items from this AM’s electoral-vote.com re racism in the news
(yep, we’re normalizing it)

Quinnipiac just released a poll in which 51% of respondents agreed with the statement that Trump is a racist. That’s considerably higher than the 41% of Americans in 1968 who felt that George Wallace was a racist. …George Wallace …who stood in the door of the the University of Alabama and announced “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

This does not mean that Trump actually is more racist than Wallace, of course. Standards were different in 1968… It does mean, however, that Trump is more out of step with his time, on this issue, than Wallace was in his.

and re the vile comments on the nixon / reagan tape:

The lesson is this: Any candidate willing to do some dog whistling is almost certainly revealing something about their own personal mindset. And if a candidate is willing to go far beyond dog whistling, well, you can reach your own conclusions about their mindset