Georgia Republicans blamed last night’s humiliating playoff defeat for the Atlanta Braves because of their efforts to ban the “tomahawk chop” chant, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
The team didn’t distribute the trademark foam tomahawks to fans at the decisive National League Division series game after St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Ryan Helsley, who is a member of the Cherokee Nation, called the chop disrespectful.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wore brownface makeup to a party at the private school where he was teaching in the spring of 2001, Time reports.
“A photo shows Trudeau, then the 29-year-old son of the late former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, wearing a turban and robes with his face, neck and hands completely darkened. The photograph appears in the 2000-2001 yearbook of West Point Grey Academy, a private day school where Trudeau was a teacher.”
“Who do you like more, the country or the Hispanics? He says the country, I don’t know. I may have to go with the Hispanics to be honest with you. we’ve got a lot of Hispanics.”
— President Trump, quoted by The Week, at a rally in New Mexico last night
New York Times: “At the Democratic primary debate last week, Joseph Biden prompted some distress within the party with a rambling, discordant answer to a question about the legacy of slavery, a moment that highlighted his unsteady instincts, and mixed record, on matters of race. Three days later, a heavily African-American crowd gave Mr. Biden a warm welcome as he delivered a passionate address at the 16th Street Baptist Church, a symbol of the civil rights struggle, where he denounced institutional racism to mark the 56th anniversary of the bombing that killed four young black girls here in 1963.”
“The divergent responses underscore the uncertainty surrounding whether Mr. Biden can translate his longstanding connection to black voters into votes next year. His deep ties to black leaders, his service as Barack Obama’s vice president and his popularity among older, more conservative African Americans have given him a commanding lead in the polls among a constituency that is crucial to any Democratic candidate seeking the nomination.”
“But that support has never been rigorously tested at the ballot box outside of his home state of Delaware, and missteps like his meandering debate answer on slavery, as well as his legislative record on issues like busing and criminal justice, have intensified questions among progressive activists, and some party leaders, about whether he is the best standard-bearer for African-American priorities.”
Newly acquired e-mails and records reveal that Republican Party operative Thomas Hofeller may have unconstitutionally used race data to draw congressional districts in 2016, the New Yorker reports.
“Hofeller’s files include dozens of intensely detailed studies of North Carolina college students, broken down by race and cross-referenced against the state driver’s-license files to determine whether these students likely possessed the proper I.D. to vote. The studies are dated 2014 and 2015, the years before Hofeller helped Republicans in the state redraw its congressional districts in ways that voting-rights groups said discriminated on the basis of race. North Carolina Republicans said that the maps discriminated based on partisanship but not race.”
“Hofeller’s hard drive also retained a map of North Carolina’s 2017 state judicial gerrymander, with an overlay of the black voting-age population by district, suggesting that these maps—which are currently at the center of a protracted legal battle—might also be a racial gerrymander.”
In his upcoming memoir, newly appointed Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch describes the private tour he gave President Trump of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, recalling that Trump’s reaction to the Dutch role in the global slave trade was, “You know, they love me in the Netherlands,” the Washington Post reports.
Before the president-elect arrived, his aides told Bunch that Trump “was in a foul mood” and did not want to see anything “difficult.”
Nevertheless, Bunch writes he started the tour in the history galleries, which begin with the global slave trade: “It was not my job to make the rough edges of history smooth, even for the president.”
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) “is contacting state legislators, and apologizing for her role in a racist student skit from her time as an Auburn student,” the Birmingham News reports.
“Ivey was president of her Alpha Gamma Delta pledge class at Auburn. Photos of her sorority sisters in blackface emerged earlier this year. None showed the governor.”
Joe Biden said that racism in America is institutional and it is a “white man’s problem visited on people of color,” arguing that the way to attack the issue is to defeat President Trump and shame the racists he has emboldened, the AP reports.
Taking aim at incendiary racial appeals by Trump, Biden said that a president’s words can “appeal to the worst damn instincts of human nature,” just as they can move markets or take a nation into war.
Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman who launched a primary challenge against President Trump, told MSNBC that he wasn’t a racist but had said “racist things.”
Said Walsh: “I wouldn’t call myself a racist, but I would say I’ve said racist things on Twitter. There’s no doubt about it. And an apology is not enough.”
“The office of an African American employee of the U.S. Department of Education was vandalized earlier this week, and other employees have expressed concern that the attack may have been racially motivated,” NBC News reports.
“African art figurines were found beheaded, with their limbs removed, and a school desegregation poster was damaged.”
A Michigan city council candidate shocked a public forum when she said she wants to keep “Marysville a white community as much as possible,” the Port Huron Times Herald reports.
Jean Cramer went on to state that she would not like “foreign born” people to settle in Marysville. She said that she’s not “against blacks” but believes married couples “need to be the same race.”
Yair Rosenberg: “So is Trump a philo-Semite or an anti-Semite? The answer is both. The principle that explains his seemingly contradictory outlook toward Jews is simple: Trump believes all the anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jews. But he sees those traits as admirable.”
“To Trump, the belief that Jews are foreign interlopers who use their wealth to serve their own clannish interests is not a negative — as it is for traditional anti-Semites — but rather a positive. He wants Jews to be his attorneys and manage his money, so that he, too, can be rich. He wants them in his political corner, so that he, too, can be powerful. He wants to buy politicians, just like they do.”
“As a man who has always stood solely for his own naked self-interest, Trump does not see the anti-Semitic conception of the self-interested Jew as a complaint, but rather a compliment. He prioritizes his needs ahead of the national interest, and so he sees the idea that Jews might do the same with themselves or with Israel as entirely natural.”
“I think that any Jewish people who vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”
— President Trump, quoted by Axios.
A new Reuters analysis of public opinion over the last four years suggests that President Trump’s brand of white identity politics may be less effective in the 2020 election campaign.
“It showed that people who rejected racial stereotypes were more interested in voting in the 2020 general election than those who expressed stronger levels of anti-black or anti-Hispanic biases.”
“In 2016, it was the reverse. The Reuters analysis shows that Trump’s narrow win came at a time when Americans with strong anti-black opinions were the more politically engaged group.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders invoked the Holocaust while vowing to go to war against white nationalism and racism if he wins the 2020 presidential election, The Hill reports.
Sad Sanders: “I’m Jewish, my family came from Poland. My father’s whole family was wiped out by Hitler and his white nationalism. Too many people have fought over the years, too many people have died against racism to let it resurface and flourish in America.”
He added: “We will go to war with nationalism and racism in every aspect of our lives.”
“President Trump considers himself a branding wizard, but he is vexed by a branding crisis of his own: how to shed the label of ‘racist,'” the Washington Post reports.
“As the campaign takes shape about 15 months before voters render a verdict on his presidency, Trump’s Democratic challengers are marking him a racist, and a few have gone so far as to designate him a white supremacist.”
“Being called a racist has led Trump in recent days to lash out — in tweets and in public comments — behavior his advisers and allies explain as the natural reaction of anyone who does not consider himself a racist but is accused of being one.”
Michael Gerson: “Racism is the fire that left our country horribly disfigured. It is the beast we try to keep locked in the basement. When the president of the United States plays with that fire or takes that beast out for a walk, it is not just another political event, not just a normal day in campaign 2020. It is a cause for shame.”
“It is the violation of martyrs’ graves. It is obscene graffiti on the Lincoln Memorial… And all of this is being done by an ignorant and arrogant narcissist reviving racist tropes for political gain, indifferent to the wreckage he is leaving, the wounds he is ripping open.”
“Elizabeth Warren and Beto O’Rourke both called President Trump a ‘white supremacist,’ an extraordinary charge at an extraordinary moment in American politics,” Axios reports.
“This is a big shift from calling the president a white nationalist. Check out Merriam-Webster’s definition of white supremacist: ‘a person who believes that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races.'”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.