Some of this concern is typical in every modern election. Republicans radiate confidence while Democrats fret. Political science also provides a simple answer to Trump\u2019s continued popularity. We live in a narrowly divided country where Republicans traditionally vote for Republican candidates \u2014 and the same goes for Democrats. Every modern election is relatively close. Incumbent parties<\/a> around the world<\/a> and across the political spectrum<\/a> have struggled<\/a> after the pandemic and related inflation increases.<\/p>\n

For many Democrats, Trump\u2019s continued viability as a presidential candidate speaks to something more fundamental and concerning.<\/p>\n

Emotionally, however, this is hardly a satisfactory answer. For many Democrats, Trump\u2019s continued viability as a presidential candidate speaks to something more fundamental and concerning: How can someone as odious and malignant as Trump maintain so much popular support?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just that Trump\u2019s four years in office were defined by unimaginable incompetence, venality, chaos and cruelty. It\u2019s not just that he is a convicted felon who spurred an insurrection and still refuses to accept the results of the 2020 election. It\u2019s not just that many Democrats can\u2019t\u00a0comprehend why anyone would want to return to those days.<\/p>\n

The larger and more disquieting issue is the campaign Trump is running right now: one that is as vile and as openly racist as any campaign in perhaps all of American history \u2014 and that includes his previous runs for the White House.<\/p>\n

Virtually Trump\u2019s entire message to voters this year is about the alleged threat represented by immigrants \u2014 both legal and illegal. A recent review<\/a> of his speeches by Blue Light News summarized them this way: \u201cTrump has demonized minority groups and used increasingly dark, graphic imagery to talk about migrants in every one of his speeches since the Sept. 10 presidential debate.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than ever, Trump\u2019s rhetoric is steeped in racism, xenophobia and dehumanization. He routinely calls immigrants \u201cvermin\u201d and says they are \u201cpoisoning the blood\u201d of the country. He claims they are \u201cstone-cold killers,\u201d \u201canimals\u201d and \u201cthe worst people\u201d who will \u201ccut your throat.\u201d (This is, unsurprisingly, not true. Crime rates among immigrants are lower than those among native-born Americans.)\u00a0Last week in Colorado, he called migrants from<\/a> Latin America, Congo and the Middle East \u201cthe most violent people on Earth.\u201d He also accused Harris of importing<\/a> \u201can army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the Third World \u2026 to prey upon innocent American citizens.\u201d He\u2019s even suggested that nonwhite immigrants<\/a> have \u201cbad genes\u201d that make them genetically inferior.<\/p>\n

This is fascist rhetoric. More specifically, it\u2019s Nazi rhetoric. But the crowds at Trump\u2019s rallies aren\u2019t horrified by such language. They lap it up.<\/p>\n

Is this really what America has become?<\/p>\n

Trump is openly trafficking in racial fear and paying little political price for doing so. The centerpiece of Trump\u2019s immigration policy is a call for massive detention camps and the mass deportation of illegal migrants. At this summer\u2019s Republican National Convention, the GOP printed up and distributed thousands of signs to the assembled delegates<\/a> that read \u201cMass Deportation Now.\u201d Trump has even suggested that migrants who are in the country legally<\/a> must be deported \u2014 like the Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, whom he has repeatedly and falsely accused of eating dogs and cats.<\/p>\n

There are surely voters who take Trump seriously but not literally<\/a> \u2014 and refuse to believe he will follow through on his rhetoric. But when Trump was president, his administration initiated a policy of forcibly separating young children from their parents as a tool for deterring illegal immigration. And even if Trump doesn\u2019t mean it now, why would these voters want to associate themselves with language not dissimilar from actual Nazis?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just Trump\u2019s language about immigrants that is so troubling.\u00a0 I\u2019m old enough to remember when George H.W. Bush calling his opponents \u201cbozos\u201d in 1992 was considered untoward. Hillary Clinton was vilified for referring to half of Trump\u2019s supporters as \u201cdeplorable.\u201d Now, Trump regularly refers to his political opponents as \u201can enemy within.\u201d He has talked about taking \u201cretribution\u201d against Democrats, whom he calls \u201cevil.\u201d In recent days, he\u2019s even suggested<\/a> he would unleash the U.S. military on his political rivals.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s ability to carry out such threats might be constrained by the courts and even the military\u2019s own unwillingness to conduct illegal domestic operations. But that hardly seems like a risk worth taking.<\/p>\n

Yet the bigger danger of a Trump campaign is that so many Americans will go to the polls and validate Trump\u2019s bigotry, violent rhetoric and divisiveness. For more than a few Democrats, the lack of political backlash from comments that would spell the end of any other presidential campaign is, as much as the tight polling margin, what has made this presidential campaign so uniquely unsettling. Is this really what America has become?<\/p>\n

Many Democrats would have viewed the election of John McCain in 2008 or Mitt Romney in 2012 as disastrous events, but hardly ones that made them question the sustainability of the American experiment in representative democracy. A Trump victory would represent something very different \u2014 the endorsement of a national ethos that runs utterly contrary to the arc of modern American history, which has imperfectly bent toward justice.<\/p>\n

Even if Trump loses, he will still likely get 45%-47% of the popular vote. How does America move forward when so many of our fellow citizens embrace a candidate and a message so fundamentally un-American? Defeating Trump is obviously essential, but as this presidential election, like the two before it, has made clear, America is a very different place than many of us imagined.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Michael A. Cohen<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Michael\u00a0A.\u00a0Cohen is a columnist for BLN and a Senior Fellow and co-director of the Afghanistan Assumptions Project at the Center for Strategic Studies at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. He writes the political newsletter\u00a0 Truth and Consequences<\/a>.\u00a0He has been a columnist at The Boston Globe, The Guardian and Foreign Policy, and he is the author of three books, the\u00a0 most recent being<\/a>\u00a0\u201cClear and Present Safety: The World Has Never Been Better and Why That Matters to Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

There is one question that dominates every political conversation and every group chat in Democratic enclaves across America, and it\u2019s not \u201cWill Kamala Harris win the election?\u201d It\u2019s \u201cHow is Donald Trump this close to winning?\u201d Some of this concern is typical in every modern election. Republicans radiate confidence while Democrats fret. Political science also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":985,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}