
Why did the prognosticators get it so wrong?
Because they never believed the dogwhistles were real. After all, none of the Republicans they know are racist throwbacks
I’m writing mostly so you’ll go read her work.
There seems to be some misunderstanding of _where we stand now_, as I read current threads on DK. Is Donald Trump racist? Or is he just using racism to grow the power of his brand?
Does he encourage racists?
Is Joe Scarborough racist? (That he’s a shit-head is inarguable.) Is Mika WhatsHerName _not_ a racist?
All this bruiting buries the lede under a noise hash: America is racist, and Trump’s success is founded in American racism.
Here’s Lincoln Blades making the same point in Rolling Stone:
Trump won the GOP nomination because, unlike the other candidates, he never underestimated how racist, sexist and xenophobic Republican voters truly are.
It should not surprise, or even be debated. Here’s Digby providing some exemplary context:
The [GOP] base loved Palin and her crypto- white nationalist paeans to Joe the Plumber. And they certainly didn't mind that she was completely unprepared for the job. In fact it was a selling point.
Trump doesn’t do “crypto”. He does full-on, Hulk-Hogan, red American meat. Blades again:
They're [Trump supporters] behind him because he forcefully says the prejudicial shit they believe. He eradicated the dog whistle and replaced it with a large, bigoted megaphone.
Trump is our leading racist, leading our most-powerful political party, on a platform of open racism. And torture. And other War Crimes.
Digby goes on — again, read her on this, and everything — to make an important point. Not only that racism has always been there, has always been politically potent, and has always been used (infamously since that dearheart Nixon), but also that our deliriously one-eyed conservatives have completely misunderstood their supporters. It’s as though they forgot the cynicism with which their electoral elixir was mixed.
The problem is that many of the commentariat and the political establishment had fooled themselves into believing that the conservative movement has been inspired by ideological commitment to a set of constitutional principles, patriotic obligation and devotion to traditional values.
But it turns out that elaborate intellectual construct was never the primary motivation for many members of the GOP. What attracted them were the dogwhistles, the under-the-radar signals [ … ]
… the racism: the deep misgivings, misunderstandings, mistrust, ignorance, and hatred, of non-”Whites”.
Can we finally stop taking Republicans at their word? Can we abolish “values” conservatives? Can we abolish “traditional” has having _any_ political meaning? Can we look, directly, first at the Republican Party, and say “Their platform is openly racist, and their leaders openly support racism”? And then can we acknowledge that this is America, and address this problem?
American racism _is_ the problem. That’s what we should discuss.
(“Short-fingered vulgarian” is fine writing. It was penned by, afaict, Graydon Carter.)