Thumpalumpacus
Alive in the Superunknown
No sweat. I just want to say that I'm not sure that the key to Trump's support is racism. No doubt Trump's dog-whistles a big part of his appeal to WN/SF-type assholes (it seems like he pulled them straight out of a white-nationalist tract), but I think that more than that, economic stagnation (in terms of wage-growth vs inflation, or the availability of quality jobs -- or many jobs at all in some places).
Mind you, I'm not saying there's any good justification for voting for that twatwaffle; I'm just trying to explain why the Trumpeteers I know voted the way they did.
I think that Trump's success was primarily due to his speaking to the old Democrat constituency of the blue collar middle class. The Democrats were once their champions but abandoned them, allowed their jobs in manufacturing to leave the country, told them to get used to it because their jobs would never return, then disparaged them as "deplorable".
Democrats once represented the interests of the broad working middle class of America and had their unquestioned support. Over the last couple decades, the Democratic party has switched to representing special interest groups and international causes at the expense of their old constituency of working middle class Americans. Trump saw the hole and filled it.
Agreed -- especially about the "deplorable" comment. The moment I heard Hillary say that in the debate, I knew she had blundered ... uh ... hugely. And in the broader context, yes, the Democrats have moved upmarket, so to speak. But that neccessitates narrowing one's base, doesn't it?