Charles Blow has published a column of all columns to read this Thursday. While making the point in The New York Times that he has found something of comfort in Donald Trump’s presidency – he is too “intellectually deficient, in both practice and policy, to impose all of the heartless directives his campaign rhetoric threatened,” Blow laid bare the truth behind the worship of Trump.
Blow correctly pointed out that not only did Congressional Republicans not have a plan with which to replace Obamacare, but neither did Donald Trump. “He campaigned on applause-line policies: Anything that roused a response from his rabid adherents, he repeated and amplified. He never gave details because the details didn’t exist, and he wouldn’t have been able to understand and articulate them if they did.”
Trump support was never about policy. I have been repeating this until I’m blue in the face, while others condescend to those of us who live in “real America” to tell us that the Trump voter was concerned about economic policy. While a changing landscape of economic security certainly primed the Trump voter to be susceptible to racism and sexism, Trump’s policies were not the siren call, nor could more populist economic policies have lured the Trump voters away, had they been offered by a minority or a woman.
Charles Blow knows this (post-election polls also suggest this).
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“Trump was simply a megaphone for the primal screams of Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton haters flipping out over the cultural anxiety accompanying the ascension of women and minorities,” Blow writes.
“He helped people find the language and the platform to disguise racial worry as economic worry. He helped people who inherently, in many cases maybe even subconsciously, loathe women, at least when they aspire to equality or power, to loathe Hillary Clinton, a woman aspiring to more power.”
This is a powerful truth that won’t go away with economic policies that appeal to the poor and working class.
This is a powerful truth that hides behind the people in power at all levels of government, media, and culture.
Candidate Barack Obama was able to overcome some of this fear because he held a light up for hope and some people were willing to hear it from him. Obama’s charisma and strong character helped win national debates disguising latent racism.
The Russians were not helping Obama’s opponents, either. That’s worth mentioning.
Hillary Clinton’s slogan, “Stronger Together” was actually a good message and she had the work history of someone who meant it. She couldn’t overcome the hatred aimed at her, the way Fox News so easily used her as a symbol of a changing world where women have power and authority, and she had to fight the Russians, the media, and the Republicans.
This is happening to our country because our deep political fissure was easy to exploit. While there are liberal news sources, there is not the same level of almost cult-like epistemic closure you see in Right wing “news.” Liberals are not being fed conspiracy theories about Trump killing people in a pizza shop in DC.
The crazier the Right gets, the angrier the Left gets in reaction to the crazy. Putin took an easy shot at us, with the assist of Republicans and Donald Trump.
The comfort in this nightmare is, as Blow points out, that Donald Trump can’t get much done legislatively. Trump’s incompetence and ineptitude are the only gifts he offers his country.
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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