Damn I love how so many progressives don't want to think about the fact the that maybe many Obama voters were racist, and only voted for him so as to not get called racist.
-How does that make any sense?
It never does but thats not the point. Its like back in 2012 where so many dems tried to argue that mitt romney wanted the naacp to boo him on purpose so as to pander to the "racist" vote. Because apparently until then racists might have been tempted to vote for the black guy. Just remember, if you reduce all problems down to "the other side is icky" you automatically win any argument.
I think the problem is we are defining "racist" and "not racist" as discrete labels rather than a continuum. If the Dems were to rule out everybody who has some racialised views, you wouldn't have many voters at all - because society as a whole has internalised racism. The problem with the Clinton campaign is they lost a large amount of people in the sort of mid-region of the racism continuum; who voted for Obama in their droves because he presented himself as postracial.
The 2016 election year, with the overwhelming fixation on racial and identity issues by the media and Democrats (oscarssowhite, blm, Colin The Football Player etc) served to confuse and balkanise the electorate. These issues, which were wholeheartedly endorsed by the Democrats and their affiliates, were largely distant from whites living in homogenous areas, who concluded that the democratic party was not interested in picking up their votes. And the Democrats allowed them. Even when they were handed issues on a plate, the Democrats tendency to racialise every issue bites them (the good example here being the Flint water crisis).
And yes, I know that there is truth to the notion behind white privilege or whatever. Ok? That doesn't really matter if you're running an election campaign? A rough comparison would be an election campaign that centred around how lucky Americans are compared to sweatshop workers and peasant farmers in Bangladesh: I.e. an non-viable campaign.
