Who is to blame.

[scoobysnack]

Do we blame Trump for internal democrat polling that missed 10,000,000 democrats that voted for Obama who were going to sit out the 2016 election ?

Well we can blame the repubs for denying (at least) 7m US citizens their right to vote on the spurious grounds that two different people with the same name were one person trying to vote two different states. Remember the only double voter was a Drumpfuck.

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Sadly, we probably do.  Scott Alexander put up a lengthy blog post on how the attempts to paint Trump as a racist were so overboard as to perhaps work in his favor.  I'm not entirely sold on his premise, but he does show how the media narrative contrasted with what Trump was actually saying both in the past and as he campaigned.

Note that Alexander is not excusing Trump --on the contrary, he is convinced that Trump will be a disaster as President-- but pointing out that the media's desire to point out his racism led to a "boy who cried wolf" type of scenario where potential voters went tone-deaf to the message.

But his analysis fails because it fails to take into account that the media only started pointing out that he is a racist in the final furlong. The wishy washy attitude to Herr Obersturmbanngroppenfuhrer and his KKK kronies is what legitimised their campaign.

The racist slur was thrown about way too often to the point it lost it's meaning and effectiveness. It became a joke to the point that everything became racist. Ever talk to an actual racist? Like a member of the KKK, or a neo nazi, or a black supremacist? That's truly racist, so when the term started being used more often for things that were really not racist people just started rolling their eyes at it's use.

I kept hearing people say he was racist, and when I looked into it, they were usually just confused about nationality vs actual race. Like when he talked about Mexicans. Mexican is a national identity which makes up many races including black people. If he was talking bad about latinos, or black people that would be racist.

I actually know many latinos and black people along with women who voted Trump. Blacks were called all sorts of names for getting off the democrat plantation. Uncle Tom, negropean, oreo, sell out, etc. Latinos were called race traitors etc. But they saw past the identity of being a victim and being placed in a group and told how to vote. 

Trump really isn't racist, he's just pro American. But when you confuse nationalism with racism, I can see how you would connect the dots in your head that it translates to racism.