President Donald Trump has placed racial animus at the center of his reelection campaign, and even some of his critics believe it could deliver him a second term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every successful modern presidential campaign has been built on the notion of addition, winning over voters beyond core supporters. But Trump has chosen division on the belief that the polarized country he leads will simply choose sides over issues like race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not since George Wallace\u2019s campaign in 1968 has a presidential candidate and certainly not an incumbent president put racial polarization at the center of his call to voters. Though Trump\u2019s comments generated outrage and even a resolution of condemnation in the House, the president and his campaign believe the strategy carries far more benefits than risks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cRegardless of whether his tweets are racist or not I\u2019m not saying they are or not he is getting the media to make these extremely liberal, socialist, foolish congresswomen the face of the Democratic Party,\u201d said Terry Sullivan, a frequent Trump critic who managed Sen. Marco Rubio\u2019s 2016 Republican presidential campaign. \u201cWhat he\u2019s doing here is sad, but it\u2019s smart politics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Educated suburban voters, especially college-educated women, and minorities in key states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin were already threatening to revolt against the Republican president. Trump believes his inflammatory rhetoric will strengthen his support among the white working class and attract a new group of disaffected voters who fear cultural changes across America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That approach is likely to face significant headwinds in those three key battleground states that he won by a combined 78,000 votes in 2016. Democrats will be far more aggressive in targeting female and minority voters. Most analysts agree that the potential universe of Democratic-leaning voters is larger, if they turn out. Trump is betting they will not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The president has proved adroit at crafting a hero-villain narrative and is now focusing on Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan rather than a Democratic presidential candidate. His challenge will be whether he can drive that story line successfully for the next 16 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump told aides this week that the controversy has cemented the four progressive lawmakers as the faces of the Democratic Party, believing it has boosted his chances at reelection. Far from backing away from the comments, he and his party are now casting the minority Democratic congresswomen as the real racists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those who already believe Trump is a racist and unfit for the presidency won\u2019t vote for him in the first place. For voters in the middle, Trump\u2019s team believes they can be sufficiently scared off the progressive agenda to cast votes for Trump or at worst, stay home in dispiritedness that neither party speaks to their issues. And for many others who didn\u2019t vote at all in 2016, there is hope that his dramatic presidency, backed by fear of Democrats\u2019 leftward lurch, will persuade them to show up at the ballot box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump\u2019s allies say they think many voters, both Republican and Democratic, are cool to the \u201cwoke culture\u201d of 2019, just as they were to the focus on political correctness in 2016.The Pew Research Center found in May that 8 in 10 Republicans feel too many people are easily offended over language today. About 4 in 10 Democrats said the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Donald Trump has placed racial animus at the center of his reelection campaign, and even some of his critics believe it could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":66383,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66382"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66384,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66382\/revisions\/66384"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}