re: #81 Wendell Zurkowitz ((slave to the waffle light))

I will mention it again, these fellows were full-on bigots even back in the days before “economic anxiety” set it. The latter just gave demagogues like Trump a chance to offer up a convenient scapegoat for those peoples’ troubles.

Well yeah. Economic anxiety was just the media giving a pass to people who didn’t want to listen. You’re from a former industrial area. These places change. But I think what Trump appealed to was something baser. These people were so threatened by Obama’s admin more than Clinton’s because they really believed that Obama was the “affirmative action president.” And they mean that both for Obama personally and his administration. The fact is Obama democratized the WH by having many different people in his team and emphasizing that Americans of groups that were long ignored and discriminated against deserved equality too. Trump and the right wing media convinced millions of people that things like DACA, allowing transgendered people to serve in the military, etc were a war on whiteness. There are white people who benefited from DACA too. I’ll never forgive the right for years of telling my neighbors that my secular outlook and generally socially liberal beliefs were a war on their faith. Plus their stupid red baiting about how Obama was a socialist.