Hillary Clinton was wrong: Donald Trump’s voters are not "irredeemable"

The Republican strategy to deliberately stoke racial resentment to attract the loyalty of white voters who, like voters of color, are actually directly and overtly harmed by Republican policies — this is irredeemable. But the voters themselves are not. Their hopes and dreams are deeply inspiring and deeply American. And their anger and frustration with economic inequality is absolutely spot on. The problem is the solution they’ve been sold by the GOP. Ending affirmative action, cutting the minimum wage, slashing food stamps, repealing the Affordable Care Act and deregulating corporations won’t put the American Dream back within the reach of millions of struggling Americans. In fact, it will put that dream even further out of reach. The reality is that working people of all races fare far better under Democratic presidents and Democratic policies. Clinton needs to reach out to all voters and tell them this truth — and confront racial resentment without labeling everyone who considers it racist.

I know that we live in a deeply divided, partisan era, and that to some extent Clinton was just acknowledging that. And again, a portion of Trump’s base really is explicitly fueled by a racially tinged and xenophobic vitriol to which he has given plain comfort. Clinton is right to call that out — as she did in her speech on Friday as well as in her apology thereafter.

But more broadly, what we need is a candidate — and a president — comfortable in the complexities in between, the space occupied by the vast majority of white Americans who aren’t explicit racial supremacists but who do harbor biases that cloud their judgments. Of course we have that in President Obama, arguably one of the most thoughtful leaders on issues of race and racial justice to ever occupy the Oval Office. And yet, because he’s black, he can’t speak about race without being seen by many whites as biased. If a white president said that if he were black, Trayvon Martin could be his son, he would be hailed as bold and visionary. But when Obama makes this very obvious point, the right attacks him for divisive race baiting. Saying that those who point out racial bias are the racists is like saying that the person who pulls the fire alarm must have started the fire. How are we going to do something about a problem if we don’t even talk about it?