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“That’s Racist!”
Yes, the phase is casually, dishonestly employed, and so debased as to be largely emptied of moral weight. This is another thing the left has ruined. At the same time, leftist identity politics legitimize preferred forms of segregation, racial favoritism, and ideological policing of color lines.
Demanding “safe spaces” with admission only to specific ethnic groups is segregation. Fiddling with admission criteria to boost or suppress college class membership for a racial group is racial favoritism. And this is raw ideological policing of the color lines:
Rasmussen just released a poll with the following questions:
1* Which is closer to your point of view – that President Trump is a racist or that his opponents are accusing him of racism for political gain?
2* Is it racist for a white politician to criticize the political views of a politician of color?
3* Does the term racism refer to any discrimination by people of one race against another or does racism refer only to discrimination by white people against minorities?
If you have paid attention to the changing tone in our schools, translating into activism around campus and in city government, you will not be too surprised at the results. The answers are a real mixed bag for our body politic. As PJMedia reports Rasmussen’s results:
While 80% of Democrats believe the president is a racist, 85% of Republicans think the racism charges by his opponents are politically motivated. Voters not affiliated with either major party are evenly divided on the question.
Thirty-two percent (32%) of Democrats, however, say it’s racist for any white politician to criticize the political views of a politician of color. That’s a view shared by just 16% of both GOP and unaffiliated voters.
Among all voters, 22% think it’s racist if a white politician criticizes the political views of a politician of color. Sixty-eight percent (68%) disagree, while 10% are undecided.
Surely this makes the new version of the “race card” self-defeating for Democrats. Or does it? Calling President Trump a racist works in solidly Democrat districts. Indeed, if you are a strong “D” district congresswoman who does not call him “racist,” you are out of step with your constituents. If you mash the “Trump racist” button, you are fending off any serious primary challenger and may forecloseing any long-shot Republican challenge.
At the same time, President Trump and any Republican member who votes “no” on House “Trump racist” posturing votes, benefits in solid Republican districts. Now here is the depressing part: In competitive districts, there is no clear winner on this play. Contrary to pom-pom punditry, the math is what it is on this question. If there are a roughly even number of R and D voters in a district, then the independents will carry the day, and on the “Trump racist” play, independents are … evenly divided!
Now, if we pivot to the dynamic of President Trump and Congresswoman Liz Cheney hammering the “Squad,” this would seem to be a big winner for Republicans. Even in solidly Democrat districts, at most 32% of voters will presume that a white politician’s criticism of a “politician of color” is racist. Lead-pipe cinch winner for President Trump and the 2020 House GOP, right? Likely, yes, but look very closely.
Is this an issue that motivates one side more? Is it firing up one side to engage, while the other side responds by a shoulder shrug, an eye roll? The 2016 presidential election came down to Donald J. Trump flipping three reliably Democratic states by a few tens of thousands of votes. He knows that he will not have a catatonic Democratic Party failing to actively contest those states again.
President Trump has worked every day to expand the competitive electoral map. Understand his constant recital of great good news for African-American, Latino, and Asian-American employment. Look again at his two high-profile events, first celebrating prison sentencing reform and then celebrating the Second Change Hiring initiative. President Trump has done more of substance for African Americans than any other Republican president since Grant. He has vastly outperformed every Democrat since at least LBJ, including former President Obama.
This has thrown the Democrats into reactive mode, tipping their ideological hands completely. President Trump, as a counter-puncher. with a basic fight strategy of doing well by doing good for forgotten Americans, has continued to operate inside the OODA loop of every opponent. So, why not just break out the balloons and confetti now?
President Trump is showing, by his actions since his election, that he knows he must get more votes in the right states in 2020 to repeat, let alone, improve on his 2016 performance. The same baseless accusations that are generally rejected by Americans have resonance, have some power, in the deepest blue precincts. How does Trump close the deal with the African Americans he expects to gain, when the Democrats are pounding away to make him toxic in urban areas? Will this desperate move drive up Democrat turnout enough, and keep traditional Democrat voters on their side, to overcome the Trump voters in the rural and exurban areas?
Expect more of the same between now and November 3, 2020. As Larry Elder is wont to quote:
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Published in Politics
In case you haven’t noticed, the Left has been playing the race card for years, long before Trump. Since Trump arrived on the scene, the screeching has been nonstop. Do you imagine that one more round of “that’s racist” is going to move the needle?
They already went full racist years ago. Pro tip: never go full racist.
As many people have pointed out, if Trump is a racist, he has to be the worst racist in history. He is also an awful fascist. What competent strong man would let so many people publicly criticize him?
So, 15% of Republicans think Trumps racist?
And I’m guessing from the numbers you provided that 40% of all voters think whites can’t question blacks?
No, it doesn’t work quite like that. The number, and I haven’t paid for access to the cross-tabs, is thusly:
0.32Democrat + 0.16Republican + 0.16Independent
We are given, from the quote, that that works out to 22% of all respondents.
Let’s be clear, most partisans just follow what their peers say and public media and entertainment emphasize. Caution won’t sweep it away, and since kids are exposed to the nonsense in most schools, and most entertainment, it will grow until we radically alter the public school system and get a bigger handle on media production. It’s not a matter of going back and forth around some firm center, it grows and will continue to grow until power is swept away from Washington and public schools.
Insightful analysis, Clifford. I hadn’t seen Trump’s strategy the way you laid it out. Thanks!
The claim by people like The Squad members that persons of color can’t be racists because they don’t have power has been out and about in the deeper Blue areas of America for well over a quarter century. The recent kerfuffles have simply served to bring the one-way street idea up to the national level. It’s a way of leveraging race as a form of intimidation, and it’s a loser of a strategy outside of deep Blue areas, if only Trump will allow The Squad and their supporters time alone on the stage to play it.
While it makes sense for Trump to prevent some type of rapprochement/detente between the angry progressives and Pelosi for as long as possible, in the end, he’s going to have to step back and run on his record, while allowing the women who think the U.S. is on the verge of a great woke SJW Socialist takeover to allow their freak flags to fly without attention being diverted by Trump’s own hot-button remarks.
When he makes the race about his personality versus theirs, he makes the 2020 election closer, because they all like to create controversy; if he makes it about his record and results in office versus what direction they want to take the country, he wins over the swing voters by 15 months from now, even if that means, AOC, Omar and the rest are getting more face-time on the news channels than he is.
I think that it’s quite terrible that 16% of GOP and unaffiliated voters share this view, which is actually a racist view itself.
So about a third of Democrats are openly racist nut-jobs, and about a sixth of non-Democrats are openly racist nut-jobs.
It’s only 8 am, but I think that I need a drink.
I agree. The most alarming thing about this poll is that the number of non-Democrats who agree with this statement is not zero. I gave up on the Democrats a long time ago but still had hope for the rest of us.
Thanks for that, I read your OP more than once and somehow missed the last line. Still don’t figure it but I’m sure you’re correct. Still an atrocious and disturbing number.
That’s so cute.
I’m sure it started earlier but for me personally it was 1989 when I began law school (after 1st stint in the Air Force) and started a Federalist Society Student Chapter. The vitriol was scary, but what was even worse was the sense of their total composure and confidence (both students and faculty). They had no doubts (whereas I have always lived with doubt). I’d had no personal experience with this sort of thing previously, but it was a couple of years after the Bork hearings so I was well aware that there were no limits. I have reason to believe that it had some effect on my legal career prospects and for that and other reasons I ended up back in the Air Force flying six years later.
30 years later it’s pretty much just tedious, but I worry about my sons now as “nice people from Minnesota” still seem gullible enough to fall for this nonsense.
I see I’m still using shorthand notation, and this is an area of common confusion.
The percentage offered for each group can only be applied to that group. If the Democrats were 40 out of every 100 voters, then 50% of Democrats would be .5 times 40, or 20 voters. To continue the example, the other 60 voters in the 100 would be Republican or Independent. If 25% of R and 25% of I people give the same answer, we have .25 times 60, or 15 voters.
Now we add the 20 Democrats and 15 combined Republicans and Independents to get 35 total voters out of 100, or 35%. The combined number turns out to mean fairly little because we are not a democracy with proportional representation.
That is, we don’t take a national popular vote and assign seats in the legislature proportional to the votes for a party. This is why I keep pointing to districts and to intensity of feelings (not measured in usual surveys).
Cliff,
Up until 1973 and the first quota-based affirmative action ruling, civil rights in this country was a matter of creating a proper prejudice-free standard of conduct and providing a reasonable means of proving your individual case. That year was the watershed when we crossed over into the twilight zone of the racism to prevent racism mentality that you are describing.
This crap needs to be ended. We may be getting what we really need to do it as a gift from a surprising new source.
The Rise of the Chinese-American Right
The Asians hate affirmative action with a passion and for good reason. It has been used to hold them back and hold them down unfairly for years.
Regards,
Jim
I’ve been immune to the Racist Card since the 80’s. Whenever I have someone try and play it on me I literally laugh in their face. I love seeing the confusion it generates. They have no ideal how to deal with someone who just refuses to play that game.
There’s only one answer when someone deploys the race card: Spooby.*
*Warning for profanity; warning for extreme hilarity.
I thought he was going to explain what a spooby is.
There needs to be a Rosa Parks moment which turns the tide of all the race card bullying in our country. I don’t really know what that moment might be, but until it happens I’m afraid the Democratic race card is going to keep paying off for them. The MSM constantly refers to Trump’s statements as racist in a matter of fact way, as if they’re reporting the factual content of the statements and not editorializing.
Trump could help things along at his next political rally. He could denounce all the race baiting and the infliction of guilt for political purposes onto people who aren’t guilty of anything. Then he would pull out a red hat with white letters. Everyone would think it was a MAGA hat but the letters would say: NOT GUILTY. That would be a good rallying cry into 2020.