The 2016 presidential election began breaking toward Republican Donald Trump as Tuesday night wore on into Wednesday and over on CBS, Slate columnist Jamelle Bouie repeatedly played the race card and even shamefully compared the surprise and repudiation of the establishment to racists and segregationists defeating Civil War Reconstruction.
Before this jaw-dropping train of thought, Bouie suggested just before 10:00 p.m. Eastern that much of Trump’s appeal was “that cultural resentment” and implored that it be “identif[ied] as being racial animus and that it’s significant that Trump has closed so much of a gap and done so well with white voters across the country.”
Bouie trotted out that the racism charge minutes after midnight Eastern to CBS This Morning co-host Charlie Rose by alluding to the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement:
After the Civil War, there was Reconstruction and in Reconstruction, black Americans and white Americans attempted to build a new kind of South. What happened after Reconstruction was angry, recalcitrant whites pushed back. They retook their governments through force, through violence and we had redemption, and that lasted up until the 20th century. We had a second Reconstruction in the 1960s and we had a backlash to that Reconstruction.
Connecting it back to Trump, Bouie preemptively awarded Trump the presidency and ruled that “the extent to which Donald Trump has won, winning a campaign of racism and bigotry, turning out millions of white Americans for that campaign, suggests we are living through a kind of second redemption.”
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Bouie concluded that such a “redemption” would entail “a kind of push-back against the advancement of African-Americans, of Hispanics, of women, of Muslim-Americans and I don’t know how long we live with that backlash.”
Thankfully, conservative columnist Ben Domenech pushed back, explaining that “it's a push-back and a backlash but I think it's about something that is much more longer running than race” but instead “a rejection of the elite's of both of our political parties” that goes back to not just the Obama administration but the George W. Bush presidency as well.
“I think it's much more about a reaction to the fact that we had, under Bush and Obama, policies that did not benefit these people, That they did not see as benefitting themselves And I think they're rejecting both of those party elites. I think that's why trump came along and was able to take over the Republican Party with a message that was very unrepublican,” he added.
The relevant portions of the transcript from CBS’s Campaign 2016: Election Night on November 8 and 9 can be found below.
CBS’s Campaign 2016: Election Night
November 8, 2016
9:49 p.m. Eastern
JAMELLE BOUIE: I want to talk more about that cultural resentment because I think we run the risk of sort of painting it a bit to amorphous, but remember, Trump ran his campaign — he began his campaign attacking Hispanic immigrants and various other racial and ethnic minorities and I think some of the cultural anger we should correct identify as being racial animus and that it’s significant that Trump has closed so much of a gap and done so well with white voters across the country.
CHARLIE ROSE: Racial because they believe as they gain in terms of voter strength and economic strength that they already losing?
BOUIE: Right, a zero-sum view of American life.
BEN DOMENECH: It is zero sum but I think the other message Trump was saying is it's not your fault this is this way. It's fault of immigrants, bad trade deals, or wasteful wars, et cetera, and that was the message that they responded to.
(....)
November 9, 2016
12:03 a.m. Eastern
BOUIE: After the Civil War, there was Reconstruction and in Reconstruction, black Americans and white Americans attempted to build a new kind of South. What happened after Reconstruction was angry, recalcitrant whites pushed back. They retook their governments through force, through violence and we had redemption, and that lasted up until the 20th century. We had a second Reconstruction in the 1960s and we had a backlash to that Reconstruction. I think the extent to which Donald Trump has won, winning a campaign of racism and bigotry, turning out millions of white Americans for that campaign, suggests we are living through a kind of second redemption, a kind of push-back against the advancement of African-Americans, of Hispanics, of women, of Muslim-Americans and I don’t know how long we live with that backlash.
BEN DOMENECH: I think it's a push-back and a backlash but I think it's about something that is much more longer running than race. I think it's a rejection of the elite's of both of our political parties and that’s —
BOUIE: That’s longer running than race?
DOMENECH: In the past 16 — no, I think that it's — it's longer running than merely a reaction to the election of the first black American president. I think it's much more about a reaction to the fact that we had, under Bush and Obama, policies that did not benefit these people, That they did not see as benefitting themselves And I think they're rejecting both of those party elites. I think that's why trump came along and was able to take over the Republican Party with a message that was very unrepublican.
BOUIE: We're looking at unified white support for Donald Trump. Unified Among college-educated whites, among working class whites. I don't think this is just a question of poor economic policy for working class whites. I think we’re looking at something that’s racial.
DOMENECH: But clearly they're dissatisfied with the Obama agenda, and it's something they don't view as satisfying their needs. Barack Obama expanded Medicaid dramatically, and a lot of these white working class communities, under the idea it would both help them but it would also give them a vested interest in re-electing the democratic party. This is the “what's the matter with Kansas” problem. Clearly, that didn't work.
