Six Feet Plus, White, Christian, Male, Straight, Some Hair On Top And Not Too Uppity

Democrats need national candidates who don’t offend the mainstreaming of white male supremacy in this awful post-Obama pushback era

This week, the incompetence of the intelligence and defense wing of Trump’s cabinet was fully exposed. The heads of the DoD, the CIA, NI and others got on a hackable chat app, Signal, and spilled the beans about upcoming war plans against Yemen while a journalist, somehow invited to this high security meeting, listened in.

In any other presidency, heads would be rolling. At least one of those cabinet members would be fired or forced to resign. But these are not normal times. In the Trump presidency, this major scandal is being ignored just like all other scandals are ignored. Trump has long been Teflon coated. But now his GOP administration is as well.

They can fire nuclear inspectors by mistake. They can dox the Social Security numbers of citizens by mistake. They can ship a soccer player and barbers legally applying for asylum in the US to a Salvadoran prison for a year plus of hard labor without due process. No act by the president or his cabinet can seem to upset the press and public enough to dent Trump and his underlings.

Why? Trump knows why: Obama He’s said time and time again that Obama made his rise to the presidency possible. What he doesn’t say is that Obama’s presidency created a great wave of racist resentment and pushback that also made Trump’s ugly, hate-filled brand of politics possible.

When Obama was elected, people including Obama’s aides, talked of a post-racial America. I thought that was nuts. Racism was alive and strong. I’d seen it while campaigning for Obama.

But what I didn’t realize was that Obama’s presidency would be met with incredible and reprehensible pushback by many white people. They didn’t see Obama’s election win as a sign of progress. Instead they saw it as evidence that America had “gone too far.”

They called Michelle Obama an animal or a transexual depending on the time of day. They refused to believe that Obama was born in America, which was Trump’s form of attack as well. They called him a Marxist and communist even though he ran the country like he was an Eisenhower Republican.

They called the economic growth over his time in office “sluggish.” Even the mainstream press got in on this “sluggish” act. Later both would praise the same rate of economic growth during Trump 1.0. It turned out that being a black president was a lot like driving while black. Any offense, minor or imagined – like wearing a tan suit – was enough to get Obama pulled over.

Over Obama’s eight years in office, racial resentment grew and grew. It grew so much that in 2015 a man who spent years insulting Obama and trying to remake him into “the other” - foreign born, ignorant and dangerous - descended from a golden escalator in a shopping mall, began a campaign as the second coming of George Wallace and in 2016 won the presidency.

Throughout the campaign, the man, Donald Trump, made mistakes that would sink any candidate in normal times. He admitted to grabbing women by their genitals. He was outed for cheating on his wife. He mocked medal winning soldiers and people with disabilities.

But Trump was Teflon coated. He was the white guy in the race and his opponent was a woman. In the post-Obama era, Trump’s racism was a feature not a bug. Misogyny ever present in America, was a feature, not a bug, as well.

White America, in backlash over Obama, wanted a bigot and got the bigot they wanted. Yes, that’s not how Trump’s win was portrayed in the press. Of course it wasn’t. Who are the press’s major movers and shakers? White men. Enough said.

Why was Trump Teflon coated in 2016 and why is he still Teflon coated today? Because during the 2016 election, the fundamental purpose of our two major parties was transformed. White male supremacy had been mainstreamed with Trump and parties weren’t really about issues anymore. They were about who you were. The GOP’s main purpose was to be nothing more or less than the party for white people.

The Dem’s main purpose, at least in the eyes of the GOP and in much of the press was to be the party of “the other.” That other included people of color, those who weren’t Christian and LGBTQ.

Not everyone believed in this simple bifurcation but enough people did that by 2016 formerly purple states turned bright red, including Ohio, Indiana and Iowa. Not surprisingly, those states had small percentages of people of color and tended to be states where educational attainment levels were relatively low.

In this post-Obama era, white male supremacy has been so mainstreamed that Trump’s constant mental failings, emotional failings and errors are glossed over. He’s the Great White Hope. The Great White Hope by definition can do no wrong.

I think that those who criticize the press for “normalizing” and “sanewashing” Trump aren’t quite right. Racism is so deeply engrained in the US and this post-Obama era is so retro-racist that much of the press celebrates Trump’s abominable behavior. “Oh, he’s just such an incorrigible little boy,” people basically say with a little grin. I’ve actually seen that little grin from journalists. I’m sure you’ve seen it as well.

It’s not surprising that in this era, the only candidate who beat Trump was a white guy, Biden. The others got beat up mercilessly by both the press and the public. “But her emails.” “She speaks in word salads.” Every day for them was like Obama’s tan suit day. Democrats get criticized for being “elitist” and “not for the working people.” What they really are in the eyes of both the public and press is not white, male, Christian and straight enough.

What does this mean for future elections, if we have future fair elections? We are in the most racist era of my lifetime since the 1950s. We are in the most misogynistic era of my lifetime since the 1960s. We are in the most anti-LGBTQ era of my lifetime since the 1970s.

Because of all this hate of “the other” and because Dems are viewed as the party of “the other,” somewhere around 45% of voting Americans – both white people and people of color who feel at least some vague affinity for white people over their own group – refuse to vote for a Democratic candidate under any circumstances.

This is a sad, distressing, reprehensible and depressing era in America. We have quickly reversed decades of real progress in accepting our differences. And I believe what it means for Democrats is that they need to accept this fundamental transformation in order to win even narrowly. America before Trump was a center right country with some tolerance for those who weren’t white, Christian, straight and male. Now it’s a right wing country overloaded with public bigotry.

When it comes to House and Senate candidates in swing districts/states and presidential candidates, Democrats are on the defensive with this change in cultural and political climate. If they run a candidate who is perceived by white people as “too uppity,” they will lose even if the candidate is white and male.

And to win swing states and swing districts, they need to attract a large share of white people. That means, sad to say, their candidates need to be over six feet tall, white, straight, male and have some hair on top.

All bad eras do eventually come to an end. I can’t wait for this particular regressive and hate-filled era to be in the rear view and for America to get back to being a country that moves forward again.