Will Trump’s use of bigotry to rally anxious white voters end with his term of office?
The presidential campaign of 2020 ended in a race war between the Democratic and Republican Parties, focused on America’s history of white supremacy, the demand for racial justice, and fear of who will now lead the country at such a moment. This was a war of choice for Donald Trump and the Republican Party, and they lost. Joe Biden won by more than six million votes nationally and by the same majority as Trump achieved in the Electoral College in 2016. As president of the United States, Biden will have an outsized role in defining Trump’s corrupt and racist presidency and the issues the country must address.
The role of race in the election was a choice for Democrats, too. It was a moral choice. After the murder of George Floyd and the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor and pervasive protest marches, Democratic leaders joined the marches and House Democrats passed the Justice in Policing Act. Joe Biden chose an African American woman as his vice president and devoted a major part of the Democratic Convention to the fight for racial justice. He closed the campaign with an ad where Biden said, “Black Lives Matter,” and promised he would address the country’s racial inequities. And after winning, he said one of his highest priorities was addressing “systemic racism.”
Campaigns are fights to define the choice in the election. Biden wanted voters to choose a leader who would get COVID under control, protect the Affordable Care Act, unite the country, and address America’s racial divide, but Trump focused relentlessly on race.
Trump attacked the Black Lives Matter protests, called out peaceful protesters as looters, defended the police no matter how extreme their abuses, and invited white nationalists and Trump supporters to liberate Democratic-run cities and states, and defend the election from being stolen in Black-run cities.
Those attacks grew more politically damaging to Democrats when peaceful protests were accompanied by looting, overnight violence, and occasional attacks on police, even when Biden forcefully condemned violence of any kind. There are, of course, varied explanations for the rise in violent crime in the major cities, but Trump does not do nuance. According to Trump, Democrats winning this election means liberals and Blacks in charge of the cities, and the breakdown of law and order.
The full article can be read at The American Prospect.