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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Greenberg: To Save America, Look at America as It Is

The following article by Stanley B. Greenberg, founding partner of Greenberg Research, board member of The American Prospect and author of ‘RIP GOP: How the New America Is Dooming the Republicans,’ is cross-posted from The American Prospect:

Just as the intelligence community may have missed the size, organization, and determination of Trump’s supporters to keep Donald Trump as president, the polls in 2016 and 2020 missed Trump’s ability to bring his base of white working class, evangelical, and rural voters into the electorate, to save white people from a changing America. Trump called Mexican immigrants “murders and rapists,” sent signals to the KKK, and instituted the Muslim ban. His political mission was defined by “good people on both sides,” closing the government to fund the border wall, and telling the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”

Trump won the Republican nomination in 2016 by winning over the Tea Party, evangelical, and pro-life blocs, each of them determined to save America from Barack Obama, the first Black president. His enflaming racial resentment gave Trump an unassailable base in his party. But what the general elections reveal is that 40 percent of all Americans is fully part of an anti-establishment, God-first, racially resentful, anti-democratic bloc, who live in a right-wing media cocoon and adore Donald Trump. This bloc of white rural, evangelical, and working-class male voters rushed to the polls in both 2016 and 2020. And critically, they are three of every five Republicans.

Chanting “Make America Great Again,” “U-S-A.! U-S-A!” and “Stop the Steal,” Trump’s violent vanguard assaulted the Capitol to stop the counting of Electoral College votes. Rampaging white mobs and paramilitary Proud Boys abolish any nuance, waving their Confederate, American, and Trump flags. They aren’t sure anybody but Donald Trump will be as uncompromising, racist, and anti-establishment as they desire. And they don’t think anyone else on their side can win.

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