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From the moment he rode down that escalator in
June 2015, Donald Trump has peddled a muscular political message
packaged in gauzy nostalgia. An argument for the future wrapped in a yearning
for the past.
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Make America Great Again. It’s
a promise to return the country to past glory. A time of strength abroad. A
time of prosperity at home. A time of “so much winning.”
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A time that never really
existed.
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The past wasn’t all that
great if you were, say, brown, black, Indigenous, L.G.B.T.Q., Jewish, Muslim,
a woman, an immigrant, or plenty of other people. For a large swath of the
country, the present is far from perfect, too. But few of them would want to
turn back the clock to the days of more segregation, more open
discrimination, more people in the closet.
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Mr. Trump’s message focuses
on the economy, but also taps into a vein of white political grievance. There
have been a number of studies showing that’s exactly what happened in the
2016 election. Many white, Christian and male voters, academic research suggests,
supported Mr. Trump not because of financial anxiety but because they felt
their social status was at risk.
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Those concerns were deeply
intertwined with race. Support for Mr. Trump was closely linked to a belief
that groups like whites, Christians or men faced more discrimination than
groups like minorities, Muslims or women, according to various analyses of the
election.
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Public polling today
indicates that the number of voters sympathetic to that view is shrinking —
fast.
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Public opinion on race and
criminal justice issues has been creeping leftward since the fatal shooting
of Trayvon Martin in 2012. The killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis last
month supercharged that shift, as my colleagues at the
Upshot detailed on Wednesday.
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Over the last two weeks,
support for Black Lives Matter increased by nearly as much as it had over the
previous two years, according to data from Civiqs, an online survey research
firm. A series of polls
shows a significant increase from just a few years ago in the belief that
African-Americans face a lot of discrimination, and that it’s a “big problem.” A majority of Americans
say that black Americans are more likely to be mistreated by the police, and
that the mass protests in cities nationwide are justified.
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“In my 35 years of polling,
I’ve never seen opinion shift this fast or deeply,” Frank Luntz, a veteran
Republican pollster, tweeted this
week. “We are a different country today than just 30 days ago.”
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Even within some of the
most culturally conservative corners of the country, views are shifting. This
week, NASCAR banned Confederate
flags at races. The military is open to renaming its bases
named after Confederate leaders. Statues of Confederate solders, slave owners
and race-baiting politicians
are falling like dominoes.
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The country is changing;
Mr. Trump is not.
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Rather than acknowledge the
realities of systemic racism, he attacks protesters and militarizes the area
around the White House. He has yet to deliver a speech devoted to race or
reconciliation, instead posting near-daily tweets extolling “Law and Order!”
He’s returning to the campaign trail on Juneteenth (June 19), a day dedicated
to honoring black emancipation, in Tulsa, Okla., a city with a devastating history of
racial violence. He lends credibility to the
views of white nationalists on Twitter.
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Mr. Trump delivered some of
his most extensive comments on the protests at an appearance today at a
Dallas church, but his strongest sympathies were reserved for the police, as
he repeated his call to “dominate the street.” He said he would sign an order
to encourage better police practices, but stayed away from broader proposals
to address racial injustice.
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“We have to work together
to confront bigotry and prejudice wherever they appear, but we will make no
progress and heal no wounds by falsely labeling tens of millions of decent
Americans as racist or bigots,” he said.
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Though Mr. Trump’s
hard-core supporters stand with him, other Republicans are following the
country’s lead. Senator Mitt Romney marched with protesters on Sunday, trying
to create a permission structure for Republican voters. Acknowledging that
voters want action, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, tapped
Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the lone black Republican in his ranks,
to lead an effort on how to address police misconduct.
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Mr. Trump’s November
opponent, Joe Biden, once declared that “nothing would
fundamentally change” under his presidency, and he faced criticism
during the Democratic primary over his legislative record
on race and nostalgia for the past.
But Mr. Biden, long a reliable ally of law enforcement, supports overhauling
the police, as does nearly all of his party.
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Few Democrats have embraced
the calls to “defund the police” issued by activists. But there is a growing
sense that something fundamental has gone awry in America.
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In his inauguration
address, Mr. Trump described “American carnage,”
outlining a doomsday vision of a country ravaged by economic disaster,
violence and fear.
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For many Americans, that
carnage has now arrived, visited upon us by a virus, a recession and social
unrest. For others, including many of those protesting, the carnage was
always there.
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If Mr. Trump loses in
November, the carnage may be self-inflicted.
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