Adam Serwer: “The theory is that by supercharging the salience of race—a reliable winner with huge swaths of the electorate—they can compensate for the unpopularity of the Trump campaign’s actual policy agenda: its plans to ban abortion, repeal protections for preexisting conditions in the Affordable Care Act, deregulate Big Business, and cut taxes on the wealthy while raising them on everyone else.”
“The campaign wants people—white people in particular—thinking about race, and hopes that these kinds of appeals will activate the necessary number of voters in the key swing states where the electorate is more conservative than the country as a whole. As Molly Ball reported in 2017, based on polling from the former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, another former Trump stalwart, Steve Bannon, developed a plan to galvanize white voters with race-baiting on immigration.”
“The belief that demagoguery on immigration is politically potent is why conservative media erupt with saturation coverage of the perennial migrant caravans every election season. The right sees as its most effective message the argument that immigrants, particularly nonwhite immigrants, are going to come to America and take or be given that which belongs to you.”
