On The Other Hand...

"To a great degree," Mitt Romney writes in a Washington Post op-ed published Wednesday,

a presidency shapes the public character of the nation. A president should unite us and inspire us to follow “our better angels.” A president should demonstrate the essential qualities of honesty and integrity, and elevate the national discourse with comity and mutual respect. As a nation, we have been blessed with presidents who have called on the greatness of the American spirit. With the nation so divided, resentful and angry, presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable. And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring.

The former Michigan governor and incoming United States senator from Utah also comes up big where some other Democrats, such as Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, come up small. In his brief piece, Romney manages to invoke the words "Trump" (twice) and "Trump's (once), an accomplishment worth noting.

In a March, 2016 speech in which he recognized "dishonesty is Donald Trump's trademark," Romney maintained the real estate bamboozler

lacks the temperament to be president. After all, this is an individual who mocked a disabled reporter, who attributed a reporter’s questions to her menstrual cycle, who mocked a brilliant rival who happened to be a woman due to her appearance, who bragged about his marital affairs, and who laces his public speeches with vulgarity.

Donald Trump says he admires Vladimir Putin, at the same time he has called George W. Bush a liar. That is a twisted example of evil trumping good.

  

Then he went on to say the candidate "compromised our national secrets," the family members having "lived at the intersection of money and politics, trading their political influence to enrich their personal finances."  Moreover, "they embody the term 'crony capitalism'" and "a person so untrustworthy and dishonest as (the candidate) must not become president."

That corrupt, self-dealing candidate who could not be trusted to put the interests of the nation first was, in Mitt Romney's reckoning, Hillary Clinton. With the benefit of hindsight (which shouldn't have been necessary), that is obscene.

Her opponent, now President of the United States of America, has given to Russia classified intelligence about a steadfast American ally and relies for advice in large measure to a son who may have given an enemies list to the Saudis after they butchered a legal US resident. Dedicating the presidency to accumulating financial wealth for the President's family is not only unprecedented, but hitherto unimaginable. (Video below is from 1-2 weeks after the election.)

Now Mitt Romney, in the pages of The Washington Post, implies that Donald Trump has failed to "demonstrate the essential qualities of honesty and integrity, and elevate the national discourse with comity and mutual respect." Yet, the former presidential candidate maintains

It is not that all of the president’s policies have been misguided. He was right to align U.S. corporate taxes with those of global competitors, to strip out excessive regulations, to crack down on China’s unfair trade practices, to reform criminal justice and to appoint conservative judges. These are policies mainstream Republicans have promoted for years.

In what must be the most obscure reference (unknown even to the Urban Dictionary) for "caving," Charlie Pierce asks "What do you want in the pool for when he turtles? I'll take March 1st."

Romney states "I look forward to working" on several issues "with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other senators." In Pierce's pool, I'll take January 2.

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Guts Recognizing Guts

The piece in Politico, written by a Massachusetts senator, noted that she she had cast her vote in the Senate Banking Committee in favor of a nominee to serve as the No. 2 individual at the US Federal Reserve. However, her vote was cast "reluctantly because of my growing frustration over the concentration of people with ties to the megabank Citigroup in senior government positions" (as) in recent years, Wall Street institutions have exerted extraordinary influence in Washington’s corridors of power..."

It would be unsurprising for Democratic senators such as Elizabeth Warren to cast doubt upon the preponderance of industry-friendly administrators in the Trump Administration. However, this was April of 2014, and it was the Obama Administration, headed by a president Democratic politicians were loathe to criticize and whom Democrat voters still idolize.

David Sirota linked to the Senator's article while recognizing

Warren offered up one of the harshest critiques of Obama’s administration & the Dem Party Establishment. She decried Wall Street’s “tight grip over the Democratic Party’s economic policymaking apparatus.” That kind of honesty is laudable — and takes guts. https://t.co/5YHc7OrpKl

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) December 31, 2018

Not enough guts, it appears, for some people reacting to Sirota's tweet.  One individual, who will remain nameless to protect the identity of the ridiculous, remarked "fair enough, but where were the guts when she stayed silent during the primary?" When someone suggested "at some point, maybe leave that primary in 2016," the first responded

I'm ready for the 2020 primary,but one shouldn't ignore the 2016 primary. It finally exposed the Democratic Party for what it truly is, i.e., an organization that represents the interests of the economic elite. The real fight is on the left, not between Dems and GOP.

For all its faults, the Democratic Party is not the party actually obeisant to such industries as financial, fossil fuel, and pharmaceutical, and that is no small thing. And Elizabeth Warren, especially, has nothing left to prove on that score.

In the last campaign, there was only one Democratic senator (obviously no Republicans) who endorsed Bernie Sanders' bid for the White House. That was Oregonian Jeff Merkley, a reliable liberal/progressive, most recently a fervent critic of President Trump's immigration policies and himself one of the dozens of prospective 2020 presidential candidates.

Nonetheless, there is distrust of Warren among some 2016 supporters of Bernie Sanders and others because she did not endorse the Vermont senator in his 2016 run. For perspective, let's recall that Washington Post reporters Anne Gearan and Mike DeBonis in November, 2015 wrote

The tableau surrounding Hillary Clinton on Monday was impressive: 13 female Democratic senators endorsing the Democratic 2016 presidential front-runner en masse.

The evening fundraising event on Capitol Hill brought in a chunk of campaign cash ahead of an often difficult fundraising month in December. But it was also meant to underscore Clinton’s near-monopoly among Democratic lawmakers who have declared a preference, and her appeal as the first woman with a strong shot at becoming president.

But one particularly influential female Democratic senator didn’t join her colleagues: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — the anti-Wall Street crusader who was courted to run as the darling of very liberal Democrats — has not endorsed Clinton, nor has she promised she will.

Mrs. Warren remained neutral until Mrs. Clinton's nomination was a fait accompli. The event evidently was a big success as it

drew about 1,000 supporters who paid between $250 and $2,700 for a ticket. Clinton also held two other fundraising events in Washington on Monday.

“It would take something extraordinary to get all 13 of us here at one time,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). “That something extraordinary is Hillary Clinton.”

Each of the senators appearing Monday night with Clinton has previously indicated at least tentative support for her presidential run. Warren, on the other hand, has stayed studiously neutral while pushing the candidates toward more liberal economic policies.

A senior Democratic aide familiar with the planning for the event did not believe that Warren was invited to participate.

Boxer dismissed the suggestion that Warren’s endorsement holdout might indicate deeper tensions among Democrats. “We have 83 percent of the senators supporting Hillary, and it’s wonderful,” she said Monday.

It was unclear what that figure referred to. Thirty-three of 44 Senate Democrats have officially backed Clinton, or 75 percent, while 93 percent of the 14 Democratic women have.

At that early date, fully three-fourths (75%) of Democratic senators already had endorsed Clinton. Moreover, every single female Democratic senator- except Elizabeth Warren- had done so. Lest we forget, there was enormous eagerness to break the "glass ceiling," to elect as President a woman, especially one named "Clinton," who had been a senator herself and earlier performed a substantive role in her husband's Administration.

But one woman presumably believed that her influence could better be exerted on policy, to extract whatever concessions possible -especially on the economic front- on the eventual nominee. Gearan and DeBonis continue

While Warren has clashed at times with the Obama administration — particularly over appointments to the Treasury Department — her relations with Democratic colleagues on Capitol Hill have generally been positive and respectful. One notable exception was last December, when she criticized Democratic leaders for failing to strip a provision weakening the Dodd-Frank financial regulations from a massive spending bill.

But the fact that Warren has not yet endorsed a presidential candidate has been widely interpreted in Democratic circles as an effort to maintain her influence on the campaign agenda rather than as a snub of Clinton.

The tweet recognizing Warren's courage questioning the Obama Administration's approach to the financial services industry is fairly bold, especially coming from an early and faithful booster of Sanders 2016.  Sirota already had been harshly criticized for drawing attention to Beto O'Rourke's support in the House of Representatives for oil and gas interests and conservative initiatives.

Charismatic Texan O'Rourke is being touted as the brightest, freshest face among Democrats interested in the presidency, reminiscent of the exciting Illinoisan who captured the hearts and emotions of Democratic voters (and ultimately of the party establishment) some ten years ago.

Therefore, there may be a parallel between Sirota's skepticism of O'Rourke and his admiration for Senator Warren having "offered up one of the harshest critiques of Obama’s administration & the Dem Party Establishment." There also is a parallel to Sirota's courage and insight and that of the Massachusetts senator who resisted the pull three years ago to jump aboard the bandwagon of the heavily-favored Hillary Clinton.

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Bequeath Not

Matthew Yglesias realizes

The action at the border these days, in terms of immigration, is about asylum seekers, whole family units who arrive and either cross at legal ports of entry or else deliberately present themselves to Border Patrol after crossing illegally.

That's part of the reason the Administration is focused instead on the wall, whatever they're trying to pass it off as today. The New York Times' Haberman reports

The concrete border wall that President Trump has repeatedly called for as a signature campaign promise is not actually a wall and has not been since “early on in the administration,” the outgoing White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, said in an interview published Sunday.

The comments further muddy the administration’s position as Mr. Trump demands that Democrats provide $5 billion in funding for a wall on the border with Mexico, an impasse that has led to a partial government shutdown after the president abruptly pulled out of a compromise deal to keep the government funded through February. They were also notable given Mr. Trump’s insistence for most of his term that the border would have a wall, not the “steel slat barrier” he has pivoted toward in the past few weeks.

“To be honest, it’s not a wall,” Mr. Kelly told The Los Angeles Times.

Alarmed that the base might hear that and recognize the scam, President Trump on Monday morning tweeted

It’s incredible how Democrats can all use their ridiculous sound bite and say that a Wall doesn’t work. It does, and properly built, almost 100%! They say it’s old technology - but so is the wheel. They now say it is immoral- but it is far more immoral for people to be dying!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2018

Whatever Trump means by people dying- he's not referring to children dying while in CBP custody- giving this President any money for a wall is bad policy and probably worse strategy. But Trump's quick response is a sure sign both that he wants a concrete wall badly, and that he is losing.

So the short-term strategy for congressional Democrats must be to deny Trump any money for a wall. Claiming victory is always his goal, the oxygen that gives him life. "And some of you are friends and you're going to call," candidate Trump boasted at a campaign rally, "and you're going to say, 'Mr. President, please, we can't take it anymore, we can't win anymore like this, Mr. President, you're driving us crazy, you're winning too much."

Once the government is re-opened, as Yglesias points out, attention should turn to  long-term issues, primarily "internal enforcement, asylum law, the treatment of long-settled unauthorized migrants, and future flows of legal immigration."

Good luck with that. Internal enforcement involves ICE, which the left generally doesn't like much and the right places miles behind CBPP as its government agency of choice.  Processing asylum claims will require personnel and money but increasing the number of government employees is not high on the wish list of Republicans.  While visa overstays outnumber individuals illegally crossing the border(s), and most Democrats are on principle against throwing law-abiding individuals out of the country, and most Republicans don't have the stomach for it.  While the Trump Administration would like to cut the quota for illegal immigrants, Democrats are a hard sell.

However, running a massive government in a global economy requires difficult choices, ones far beyond demanding that "Dreamers" get a fair shake.

After Democrats smashed Republicans in the mid-terms, Jamelle Bouie argued

when faced with Trump’s demand for $5 billion in funding for his border wall with Mexico, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer offered the $1.6 billion that Democrats had previously agreed on. This may not constitute support for “the wall” itself, but it does miss how the landscape has changed. The president’s immigration policies are unpopular. Schumer had political space to make a lower bid, or no bid at all. But he doesn’t seem to grasp the extent of his party’s political advantage or understand the value of opposition. He seems stuck in a past where voters rewarded compromise and bipartisanship, unable to see how this doesn’t apply to the Democrats’ relationship with Donald Trump.

President Trump's immigration policies probably are as not unpopular as Bouie believes. However, as he would understand, the best way to make those policies, and Trump himself, popular would be to give him what he wants. And that is to deliver to him any amount of money for what he could credibly claim is a "wall."

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OK, Better, And No More

Sirota and Grunwald:

You can believe Obama was an OK president (and better than the GOP) and also believe that if we replicate Obama's record of historic increases in oil production, then climate change will kill lots of people.

You can think both. It's weird that some folks can't understand that. https://t.co/eWAib5kOh6

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) December 28, 2018

Barack Obama has remained very popular with Democratic voters while Donald Trump's job approval is at 89% among GOP voters. Allegiance to a president (incumbent or former) may be sparked by him being one of yours rather than one of theirs, which can lead to a failure to understand that your own guy wasn't all he is (or was) cracked up to be. This has helped propel the Beto O'Rourke boomlet, Sirota explaining

In an era of growing economic inequality, O’Rourke has split with the majority of his party to vote for Republican initiatives to weaken Wall Street regulations and accelerate bank mergers – and he once voted for a Republican bill that Democratic legislators said was designed to block the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s from combatting racially discriminatory lending. He also voted for a key part of Donald Trump’s so-called deportation force.

Meanwhile, despite the imminent climate catastrophe facing our planet, O’Rourke has often taken the side of carbon polluters. He has repeatedly voted to help the fossil fuel industry increase its exports. He even helped the GOP defeat a Democratic measure designed to limit the possibility of offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

Sirota realizes

Replicating an Obama presidency would be better than what we have now. But it would still be a tragedy. That’s because the fundamental premise of Obamaism - and its predecessor, Clintonism – is that there is always a policy that can at once serve the people and the powerful. And recent history has showed that is both false and dangerous.

The fantastical mythology of a satisfactory “third way” between the corporate class and the rest of us posits that the Democratic party’s insurance industry backers can be enriched and healthcare policy can still be humane; its Wall Street sponsors can eviscerate industries and workers can still earn enough to survive; and its fossil fuel donors can keep pumping out carbon and the ecosystem can still sustain human life.

It's a little strange, and disconcerting to Sirota, that Democratic voters will not acknowledge that President Obama was a gift to plutocrats. Eight days before the close of the last presidential term, populist critic Matt Stoller noted the concentration of economic power during the Obama Administration and the "roughly 9 milion foreclosures" which it "enabled and encouraged." Further, the Adminsitration

let big-bank executives off the hook for their roles in the crisis. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) referred criminal cases to the Justice Department and was ignored. Whistleblowers from the government and from large banks noted a lack of appetite among prosecutors. In 2012, then-Attorney General Eric Holder ordered prosecutors not to go after mega-bank HSBC for money laundering. Using prosecutorial discretion to not take bank executives to task, while legal, was neither moral nor politically wise; in a 2013 poll, more than half of Americans still said they wanted the bankers behind the crisis punished. But the Obama administration failed to act, and this pattern seems to be continuing. No one, for instance, from Wells Fargo has been indicted for mass fraud in opening fake accounts.

President Trump was dealt a bad card on foreign policy, also. Pyongyang may be intensifying its nuclear weapons program, which continued unabated while Barack Obama was in the White House. President Trump recently has been vociferously criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike for his rash actions toward Syria, yet Barack Obama was criticized even by former Secretary of State John Kerry for the "red line" Obama proclaimed, but was too timid to enforce.

U.S. airstrikes supporting Syrian forces in Yemen have increased dramatically under President Trump, as has the federal government's support for the murderers in Riyadh, but the direction of policy was set by President Obama.

President Trump has made a bad situation worse nearly everywhere, which has obscured an awareness that we were snookered by the last President.

Barack Obama probably wasn't the bad president Matt Stoller argues that he was. Nonetheless, whether foreign policy, continued reliance on oil, enthusiasm for "clean coal," or even letting the financial industry off the hook, the ongoing swoon among Democratic voters for the 44th President is self-delusional.  Moreover, as Sirota finds, it has inspired the undeserved excitement that a tall, slender, inspiring centrist male such as Beto O'Rourke has aroused in the Democratic base.

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Fierce Urgency For The One

What do journalist Jonathan Capehart and US Senator (soon to be "former" US Senator) Claire McCaskill have in common?

Neither is Hispanic, Republican, or allied with the left wing of the Democratic Party. They are, however, both comedians or less generously, oblivious to the past.

Capehart is guilty of the less egregious hypocrisy, and his prescription is right.  He observes

Democrats have this annoying habit of always looking for “The One.” The one who will sweep them off their feet in a fit of electoral ecstasy. Only their “one” should make a go of it. All others are deemed inadequate or somehow all wrong for the party or the times. Then there’s this other annoying habit. If their “one” doesn’t win the nomination, then the person who actually does win is dead to them.

Therefore, he argues

don’t get me started on the political teenage crush du jour. One minute it’s all about Oprah Winfrey. Then there are dreams of Michelle Obama. Don’t forget the boomlet over Michael Avenatti. Today, it’s all about Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Tex.). That’s not to say that O’Rourke or even Avenatti aren’t serious. But, c’mon, people.

He mentions the 44th president only once, that when he notes

The staid process (when viewed through the WWE lens that was the GOP 2016 contest) produced a seasoned and prepared nominee in Barack Obama. He had been elected to the U.S. Senate from Illinois only four years earlier, but he won the presidency against his more senior Senate colleague, John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Barack Obama was not a seasoned nominee. Moreover, Capehart failed to note that Obama, of whom he generally has been enamored, was (and still is) the beneficiary of the equivalent of a "teenage crush." Nonetheless, Capehart was eclipsed by the oblivious remarks of Mrs. McCaskill, who has warned that Democrats

should be cautious about the rise of politicians like the 29-year-old Ocasio-Cortez, who vanquished a Democratic leader, Joe Crowley, in her primary, and have vowed sweeping changes in policy.

"I don't know her," McCaskill said when asked if she'd consider Ocasio-Cortez a "crazy Democrat" like the ones she decried on the campaign trail. "I'm a little confused why she's the thing. But it's a good example of what I'm talking about, a bright shiny new object, came out of nowhere and surprised people when she beat a very experienced congressman."

McCaskill added, "And so she's now talked about a lot. I'm not sure what she's done yet to generate that kind of enthusiasm, but I wish her well. I hope she hangs the moon.

"But I hope she also realizes that the parts of the country that are rejecting the Democratic Party, like a whole lot of white working class voters, need to hear about how their work is going to be respected, and the dignity of their jobs, and how we can really stick to issues that we can actually accomplish something on."

Credit the Senator with getting one thing right- invocation of the idiom "hang the moon," defined as "used as an example of a superlative act attributed to someone viewed with uncritical or excessive awe, reverence or infatuation." However, as Ocasio-Cortez could point out (but oddly, has not), the middle and lower middle class individuals and families being carved out of American society need more than rhetoric about "respect" and "dignity."

Ocasio-Cortez is a bright, shiny new object, though one who appears fortuitously determined to use her sudden celebrity on behalf of needed policy changes, such as promoting the Green New Deal. 

She may as well strike while the iron is hot. So, too, was Hillary Clinton a hot political commodity when she resisted the urging of supporters to run for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination in order to gain more experience. Instead, she waited until 2008 when there was, to John McCain's ultimate dismay, a different "hot" politician- a bright, shiny new object.

Fortunately, we have the benefit of hindsight, and of the St. Louis American, which reported in January, 2008 of the same senator (who now ridicules the "bright, shiny new object")

“I get the force and urgency of now,” McCaskill said Sunday morning in a conference call with local, state and national media.

“I feel it in my bones"....

McCaskill credited “the fierce urgency” of her own 18-year-old daughter, thereby aligning her support with the powerful youth movement that has helped to make Obama a strong contender.

"I get the force and urgency of now" because "I feel it in my bones," exulted the United States Senator from the state of Missouri.   And if the "urgency of now" (as opposed to, presumably, the "urgency of then") and her "bones" (judgment optional) didn't convince her, the veteran legislator was persuaded by her teenage daughter. Bright, shiny object indeed.

Let's be serious. The last Democrat to have been elected President had been a member of the US Congress for only two years when endorsed by McCaskill and was noteworthy as a Senator for.... nothing.  He differed ideologically little from his major opponent (Senator Clinton) but was motivated by "the fierce urgency of now."

And he won. He won the nomination and the presidency, later going on to be re-elected. (Thank you, Justice Roberts!) He was a bright and shiny, albeit impressive, object who caught a wave and rode it all the way.

Now Claire McCaskill and Jonathan Capehart want Democrats not to fall in love.  That's a hard sell to a Party which almost visibly swooned, got one of their own elected President, then eight years later went with the tried and true veteran and lost. The warnings of McCaskill and Capehart are very interesting. They're also eight years late.

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Only If Honorable Is Spelled "Dishonorable"

Former FBI agent Josh Campbell is an analyst with CNN, and a very good one. And maybe we should thank him for reminding us to take at face value what seems to be reasonable action:

Three things can all be true at the same time:

* A President honorably visiting troops overseas

* Deployed troops grateful to see their President

* A White House using troops as political pawns in photo ops

— Josh Campbell (@joshscampbell) December 27, 2018

Admittedly, President Trump on Wednesday visited soldiers in Iraq, whom he used as political pawns in photo ops while they were glad to see him. The New York Times reports

on Wednesday, about 100 American servicemen and women, some of whom were wearing red “Make America Great Again” caps, greeted Mr. Trump with a standing ovation in Al Asad Air Base’s dining facility, which had been decorated for Christmas. He and Mrs. Trump spent about 15 minutes there talking with the troops.

Pictures of red MAGA hats on soldiers, a standing ovation, and a quick in-and-out make for a near-perfect photo-op. The soldiers would have had to be near-insane, or at least aberrant, not to be grateful when someone who occupies an office formerly held by the leader of the Free World flies from half the globe over to see them.

They can be expected to be proud, too, to be congratulated for doing a "great job" and elated being told by Trump that he got them "a big one."

Raise, that is, at least presumably.  The President asserted that he had gotten them a 10% raise after they had gotten no raise at all for 10 years.

The 10% raise was actually 2.6%.  Active-duty military personnel have received a raise each year for at least the past 56 years and this was the third biggest, not the largest, of the past eleven years. Moreover, the increases are tied to increases in private-sector raises, though Congress can hike them. (This was not the first of his lies on the subject; from May, below.)

Otherwise, Trump's assertions were accurate (And how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?). That does not make the President's visit "honorable." Neither was it made more honorable because Trump proudly did a selfie with members of Seal Team Five, whose presence in Iraq had been confidential. (If it's good enough for the Israelis, it should be good enough for our soldiers.)

It's tempting for liberals to show our fairness, objectivity and bipartisan bonafides by supporting President Trump when he does something normal, such as visiting American soldiers in a war zone.  But buyer, beware. Norm Eisen of CREW sums up:

On the other hand,Trump managed on one short trip to lie about the troops’ pay increase, to lead them to violate the rule against political activity by signing his campaign gear, & to expose the identity of Navy SEALs, perhaps endangering their lives. I’d say its a wash at best. https://t.co/zzw36h4gUt

— Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) December 27, 2018

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Elusive Privilege

At first read, perhaps, Brianha Joy Gray made a point Thomas Frank and so many others have made when she wrote in January 2018

Importantly, Democrats should make clear that the white supremacy Trump peddles may benefit working class whites, but its benefits are marginal compared to the material rewards that would come from a class conscious, progressive, political agenda.

Gray understood "there is real danger in artificially divorcing Trump’s broader economic agenda from his racism. Doing so has the potential to bolster the flimsy relationship between working class white voters and the Republican Party."  Moreover, she acknowledged (as do few in the left or in the mainstream media) "that for an unsettlingly large percentage of white-Americans- many of whom feel abandoned by liberals- the identification of Trump with whiteness is not a critique." (She meant "criticism," not "critique," the latter being an analysis and not necessarily negative.)

Moreover, Gray realized

for all he maligns non-whites, Trump is far from a champion of the white race. Even at his most bigoted, one can tease out the financial incentives that operated in symbiosis with his prejudice. His relentless campaign against the Central Park Five was not only evidence of his callow disregard for criminal justice and the civil rights of the accused, it reflected his personal interest in the greater policing of New York City, the increased safety which most (wrongly) assumed would follow, and the correspondingly higher value of his Central Park-facing properties. The housing discrimination for which Trump is famous was enabled by a lack of fundamental respect for black renters, yes, but it was also likely motivated, in part, by a desire to extract the maximum fees from his properties. Trump wrote off entire nations as “shithole countries,” but while those “shitholes” were uniformly brown, it strains credulity to believe that he would have made a stink about wealthy, non-white nations like Japan or Saudi Arabia. Even Eric Trump’s foot-in-mouth defense of his father’s racism speaks some truth to power: “My father,” he says, “sees one color: green. That’s all he cares about.”

This is all standard, albeit valid, boilerplate of the populist left, which often notes "the role racism has played in dividing the poor and preserving power for the wealthy." Gray even quoted President Johnson's "prescient warning that 'if you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket.'”

"While Trump is a racist," Gray emphasized, "he is no zealot. His "true religion" is not racism but "avarice" and "it seems more apt to describe him as a plutocrat." Yet

despite his governance of grift, the mainstream left has committed to a narrative in which Trump is defined predominately by his racial antagonism. He’s our “first white president.” The “lowest white man.” Similarly, his supporters, who certainly should be criticized for being, at best, indifferent to Trump’s racism, are painted as motivated solely by racial animus rather than the blend of economic populism and bigotry that has long been used to foment a potent nativist anxiety.

Instead, Gray recognized, almost uniquely, that

it’s important to draw attention to the ways in which our liberal language increasingly pushes the idea that anti-blackness and pro-whiteness are always in diametric opposition, leaving no space for forms of oppression which subjugate subsets of both groups.

This leaves inevitably and inextricably to the truly revelatory money quote:

When we describe Trump as pro-white, we are complicit in the transformation of a man infamous for his commitment to wealth into an ideologue committed to the betterment of most American people.

This means all Gray thinks it means, and more. She believes that the Democratic Party must not "take for granted" what Charles Blow terms the "unassailability of white privilege." However, her entire critique calls into question the increasingly chic concept of "white privilege."

There is, as she both implicitly and explicitly argued, a class privilege. But she resists the logical implication, that "white privilege" is largely (albeit not completely) ephemeral and chimerical. It is a diversion from policies intended to reinforce the power and privilege of the economic elite of whatever race.

This is the North Star, the guiding ethos, of the Republican Party, which has stood by President Trump, despite his destruction of norms and common decency, because he has delivered the Party's donor base a tax cut.

If the identification of Trump with whiteness, as Gray was bold enough to point out, is less a negative than a positive among white Americans (such as those who provided Trump's margin of victory in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania), characterization of those voters as benefiting from "white privilege" will continue to backfire. President Trump's policies not only fail to improve the lot of most white Americans; they are not intended to improve the lot of white Americans.  Yet, linking the policies of a president who is apparently racist to "white privilege" reinforces the notion that as they harm blacks, they help whites.

Poor, working-class, (even middle-class) whites do not possess a privilege, but instead exist under a lesser burden.  Bandying about "white privilege"- or as Gray would argue, "racist" trivializes the struggles of poor, working-class, and even middle-class white Americans. It will convince ever more whites that policies undermining blacks will inevitably benefit themselves. 

That is not only electorally counter-productive for the Democratic Party, which must persuade voters that the impact of conservative GOP policies is not a zero-sum game. Insisting that they are encased in a cocoon of "white privilege" is not only counter-productive, but demeaning and in essential part,
false.

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