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Using 'racist' in the context of criticizing Republicans is just name-calling. Bush displayed no open racism, bullied no one, and was not xenophobic. Same for Romney. Yet the anti-Trump language is just a more hysterical version of the anti-Bush and anti-Romney language.

At some point the term "racist" came to mean "insufficiently left wing". This happened because left wing types called every Republican "raaacciiiiist" - like a bored shepherd boy yelling "wolf" for amusement and likes on social media.

How's that working out?

Trump is looking to get about the same amount of votes as Romney.

Clinton is getting a lot less votes than Obama got.

So there is an alternative explanation there, that rather than one group of people getting sick of shrill accusations of racism, a different group of people just doesn't like Hilary Clinton all that much.

Or that different group of people weren't as afraid of Trump as Clinton needed them to be.

A whole coalition of groups with different reasons for not voting for Clinton.

I'm just pushing back against the "unprecedented Trump blowout" narrative. So far he's got less popular votes than the loser of the last presidential election (Romney got 60,933,504 votes. Trumps at 59,088,517 with 98% of precincts reporting. He probably won't pick up another 1.8 million votes).

A different argument is that Trump attracted new people to the polls. I'd be more inclined to believe that many of those people are sick of establishment politics and their tactics. But I don't think they are actually a majority of Trump's support.

Bush was pretty inclusive racially. McCain too. IDK about Romney, but Mormons have written history and religion that makes him suspect on that, but he campaigned reasonably. Trump campaigned openly on a racist, xenophobic platform. They were key parts of his rhetoric and key to a good proportion of his winning. That is the difference here.

Which parts of his policies/campaign/platform are racist?

He used it in the context of "Trump" not "Republican's"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-racist-exam...

And we're right back to smug. You smugly state that it's a zero tolerance policy on racism, when it's going to be the progressive cohort who gets to declare things racist. Specifically, they'll cry racism every time someone disagrees with them. Don't like what the president wants to do? Racist. Have an issue with Mexico? Racist. Mildly suggest that college admissions should have a class based adjustment instead of racial quotas...racist.

Or just sit in the wrong place and you get to hear, "all white men are racist." It may guilt some to action, but it makes others disinclined to help.

Look at the #blacklivesmatter. Look at all the people who have been railing against police militarization for decades being called racist by the recent arrivals to the issue just because they say there is a larger problem.

I'm not a Trump supporter... far from it however looking at my HRC social media bubble it's clear that practically 95% of my social circle are way off base when it comes to their analysis of why Trump won, which is precisely why he did win. If you don't understand your 'enemy' you cannot organise against him... or in this case liberals are so out of touch of what life is like in less fortunate areas of the country that they cannot begin to communicate with the people that live there on a level playing field. We needed a more extreme version of Bernie but instead we got offered the status quo. Racism, which has always been a big problem, has very little to do with this election and the sooner we accept that the better for everyone. This is economic.

Do you have any examples of what you call racism from Trump. I haven't been following him super close (not American), but from what I've seen he wants to tighten up immigration. It's my understanding that this is not racism, but protectionism. Here in NZ it's very hard for people to immigrate here (I have had friends have to leave) but we don't associate racism with tight immigration policy.

The Huffpost did a round-up: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-racist-exam...

For example there were proposals to not allow Muslims to immigrate to the US. There was calling Mexicans 'criminals' and 'rapists'. Beating of black people at Trump rallies (which he endorsed).

This shows up this night on my twitter feed: "I am at a Trump rally in Manhattan, and thousands are chanting 'We hate Muslims, we hate blacks, we want our great country back'. Disgusting" https://twitter.com/SRowntreeNews/status/796141495573155840

I'm a little suspicious of that tweet. Seems like that's the sort of thing that would show up on at least one cell phone video somewhere.

Fair enough if the stuff with Trump Management Corporation and his action at the casino are correct I'd say it's a fair call he's probably a bit racist.

Not allowing Muslims in could be seen as racist, but I don't know that was at the core of what he was trying to do. Don't get me wrong I don't think it's a good idea. But 100% of radical Islamic terrorist are Muslim so banning them would have made people less afraid of the radical Islamic threat the media were hyping up as ISIS was taking hold of Iraq. It's dumb and unfairly treats good honest safe people, but racist is a stretch.

That tweet holds little water with me each side has been mud slinging, most of the time it's either BS or an exaggeration.

>It's dumb and unfairly treats good honest safe people, but racist is a stretch.

That's all racism is. Dumb thoughtless prejudice. It doesn't have horns and a tail.

That twitter thing you just linked, did you read the replies under it?

I'm not 100% sure of the context. But it looks like it's fake.

@SRowntreeNews @WALTBACON Dude that's a fake account. Don't RT that garbage.

@aobrien7 good catch, thanks

@SRowntreeNews This is fake, @michaeldweiss. Part of disinfo network spreading false rumors. They were very active during Euro soccer riots.

--

If thats case aren't you just perpetuating a narrative about Trump supporters being a bunch of racist bigots, when in this case its made up BS????

This is exactly what pissed off a lot of regular people and got them to the polls IMO.

> ...aren't you just perpetuating a narrative...

Uh, no. I wrote that something 'showed up on my twitter feed', implying it's unverified. Last night there wasn't a way to verify it, it merely seemed plausible. In any case, the Huffpost article sufficiently makes the case.

> If thats case aren't you just perpetuating a narrative about Trump supporters being a bunch of racist bigots

You are though.

I want to agree with you but Muslims are not a race. Neither are Mexicans for that matter. And being Islamaphobic and xenophobic genuinely is different from being racist. Perhaps not very different, but different nonetheless.

N.B. The chant you mention was in fact a hoax.

It's worth bearing in mind that the US is a much more racialized society than the UK. We don't think of 'Mexican' or 'Muslim' as racial categories. But they de facto are racial categories in the US. That may not be very logical, but then neither are most Trump supporters. How many of them do you think are able to carefully parse the distinctions between 'Latino', 'Mexican' and 'illegal brown person'?

And of course, racism very often comes wrapped up in other prejudices which are thought (rightly or wrongly) to be more respectable. All of the groups Trump has targeted are groups that just so happen to consist mostly of people who aren't white. They're the groups that, in the public imagination, are responsible for the loss of an imagined homogenous White America.

Trump can't say "I want a white America". But the people who do want this haven't had any difficulty picking up on his hints.

>How many of them do you think are able to carefully parse the distinctions between 'Latino', 'Mexican' and 'illegal brown person'?

And yet, Trump supporters understands that Mexican and Muslims are not a race. Hence, why they think Trump is not racist.

>Trump can't say "I want a white America". But the people who do want this haven't had any difficulty picking up on his hints.

Now you're just making up things in your mind about Trump and Trump supporters, and then accusing them of it.

> Trump supporters understands that Mexican and Muslims are not a race. Hence, why they think Trump is not racist.

So they think he's xenophobic and religiously bigoted instead? How is that better?

>Now you're just making up things in your mind about Trump and Trump supporters, and then accusing them of it.

I'm not making up the fact that white supremacists supported Trump.

>So they think he's xenophobic and religiously bigoted instead? How is that better?

He is not against all immigrants. He is ONLY against ILLEGAL immigrants. He still supports LEGAL immigrants from all over the world.

Also, he is not against the Islamic religion. He is just against immigration from countries with known ties to terrorism.

>I'm not making up the fact that white supremacists supported Trump.

The KKK also supports Hillary too, so that's just the typical election rhetoric you see every four years.

These are misconceptions by people who have not listened to Trump's rally speeches. They only hear a small part of the quotes without the context and form these misconceptions about him. And now, they're shocked and confused to find that the majority of the country supports him.

> Also, he is not against the Islamic religion. He is just against immigration from countries with known ties to terrorism.

He expressly called for all Muslims to be barred from the United States. I'm afraid that claiming he's "not against the Islamic religion" is not a fact-based argument.

Which he also later clarified to meant immigrants from countries with direct ties to terrorism. And TEMPORARY only, until they can figure something out, like a vetting program, from those countries with direct ties to terrorism.

He wants to protect everyone from terrorism. Yes, he wants to protect Muslims from terrorism too. He even asked them for their help in the fight against radical terrorism, because he knows that terrorism affects them too.

>Which he also later clarified to meant immigrants from countries with direct ties to terrorism.

That's not a clarification, that's just saying something completely different from what he originally said.

But at no point was it racist like you claimed.

We already covered that. You're changing the subject.

Accusation of racist where there is no racism.

Yep, we already covered that. Feel free to call it xenophobia and religious bigotry instead.

But it is not xenophobia to want to keep terrorists out by temporary stopping immigration from countries with ties to terrorism. And that has nothing to do with their religion. It has to do with the fact that terrorists want to blow people up.

Calling that xenophobia and religious bigotry is just a straight out lie.

He called for a ban on all Muslims. Try explaining how that has "nothing to do with religion".

>...all Muslims...

Not ALL Muslims.

ONLY the Muslims IMMIGRANTS from countries with direct ties to terrorist groups.

So how can he be racist if he's only banning the Muslims from countries with direct ties to terrorism, and not ALL Muslims? He's not banning ALL Muslims immigrants like you claim.

And this has nothing to do with religion. An immigrant don't even have to be Muslim. ANY immigrants (ANY, not just Muslims) that are attempting to enter the United States from a country with direct ties to terrorism will not be allowed into the United States until vetting can be done.

He is on video calling for a ban on all Muslims.

He was also on video calling for ban for only immigrants from nations with direct ties to terrorism.

http://www.snopes.com/kkk-endorses-hillary-clinton/

Like I said, election rhetoric meant to smear the opponent.

Voters are smarter than this. Voters care more about the real issues that are affecting them (jobs, economy, etc). They don't care who the KKK is voting for. The result of the election have shown that.

Huh? My point was that the KKK really was supporting Trump, whereas it was not really supporting Hillary.

We have no way of knowing whether they genuinely support Trump, or whether they did actually support Hillary like they claimed to. It's all election smearing and rhetoric, which voters don't care about, as the election results have shown.

They didn't claim to support Hillary; see link. David Duke did, however, endorse Trump.

I understand.

They claimed to have donated $20,000 to Hillary. The website claimed the claim is false.

We will never know, but more importantly, the voters didn't really care who the KKK was supporting, as the election results have shown.

We know that David Duke supported Trump. We don't know of anyone associated with the KKK supporting Hillary. That the voters don't care is to their discredit.

We do know of Hillary's mentor, he claimed to have left the KKK. We know of other KKK Grand Master who have claimed to have donated to Hillary. It's all just claims and accusations to smear the opposite opponents in the election cycle. These are not important issues. Voters knows these are just election smears.

Nope, we know for sure that David Duke endorsed trump. Everything else you're referencing is baseless speculation.

But we also know that the KKK donated $20,000 to Hillary.

>And Trump is a racist bigot, you simply cannot deny it.

There you go with the name calling again. How about you listen to Trump supporters for once. Or maybe you just don't want to know the real reason why Trump supporters supported Trump.

Stop talking and start listening.