Trump Knows How to Push Our Buttons.
'Last week, when President Trump called on the police to use rough justice in dealing with violent Latino gangs, there was a clear method to his madness. Addressing patrolmen and officers assembled in the Van Nostrand Theatre on Long Island on July 28, Trump was fully aware that his remarks would prove incendiary:
When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon — you just see them thrown in, rough — I said, please don’t be too nice. (Laughter.) Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over? Like, don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody — don’t hit their head. I said, you can take the hand away, okay? Underlying Trump’s defiance of law enforcement norms is a calculated strategy advocating the use of force, with the twofold goal of pushing liberals back on their heels and affirming the instincts of his most avid supporters.
The same design underpins such recent actions as his endorsement of legislation to cut legal immigration in half and his administration’s apparent plans to pursue “investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions” in opposition to affirmative action. Trump’s repeated attacks on liberal orthodoxy highlight how Democrats are themselves bound — hogtied is not too strong a word — by the conflicting needs and goals of the various constituencies in their multiracial, multiethnic coalition — a coalition that has been vulnerable to wedge issue attacks for 50 years.
Trump’s Suffolk County speech came four days after the announcement by Democratic House and Senate leaders of their newest economic proposal “A Better Deal,” the recent attempt by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to recoup Democratic majorities lost in the 2010 and 2014 midterms. This “better deal” is explicitly designed to appeal to the “many American workers who have been left behind and left out of the economic recovery” — and to reduce the political salience of issues touching on ethnicity and race.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/03/opinion/donald-trump-democrats-better-deal.html?
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