After spending decades decrying as foul and despicable the Republican pandering to white southern racism to win elections, euphemistically called the Southern Strategy, serious journalists and even many prominent Democrats are at least hinting that the Democratic party should do the EXACT SAME THING.
That Democrats should consider pandering to the perceived prejudices of white working class voters in the economically depressed Midwest and inner northeast. That the democrats should give this small slice of the overall party – allegedly bigoted Democrats – the strongest of all voices and nominate the more divisive, more negative and negatively perceived, and LOSING, Hilary Clinton because she is the white candidate.
In addition to violating every premise on which the modern United States of America has been constructed, such a suggestion also points out the sickness engendered by our outdated and outmoded method of electing a President. The reasoning goes that Democrats cannot win the Presidency without the State of Pennsylvania. They cannot win the State of Pennsylvania without conservative, white working class voters.
And they cannot win those conservative, white working class voters with a n-word on the ticket.
(apologies for the language, but we need to be shocked about this).
Call it the Rust Belt Strategy. Call it vile and disgusting.
There are innumerable reasons why such an decision would turn away far more voters than it attracts, even in Pennsylvania, and would virtually ensure a Democratic loss in the fall.
But far more important is the basic principle that should not even be questioned, certainly not in the allegedly more progressive Democratic party:
Racism should never be used or played to, to win an election.
Surely, the Democrats have not become so power mad that they are willing to violate one of their most fundamental principles. Surely, they are not willing to sell their very souls to win an election.
If they are, then they are also, at long last and fundamentally, little different from the Republicans and we are seriously screwed.
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