I'm not wasting my time trying to apologize for or "understand" racist people better. [View all]

I can accept that maybe some fraction of Trump voters are not actually racist, they are simply OK with racism and bigotry even though they are not racists and bigots themselves. I also get that, due to the inherent undemocratic nature of the electoral college, a system create to sustain slavery, the probably-racist-but-maybe-not votes are worth more than other votes.

So in light of that, if the Dem leadership, in their postmortem, decides that they need to do more to cater to quasi-racists, I will understand that. I am, after all, a pragmatist, and winning elections is important.

But let's not delude ourselves as to what's going on. The whole push against "identity politics" is basically saying, look, lots of people are somewhere on the racism spectrum, and putting emphasis on anti-racism and anti-discrimination in all forms alienates racist bigots, so to get a bigger chunk of the racist vote, given that racist votes count more than others, maybe talk more about other stuff and go easy on the anti-discrimination in parts of the country where people like discrimination.

It's nauseating, but maybe it has to be done. But it's extra nauseating when people to pretend that this isn't what's going on, that really it's about economics and not bigotry.

Fortunately, I'm not a politician, so I don't have to play that game myself. I don't have to worry that if I don't wink-wink-nudge-nudge to the racist portion of the electorate, voters might think I'm part of the "liberal elite". This last election was a big victory for racism and bigotry. That's why white supremacists and neo-Nazis are the ones celebrating the most. And as a non-politician, I don't have to pretend that losing your job is an excuse for hating minorities and women and LGBT and Muslims and everyone else.

And the other thing I don't need to do is feel sympathy for the segment of the white working class that voted against their own economic interests because they like racism more than they like having a decent paying job. Notice that I said "segment". Even in those 80-20 Trump coal country towns we read about, 20% of the electorate are decent people. And if we grant that some of the Trump voters are just idiots, as opposed to racists, maybe that's 30%. For those people I do feel sympathy.

But overall, Trump put racism on the ballot, and racism won. Yeah, Russia/Comey/emails/media/etc. played a big role. But in terms of substance, this election was about racism and bigotry.