Is Racism Finally Catching Up To the GOP?

 

     It's long been a facet of conservative politics that as long as there have been conservatives, there's been racism. Whether they were southern Democrats in the 19th century or today's Republican party, racism has been a feature. Now, by that, I do not mean that all conservatives are racist. I don't believe for a minute there's a racist bone in Liz Cheney's body and the late Arizona senators Barry Goldwater and John McCain never ran on racist platforms. And the list goes on and on.

     And, yes, there have been some Democrats who'd continued espousing racist talking points, holdovers from the Dixiecrat era (I'm thinking of the late Zell Miller, who was never a real Democrat). But more often than not, much more often, when we see racism injected into the national discourse, especially during election years, they're advanced by Republicans. That's a plain fact of political life and it's not even worthy of debate.

     But we're seeing a ramping up of racist and xenophobic rhetoric coming from the top of the Republican ticket and that's obviously by design. Trump and Vance seem to think we're still the same United States that was taken in by Reagan's cynical use of Philadelphia, Mississippi to kick off his 1980 presidential campaign and his stereotypes of the welfare queen.

     And, to race baiting scumbags like Trump and Vance, there may be reasons to believe that. Many racist voters still haven't recovered from the fact that the nation was run by a black man for eight years. And those very same racist holdovers from the Obama years are just as outraged that at the top of the Democratic ticket is another Black person and a woman, at that.

     Racism, and race-based politics, for a brief, shining moment, was a third rail. And using the N word is still the unholiest of unholies. That's not to say during those few post Civil Rights years that Republicans weren't willing to step on that third rail. But since Trump came down that escalator in June 2015, racism has come back with a vengeance. 

     Trump already had a lot of racist baggage to take down with him on that golden escalator. Over 50 years ago, he and his father, Fred, were hauled into federal court by HUD over their refusal to rent apartments to Black applicants. And then there was the Central Park Five travesty in which a white woman was raped and beaten to within an inch of her life. Trump wasted no time in taking out tens of thousands of dollars of full-page ads. New York's biggest newspapers were all too glad to take Trump's money for ads that called for the death penalty even though the five minority youths hadn't been convicted.

     Years later, the real culprit confessed and the young men were released. Yet, to this day, even after DNA verification, Trump refuses to admit their innocence and that he was wrong because Trump would literally rather die than admit he was wrong about anything.

     Then there was the birtherism, in claiming Obama wasn't born in America. As much as he hated John McCain, it never would've occurred to him to make hay over the fact that McCain was born in Solo Coco, Panama Canal Zone because McCain was as white as they came.

     In 2020, he tried to scare white suburban housewives into believing that unnamed individuals would build low rent apartment buildings in their neighborhoods (which doesn't happen, ever, and one would think a real estate developer would know better. In fact, Trump was originally all for that idea).

     And yet, no matter deeply Trump slides into dementia, deep down in that reptilian brain of his, it can't ever be said that he doesn't know his base. 

     And now, he and his running mate are attacking Haitians and Venezuelans in at least three different states. In fact, during the September 10 debate with Vice President Harris, Trump said,

     "We have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums. You see what's happening with towns throughout the United States. You look at Springfield, Ohio. You look at Aurora in Colorado. They are taking over the towns. They're taking over buildings. They're going in violently. These are the people that [Vice President Kamala Harris] and [President Joe Biden] let into our country. And they're destroying our country. They're dangerous. They're at the highest level of criminality."

     Again, this is coming from a felon convicted of 34 felony counts and counting but just to leave that aside for a moment, you don't need to be a genius to see that the common denominator is that Trump is once again punching down on people of color. George HW Bush learned that racism worked and he proved that with the Willie Horton ad. Lee Atwater shamelessly used it during the Reagan years.

     But there are signs that the tactic is backfiring.

     The MSM, to its credit, is at least pushing back on Trump's and Vance's lies. When Harris entered the race on July 21st, Black voters who'd previously given their support to Trump immediately switched to Harris. In a recent poll of over 600 Black Michigan voters, they were asked who they'd vote for and not a single one of them said Trump.

     This shows that Trump doesn't have nearly the support of Black voters as he claimed in his fact-free assertions. It shows that Black voters, who originally went with Trump in the beginning against all rhyme or reason, showed themselves to be very fickle. This shouldn't be too surprising. That's a demographic that gave him only 4% support nationally in 2016 and just 8% in 2020.

     And, again, the racist lies just aren't working this time around. Even other Republicans have been calling Trump and Vance out on their lies. Ohio's governor, Mike Dewine, no blushing liberal, flatly said that there's no truth to the lie that Haitians are eating peoples' pets or that they're living there illegally. And the Haitian Bridge Alliance recently filed criminal charges against both Trump and Vance over their incessant lies.

     In the latest national poll taken by the NY Times, all the battleground states are still competitive and very much up for grabs. The most surprising development was that Harris is only behind Trump by one point in North Carolina, which has never been seriously advanced as a swing state. And 1%, obviously, is well within the margin of error in any poll. Plus, the sinking blimp of Mark Robinson's campaign could theoretically have a deleterious effect on Trump's own race there.

     The bottom line I can infer is that racism is a nonstarter, even as much as the overturning of Roe v Wade. There are signs that the American electorate is finally getting sick and tired of the GOP's racial division. Voters on both sides of the divide are both concerned about the economy. I would think a vanishingly small minority of voters are going to be thinking about Haitians eating dogs when they go to the polls this November 5th.