Understanding Trump

BY ED FELIEN

Nixon said, Democrats move to the left for the nomination and to the right for the election, and Republicans move to the right for the nomination and to the left for the general.
But no Democrat has moved as far to the left as Bernie Sanders in more than a hundred years, and no Republican has ever moved as far to the right as Donald Trump.  Bernie Sanders wants free health care, free college, good paying jobs, etc.  Democrats haven’t heard that kind of talk since William Jennings Bryan.  Trump calls Mexicans rapists and wants to keep Muslims out of the country, and Republicans haven’t heard that kind of talk since before the Civil War.
There is a large part of the Republican base that has always been very racist and has hated foreigners.  It goes back to the formation of the Republican Party.  The Republican Party was a hasty shotgun marriage of two unlikely factions.  The Whigs in the North had been taken over by abolitionists.  Their principal enemy was the racist Southern Democrat.  The Know Nothings in the South hated the Northern big-city Democrats for their immigration policies that they feared encouraged German and Irish Catholics to come to this country and take their jobs. The two factions were united in their hatred of Democrats; it’s just that they hated two quite different kinds of Democrats.  Lincoln somehow managed to keep both factions happy, run the government and win the Civil War.  His Emancipation Proclamation, probably the most profound executive order written by a President, freed the slaves in the Confederate states but carefully excluded Kentucky, which was fighting on the side of the North.
After the Civil War the Confederate Rebel went underground.  He put on a white sheet and joined the Ku Klux Klan.  They called themselves the Invisible Empire and began a campaign of terror against the African-American community that lasted a hundred years.  And it wasn’t just in the South.  A Fourth of July gathering of the Klan in Kokomo, Ind., in 1923 had more than 100,000 members and their families present.  The state Konklaves at Buckeye Lake in central Ohio in 1923 and 1925 had more than 70,000 attending.  They never went away.  They never felt defeated.  They just went underground and resented anything that smelled of “political correctness.”
You might say, “But the Klan is just a joke today.”  Don’t bet on it.
Steve Scalise, the majority whip for the Republican Party in Congress, the one whose job it is to keep everyone in the Republican Congressional Caucus in line, spoke at a meeting in 2002 of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO), a group organized by David Duke, the white nationalist and former Klu Klux Klan “grand wizard.”  He told the Washington newspaper Roll Call in 1999, “The voters in this district are smart enough to realize that they need to get behind someone who not only believes in the issues they care about, but also can get elected. Duke has proven that he can’t get elected, and that’s the first and most important thing.”
Scalise is part of the Invisible Empire.
But racists and nativists are genuinely excited about the Trump candidacy.  For years Republican politicians have talked in code words (“welfare queens,” “those people”), but, finally, Trump is saying racist things right out loud.
David Duke told his radio audience recently, “Voting for these people, voting against Donald Trump at this point, is really treason to your heritage.  I’m not saying I endorse everything about Trump. In fact, I haven’t formally endorsed him. But I do support his candidacy, and I support voting for him as a strategic action. I hope he does everything we hope he will do.  And I am telling you that it is your job now to get active. Get off your duff. Get off your rear end that’s getting fatter and fatter for many of you every day on your chairs.
“When this show’s over, go out, call the Republican Party, but call Donald Trump’s headquarters, volunteer.  They’re screaming for volunteers. Go in there, you’re gonna meet people who are going to have the same kind of mind-set that you have.”
In December, Duke told POLITICO that Trump’s candidacy allows Americans to be more open about their racism.  “He’s made it OK to talk about these incredible concerns of European Americans today, because I think European Americans know they are the only group that can’t defend their own essential interests and their point of view.
“He’s meant a lot for the human rights of European Americans.”
Even before Super Tuesday, Trump felt he had the nomination wrapped up.  He’s already starting to move to the left.  He’s said he’ll support some kind of medical plan for everybody so we won’t have people dying on the streets.  He’s said Planned Parenthood does some good things for women.  He opposes the international trade deals that have let cheap foreign products flood the American market.  He has been the only Republican candidate to support Social Security.
It looks like Trump is certain to win the Republican nomination.  He has the highest negatives of any candidate, but it’s a long time from here to November.  An October surprise could change the dynamics.  A terrorist attack could drive up fear and loathing which would be good for Trump.  Watch out for a false flag attack!
What the Trump candidacy has achieved to this point is that he has made racist fear and hatred legitimate.  There will be more attacks on people of color.  There will be more attacks on mosques.
“Make America Great Again.”  He has made us uglier.