Minnesota’s Democratic attorney general, Keith Ellison, recently told a partisan audience that he’s worried about his reelection prospects. He explicitly framed his race against a Republican challenger as a battle between good people and bigots. As he described the composition of November’s electorate, he asked, “Is the base of people who believe in freedom and justice, compassion and mercy, the people, will the people who believe that in the equality of human beings, in the dignity of all human beings, will we show up and vote? Or will the bigots and the racists show up and vote?”

Perhaps Ellison has no choice but to engage in race-baiting smear tactics as a means of distracting from his party’s dismal record in the state. It’s probably easier to attack your opponents as racists than to explain things like a NewsNation report earlier this year in which the outlet revealed it had “obtained a 2021 audio recording in which Ellison pledges support to members of the Somali community — some later convicted in the Feeding Our Future fraud — while they discuss campaign donations to him and his family.”