Bannon explained why that speech boosted his confidence so much. He wanted the Democrats to go on playing the identity-politics game. Let them keep shouting “Racist!” They’re just digging their own grave. Because Americans, he explained, are an immigrant nation and mostly, in fact, they are not racists. If the Democrats keep playing the race card, the campaign would evolve something like this: Trump will say that the Mexicans are taking Americans’ jobs, that they are making wages fall. He will rage against them with his trademark bluntness. Hillary will respond with the standard Democratic reflex: The way Trump talks about Mexicans is racist, she will say. The voter whom Bannon is targeting will look at both candidates and say to himself: Here’s a candidate who’s talking about my problems; and here’s a candidate who says that it’s not nice to talk about my problems. No brainer. Such ordinary Americans will fall right into Trump’s lap. Now there’s a basket to collect the “deplorables.”
It would be the same with terrorism and Islam. Trump will refer to “Islamic terrorism”; Hillary will call him an Islamophobe. The ordinary American will ask himself which of them will be better at dealing with terrorism – the one who talks about it, or the one who’s afraid to call it by name.
“I told Trump,” Bannon says, that if she continues in this vein, “100 percent metaphysical certitude – you will win. One hundred percent.”
Bannon seems to have discovered something that for members of the American intelligentsia is not only strange, but practically incomprehensible: Racism is not an issue that interests the majority of Americans. The economy, not racism, was the issue of the election. What truly interests Americans is not the Mexicanness of illegal migrants, but the illegality of so much Mexican migration. “The Democrats,” Bannon told an infuriated Robert Kuttner at The American Prospect a few days before he was sacked from the White House, “the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2022-01-07 08:36 pm (UTC)It would be the same with terrorism and Islam. Trump will refer to “Islamic terrorism”; Hillary will call him an Islamophobe. The ordinary American will ask himself which of them will be better at dealing with terrorism – the one who talks about it, or the one who’s afraid to call it by name.
“I told Trump,” Bannon says, that if she continues in this vein, “100 percent metaphysical certitude – you will win. One hundred percent.”
Bannon seems to have discovered something that for members of the American intelligentsia is not only strange, but practically incomprehensible: Racism is not an issue that interests the majority of Americans. The economy, not racism, was the issue of the election. What truly interests Americans is not the Mexicanness of illegal migrants, but the illegality of so much Mexican migration. “The Democrats,” Bannon told an infuriated Robert Kuttner at The American Prospect a few days before he was sacked from the White House, “the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”