I don't buy it.

While its true that Trump said a lot of racist stuff, there are racists voting in every election. Those racists weren't enough to keep Obama from getting elected twice. The Democrats were never going to get those votes anyway.

What the Hillary campaign failed to do is get the non-racists on her side. It's already starting to come out that in some places more women voted for Trump than Hillary. I wouldn't be surprised to find that there was an overall lack of turn-out for her side with many minorities, and that Trump won more minority votes than many expected.

The sad fact is that Hillary was a flat out terrible candidate who was neither able to motivate her base nor convince independents of all races and genders. It was Hillary's campaign to lose, and she lost it.

Hillary wasn't a terrible candidate. Hillary was a mediocre candidate that the right painted as the worst candidate ever (that's their main strategy nowadays, their biggest opponent is always The Worst Candidate Ever). The problem is that a sizable chunk of the middle and left bought into it. In the end, Jill Stein may have been the spoiler in surprise states like Wisconsin.

Hillary was the second least popular candidate in modern history (Trump being the first). The Democrats ran the ultimate insider candidate in a no-more-business-as-usual election, and then campaigned on nothing but "it's her turn", "she's not Trump", and "Trump voters are stupid". She fully qualifies as terrible.

Stein wasn't the spoiler, she got less than a third as many votes as Johnson in Wisconsin. There's no point looking for a scapegoat, just learn the lesson.

What other election had so many hate and white supremacist groups endorsing a single candidate? Did he ever disavow them directly?

Why Clinton Lost according to CNN.

In every demographic, Hillary lost ground compared to Obama.

Demographic: Hillary (Obama)
African American: 88% (93%)
Latinos: 65% (71%)
Under 30: 54% (60%)
Asian: 65% (73%)
Women: 54% (55%)

She flat out failed to appeal to her voter base.

Then you have this gem: "White voters made up 70% of the electorate this year, down from 72% four years ago."

So there were actually less white voters this time, yet Trump still won.

It seems pretty clear to me that the problem was Hillary failing to appeal in every demographic rather than some sort of racist surge. While those people definitely exist, I don't think there are suddenly more of them around now as opposed to 4 years ago.

Now it true that Trump gave a voice to those racists. But ultimately they didn't decide the election, Hillary's poor performance did.

This is the point I was trying to make in my post at the bottom of the comments. Hillary is one of the most despised politicians in all the land. Why her? The democratic party had become so complacent with the republicans ever evolving into the party of the stupid.

I think you're also rather missing the point of how many of these groups not only voted for him, they voiced enthusiastic support for him, endorsed him, etc., and he never repudiated said support. They showed up to his rallies with shirts that had racist or violent slogans on them, and they weren't ejected.

If suddenly the Crips and/or the Bloods said that a candidate was their favorite, would you expect said candidate to at least say they didn't support the views of said gang?

I feel like you are responding to a different conversation.

I'm not denying that Trump is racist, or that he encouraged the support of racists. The is a factual thing that can't really be argued against.

What I'm saying is that racism is not the reason why he won the election.

In 2008/2012, Obama didn't win by silencing all the crazy people saying that he was a secret Muslim. He won by getting key demographics which are usually underrepresented to come out to the polls and vote.

Make no mistake, those crazy people are the same ones showing up at the Trump rallies; they were just better dressed back then. The DNC knew this; Obama literally handed them the formula for how many votes they need in each demographic to win against the opposition (including racists) and proved that it worked.

The stats show that Hillary didn't achieve those votes. What's worse, the Hillary campaign (along with most of the media) was completely blind-sided by how far off she was from earning those votes. It is a complete failure of campaign management and forecasting on the DNC side which led to her defeat. The racists never went anywhere; its everyone else which failed to show up.

His campaign did indeed repudiate endorsements by the KKK, etc.

There are racists voting in every election, but they don't usually have a blatantly racist candidate to get behind. His campaign was mostly based on portraying non-white, non-christians as a direct threat to the shrinking white majority.

I have relatives who claim Trump isn't a racist. They had only cries about e-mails when it was pointed out that Trump was endorsed by pretty much every racist and racist organization out there.

What I find really troubling is how these sorts of people are going to be emboldened over the coming months and years. I expect a lot of violence targeting minorities to not only take place, but be glossed over by the DoJ.

At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if Sheriff Joe Arpaio was appointed as Attorney General.

Probably Giuliani for AG, he still wants to prosecute Clinton.

Everyone's a little bit racist. There's a super catchy song about it. Is der Trumpenführer more racist personally than Hillary "super predators" Clinton? Doubtful.

That wasn't my point, so let me restate it for you:

Whether or not Trump is racist is rather less a problem than the fact that he was endorsed by a large number of racists and racist groups.

Not racist, but #1 with racists.

As Micheal Tomasky pointed out in the article I just posted, how many white supremacists do you think live in Bucks County, Pennsylvania?

Plenty. As James Carville once said, Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in the middle.

Nice. Having never been, I'll take your word for it.

Is it racism when someone believes, in spite of all rational evidence, that Mexicans are flooding across the border to take their jobs? When they refuse to believe that the Obama administration has been deporting illegals in record numbers? Is it racism when someone believes that Syrian refugees have committed acts of terrorism when they haven't?

Where does racism start in that set of beliefs?

No, it's stupidity.

I'd counter and ask why it's so believable to them, then.

I'll also point out that racism isn't exactly a sign of a towering intellect.

I've been trying to tell friends and family about this shit for two years now.

I told them that the real racist assholes don't dress up in their white robes and hang out with their two friends in the woods much anymore. They are online persuading young people to be racist douchebags, trolls, and bullies. They are on places like /pol/ and tons of other shitty places being general assholes. Being crap anywhere on the internet, really, and bullying the ever-living fuck out of minorities and women.

They're also emboldened town members that have been encouraged by right-wing radio and Fox News to hate on immigrants and blacks. That's why they think BLM is a terrorist organization and they treat Somali refugees like trash.

When you call people "the African-Americans" and you treat latinos with great suspicion, promise to ban all muslims from coming into the US, young people WILL take notice. Thank god I'm not a kid in middle school right now. I got beat up for being black when I was, but I can't imagine what it is like now.

But maybe Trump learned at the end of the day that you don't need those dirty minorities to vote for you to win. You just need enough white people. At least he doesn't need those troublesome people on his conscious while he makes America great again.

It will be interesting to get the exit poll data and all the other info like voter turnout.

Even talking about it brings up terms I hate to use like "white" (what the actual fuck) and "non-white" (even worse) but well, America is what it is so here we go: what I heard was that Trump / Republicans could not win without Hispanic support, at a bare minimum, and a significant fraction of the "non white" (apologies) vote generally. Certainly they'd need women. Those requirements go up if they could not get the black vote... which, yeah, they probably didn't get.

White male college dropouts (rednecks or not rednecks) alone cannot win you an election. Numerically impossible.

So whatever happened, it involved a lot of hispanics and women and minorities like muslims and asians and so forth and maybe even college graduates of all stripes and colors who were supposed to not vote for Trump but did, or did not vote at all.

We do need to have that conversation about race that Jones is talking about, but considering our new national moderator, I fear this will not be a civil, peaceful conversation.

It's not going to happen.

What liberal/democrats/progressives are not quite understanding in our attempt to understand and "heal" is that this is massive blow to what Trump supporters call "PC culture." What we might ever attempt at conversation now on race is going to be met with "We defeated that! No more talking about that now! You're done! Your side lost."

Of course, their counterargument is that PC culture destroyed the conversation in the first place.

Fun situation we're in now. Trump talking about sexism and racism and prejudice IS going to be humorous though. In a sad sort of way. Imagine this dude. He's going to make satirists great again.

I hear you. This election has made me hear you better, too.

I think rural and poor whites have had the shit end of the stick. I also think rural and poor blacks have had the shit end of the stick as well. But we seem to have this complicated outlook that comes out of our cultural institutions and art that makes this all hard to understand.

It is a terrible thing that is happening in America, and if we could get rid of all talk of race and privilege tomorrow I would. I don't even believe in races. I'm just a person. I'd rather just be called an American. But there are these living structures that are dragging us down.

I think the only way forward is either one of two things: 1) We find some sensible and intelligible way to reckon with the past regarding race so that our future is better (so we can leave the race stuff behind) or 2) we make all this shit so complicated we really do fall off a cliff and completely redefine our identity via chaos.

I think the latter is more likely to happen. That's unfortunate.

I disagree with the OP somewhat.

White supremacy is what got donald trump the nomination, but not what got him elected.

The arrogance of the democratic party and their tone deaf insistence that hillary Clinton, among the most hated figures in the country, deserved the nomination enough to blatantly collude against bernie sanders is the other half of the equation

hillary Clinton, among the most hated figures in the country, deserved the nomination enough to blatantly collude against bernie sanders is the other half of the equation

Do you have a link that shows that collusion? I'd like to read it.