Donald Trump continues to try to outrun his well-earned reputation as a racist and offer his supporters some cover as non-racists:
"The Republican Party is the party of Abraham Lincoln. Not bad," said Trump, speaking at a rally in the Seattle suburb of Everett. "Not bad. It's also the party of freedom, equality and opportunity."
"It is the Democratic Party that is the party of slavery, the party of Jim Crow and the party of opposition," Trump said, drawing boos from the supportive crowd, which was heavily white.
Sure, if history stopped sometime between the New Deal and the 1960s. But history marches on and the overwhelming majority of black voters are Democrats with reason. It’s not like they’ve been duped into supporting the party of slavery when the party of Abraham Lincoln is just over there, championing equality.
How desperate for a “you can support me without being a racist” message do you have to be to base your argument on something your party did 150 years ago while ignoring the last few decades of its history, to say nothing of the last year of your own campaign? And how racist do you have to be to implicitly argue that around 90 percent of African American voters are simply chumps for supporting your opponent, rather than rational actors who know exactly why they’re supporting her—and not you?