"They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic – Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he [Trump] has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America."
I don’t know about you but I instantly cringed when I heard Clinton’s speech despite agreeing with her characterization. My reaction was purely political; I strongly suspected it would damage Clinton and her campaign and felt she would have been better off if she had never said anything remotely like it.
But, from today’s perspective of seeing Trump as President for three years, you have to ask yourself: was Clinton wrong in her assessment? Are many of his supporters white nationalists, racists, sexists, homophobes, xenophobes, and right wing-nuts who are militantly anti-immigration? Obviously.
The question you should be asking yourself is, so what? What I mean is, if you are a student of American history you should not be surprised by Clinton’s characterization since it is right on target. Come on, slavery is a dark stain on our vaunted political system. You think slave owners and those Northern bankers and manufacturers who supported them weren’t racists? Immigrant Germans, Irish, Italians, Jews and many others in succeeding waves were reviled and treated like vermin by white Americans. Japanese, Chinese, East Asians, and others were denied the right of citizenship because they were not white. Women were denied the vote for nearly a hundred and fifty years and the Equal Rights Amendment still has very little chance of passing. African-Americans were systematically terrorized by state and local governments during Jim Crow while the federal government and judiciary turned their blind eyes elsewhere while favoring white Americans.
My point is simple. A substantial proportion of Americans have always been white nationalists, racists, sexists, homophobes, xenophobes, and right wing-nuts who are militantly anti-immigration. If Democrats are to be successful in defeating that rapscallion Trump, we have to stop looking at those deplorables and instead remember the other basket of people in Hillary Clinton’s statement at that rally in New York City:
"But . . . that "other" basket of people are people who feel the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures; and they're just desperate for change. It doesn't really even matter where it comes from. They don't buy everything he says, but — he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won't wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they're in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well."
It’s that other basket Democrats/liberals must focus on, not the deplorables whose minds are made up and most likely won’t be changed. My great fear is that the present leading presidential candidates have not fully grasped what I believe is the most salient point in this election: appealing to the liberal base will bring the same results as in 2016. And that spells disaster for this country.
