My brother Dan is very good at piercing through social niceties. Sometimes this can be a very good thing, as in his column today, at Press Watch, How much of Trump’s support is due to racism?.
Here’s a small taste:
There is one theory that fully explains the massive support that Trump continues to get among the Republican voting base: That they’re racist.
To be clear, this is a theory, not a conclusion.
But it’s certainly a likely enough theory that the mainstream media should be testing it to see if it’s true rather than avoiding the topic like the plague.
[…]
When mainstream journalists do address racism, they do so with euphemisms and denials. These days that means they understate the racist rhetoric from Trump and other leading Republicans, and they actively cover up the racism of his supporters and make excuses for them.
They don’t ignore racism entirely. What they do is worse: they normalize it.
The Washington Post, for instance, had a long, overdue front-page article on Sunday about how Trump and his fellow GOP candidates are taking overtly racist positions – except get this: They substituted the word “polarizing” for racist.
But there’s more, and even better, where that came from.
Barring something strange on or after Super Tuesday, I plan to vote for Warren in the upcoming Florida primary. In primaries you vote your heart, in the general election you vote you head. Warren is the candidate whose speeches — and whose policies — inspire. I think she’d be a terrific Chief Executive. Sanders has virtues, and I’m grateful that he moved the Overton Window. I’m sure he’d be infinitely better than Trump, but I have some pretty big doubts as to how effective he’d be as an executive.
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