Democrats and others — people of good will who are other than Democrats — are justly appalled that President Trump told four nonwhite and female extremely left-wing members of Congress to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” It was taken as shorthand for ridding the country in general of those who aren’t white.
It would in fact be obnoxious if he had said that, but Trump never said, “Go back where you came from and stay there.” What he said was, “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it’s done.”
Trump has made it easy to think the worst of him, and that’s his own fault. The best defense one can make against the complaints that he is fact racist or sexist is to point to all the white males toward whom he’s been even more vicious. In fact, nothing he’s said about the nonwhite, the female, and/or the immigrants comes close to what he’s dropped on the late John McCain and on his ex-friend Jeff Sessions, who are as white, Christian, and male as they come.
In our electorate, the balance of power is held by the 20% or so of the populace that doesn’t like Trump at all but votes for him anyhow, largely on the belief or presumption that the Democrats are or would be even worse. In 2016, the undecided quite rightly distrusted both parties and didn’t move until the last moment, 85% going for Trump as the shiny new object they had not yet experienced, against Hillary Clinton, the devil they knew much too well.
Now Trump is the devil we know. The questions in 2020 are, first, whether some of the sane things he’s done can outweigh the weird things he’s saying; and second, can the Democrats ever come up with a candidate distant enough from the base of their party so as not to scare most of the country to death.
“This is not complicated!” Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times recently. “Just nominate a decent, sane person, one committed to reunifying the country and creating more good jobs, a person who can gain the support of the independents, moderate Republicans and suburban women who abandoned Donald Trump in the midterms and thus swung the House of Representatives to the Democrats and could do the same for the presidency. And that candidate can win!!”
That candidate, however, doesn’t exist. The Democrats who flipped the House in the 2018 midterm elections were largely moderates who were in tune with the needs of their districts and who had the discretion to run as they wanted, which was in most cases far from the party’s base.
The national candidates are a whole different story. They are obsessed with race and gender theories, national healthcare, reparations for slavery, and late-term abortion, up to the very last moment and even beyond it. That last is a position endorsed by only about 15% of the voters, but their masters in Planned Parenthood demand that they support it.
No one can tell when the stable genius Trump will come up with another non-racist tweet that makes him look hideous. But this may still be another election in which those who don’t like Trump but vote for him anyhow become the deciders again.
