"It is insufficient to state the obvious of Donald Trump: that he is a white man who would not be president were it not for this fact."
Thus begins Ta-Nehisi Coates' overwrought article "The First White President" in the latest issue of The Atlantic.
It isn't to say that Trump didn't deploy racial demagoguery during the 2016 campaign. He most certainly did and much of it was directed towards Latinos whether it was his ugly comments about Mexican illegal immigrants being rapists to open his campaign or repeatedly suggesting Judge Gonzalo Curiel's Mexican heritage rendered him unfit to preside over the Trump University trial. His heinous words were among my 10 reasons why I could not vote for him.
But Trump doesn't sit in the Oval Office simply because he is a white man. He is President because of his mastery of celebrity and his perceived wealth and that he was able to utilize these qualities to convince American voters he could bring them so much winning.
It is certainly true that Trump convinced far more white Americans than African-Americans and Latinos. But curiously Coates ignores the fact that Trump actually garnered fewer white voters than Mitt Romney did in 2012 while modestly increasing Republican vote totals among both constituencies as well as Asian Americans.
How does Coates explain this fact? Would he even try?
Well, let me take a stab. In August 2016, I attended a rally by Libertarian ticket of Gary Johnson and William Weld in Boston Common. Following the rally, Weld, a former Massachusetts Governor, posed for pictures and made a brief statement. When Weld said that immigrants took jobs than Americans wouldn't take, a Latino man repeatedly shouted, "What jobs won't Americans take?" Weld did not answer. It became clear this Latino man was a strong supporter of Donald Trump
Afterwards, this man was approached by a reporter who asked him why he supported Trump. "His honesty. I like his honesty," the man said, "He's putting his fortune on the line." Now, of course, Trump lies with nearly every breath he takes. No doubt this man confused bluntness with honesty. Be that as it may his perception was that Trump is an honest man and surely this Latino man wasn't alone in that perception.
No doubt Coates would dismiss this Latino man as having insufficient racial consciousness. But Coates thinks of America entirely in terms of race. That man didn't and most people don't. Of course, it doesn't mean race isn't part of our collective thinking. It's just that most people think in terms of winning and losing and those thoughts have no color.
Whether Coates wants to admit it or not, there were African-Americans and Latinos who voted for Donald Trump. And whether Coates wants to admit it or not, there were Obama voters of all races who saw fit to vote for Trump. Not a majority mind you, but enough.
If Coates wants to attribute Trump's win to whiteness and being a white man that is certainly his prerogative. But then what of 2020? It seems to me that Coates would rather rail against whiteness than persuade people to vote Trump out of the White House. The former is easier than the latter. Yet if you convince Trump voters he isn't a winner and can't bring them winning then and only then will he lose. But so long as Coates convinces the Left that Trump's triumph is about whiteness instead of winning then Trump is going to go on winning.
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