As both a thought experiment and a messaging strategy, Democrats would be well-advised to pretend that racism has nothing to do with their current problems. The left wing—or left arm, for the purposes of this analogy—wants to fight only racism. They should tie that arm down and build up their right arm to punch on other fronts.

Consider perhaps the biggest driver of Democrats’ electoral challenges: the massive migration of rural and white working class voters into the Republican fold. Trump’s election in 2016 was a direct result of this trend. And it was Trump’s election that drove Glaude and countless others to despair that America was irredeemably and enduringly racist.

I’m not saying that race didn’t play a part in that. I’m saying focusing on race to the exclusion of all other factors is not in their interests, in no small part because it’s not the most important part of the story. Again, rural and working-class whites—the former the backbone of the FDR coalition—have been moving into the GOP fold even as they have become less racist. When only 4 percent of Americans approved of racial intermarriage, those voters were overwhelmingly Democrats. It’s fine—and probably right—that race plays some role in their migration. But the role race plays in American life has both shrunk and changed. And telling people they don’t understand their own motives and that their “real” motives are evil is a really stupid form of politics.