Trump is baiting the Democrats on race to divide his opponents

Whenever someone kicks the table in politics, it is often hard to spot who wins and who loses while the papers are still up in the air.

Take, as an example, last week’s nonsense surrounding Sir Kim Darroch. Initially, the leak looked like it might help Boris Johnson by highlighting the cosiness of the diplomatic corps and the anti-Trump (and by extension, anti-Brexit) sentiments of the civil service. By the end of the week, it was a full-blown diplomatic incident which left Johnson mumbling into his tie. He hadn’t defended the ambassador with enough vim and suddenly the story was a boon for Hunt who had come out strongly in favour of the ambassador.

None of that suggests that either the Hunt camp or Johnson bandwagon was behind the leak. It does, however, show how hard it sometimes is to ascribe motives. If Columbo were on the case, he’d have nailed the means and opportunity inside the first few minutes of the episode, but he’d still be scratching his head about who gained the most from the political hitjob.

The same questions might now be asked about Donald Trump’s latest outrage, after he attacked four progressive members of the Democratic Party, suggesting that they should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came”. In the immediate moment, it looks like Trump has harmed himself, but we should perhaps let the dust settle before we assess the damage.

After all, these are not just any four congresswomen he chose to attack.

Beyond Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, there is Ilhan Omar who has been in trouble for comments widely condemned as being antisemitic. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the rather overexposed face of the progressive Left. Rashida Tlaib, meanwhile, is famous for her indecorous language when speaking about the President, saying the Democrats are “going to impeach the motherfucker”.

All of which explains why Trump is throwing blood in the waters. He knows that the resultant thrashing will only aid his argument and, perhaps, his re-election.

He might well be right. It certainly feels like a calculated strategy, as reinforced by his subsequent refusal to back down. The response of “The Squad”, as the four congresswomen are known, was to beg that the country does not “take the bait” of his “White Supremacist” language. This was done, however, at a press conference which was all about taking the bait. They promised to be even more vocal, especially on the matter of immigration, and that, surely, is what Trump was betting on. Cue the sound of Nancy Pelosi grinding her teeth…

Because House Speaker Pelosi is really the central figure in the story. What Trump has effectively done is inject himself into the internal politics of the Democratic Party, attacking the very same members who have been in a fight with Pelosi. Pelosi knows that Democrats win elections by reaching out to the moderate end of conservative America. Trump knows the same and can minimise that appeal by pushing his opponents to the Left. It explains why we had the odd spectacle, last week, of Trump defending Pelosi against charges of racism. By aligning himself with the moderate, he dilutes a little of his own toxicity around a subject that may define the next election. It also ensures that the four young congresswomen are further alienated from their own party leadership.

Indeed, one of the few truly political powers of the presidency is the ability to direct the national spotlight into those hollows where his opponents want the least illumination. It helps Trump if the country sees Democrats squabbling among themselves. He will compound their pain by spending most of the next two years describing them as “socialists”. It’s all about the dog whistle, of course, given there’s no explanation as to why they’re socialist or which version of socialism they espouse but that barely matters. It is enough to brand them with that most emotive of words, denoting a badly thought out, messy, argumentative politics much loved by radical types.

By the same measure, “race” is another emotive term. In the space where a sensible discussion could take place, we have both sides giving little in the way of grace or understanding. That’s not to say there’s a moral equivalency between those that express casual racism or those that fight racism. There has, however, been a lot of edging around the subject on both sides.

We can thank fabled American cartoonist Thomas Nast for the association of the Republicans with an elephant, which he saw as representing the party’s fearless but clumsy nature. These days, however, the elephant sin the room is the changing demographic of America. For Republicans, it is the subject that worries them the most, but they publicly acknowledge the least. It is why Trump’s racism this week isn’t “just racism” but a vision of a white America in decline that is shared by many of those Americans who will be voting for him next year. This is the standard rhetoric of the American right, where Anne Coulter routinely opines that the country will become “another failed Latin American state” if it continues to welcome millions of refugees from the south.

Trump, without shame, is applying pressure to that wound in the American psyche. Liberal America might well be right to make the moral argument that “ethnicity should not be an issue” but that does not make that a reality in a purple state such as Florida, which Trump won in 2016. Trump is weaponizing the demographic bomb that ticks beneath the Republican Party, but he also seems to have recognised that it also ticks beneath the Democrats.

As we saw with Kamala Harris’s attack on Joe Biden, it was assumed that Harris, as a black woman having lived a life shaped by the African American experience, was more correct when she attacked Joe Biden on bussing.

Despite being later proved to be right, Biden was made to look guilty and, in the moment when he was accused, was hindered in his defence. It was a synecdoche for the Democratic Party’s greater dilemma. Do they wholeheartedly embrace the new emergent America, represented by ethnic diversity, gender theory, and the politics of identity, thereby cutting themselves off from those places where Trump prospers? Or do they retain one foot in that old America, by somehow containing the centrifugal enthusiasms of its younger members?

The Democrat’s most sensible path back into power seems obvious and that’s precisely why Trump is trying to steer them the other way.