Huh? Russian bots have been backing her since forever.

I’m focused. A majority of white voters cast votes for Trump. Exit polls suggest that as many as 11-17% of black men voted for Trump. Many whites and blacks in critical states stayed home. Those voters who stayed at home need to be energized. The fact that people are willing to vote for a white nationalist is not something that was caused by the Squad. Voters who cast votes for Trump want payback. If they believe that Trump helps their economic status will improve with Trump, they don’t care about babies in concentration camps.There is enjoyment in watching Liberal heads explode. Kanye West and Diamond & Silk Love Trump. Will Hurd had enough. Former RNC chair Michael Steel appeared with Baltimore with Al Sharpton. Steel has had enough. 

Trump’s numbers remain in the 30-40% range. There has been no dramatic fall in support. Democrats need to energize disaffected voters. Trump is a white nationalist. How can you win against a white nationalist? Barry Goldwater sought collaboration with white supremacists Martin Luther King Jr. said that people of conscience could not ote for Goldwater. Goldwater was cast as an extremist. Goldwater lost. David Duke ran for Governor of Louisiana. Duke was Klan. The campaign against Duke labeled him a racist. Duke lost, You label a racist a racist. You point out that people who vote for a racist as racists.

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Playing upon white fears and hostility is one of the oldest plays in the American playbook. Unfortunately, it’s one against which those playing defense have often fallen short.

The good news is, there is an example from recent history that could serve as a guide for Democrats hoping to defeat Trump and the racial hostility to which he has given voice. But so far, few have applied its lessons to the present moment: namely, the 1990 and 1991 campaigns against white supremacist and former Klan leader, David Duke, in Louisiana.

I was centrally involved in those efforts, as a staffer for the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism: the organization founded for the purpose of defeating Duke in his bids for the U.S. Senate and Governor. And what we learned in those years was rather simple: to deflate a movement whose yeast is racism, you have to make it clear that the choice for voters is a moral one. It’s about the kind of people they want to be and the kind of nation in which they want to live.

You can’t defeat such a movement with policy ideas. Even trying to do this normalizes the extremist by treating them like any other candidate. To debate David Duke on jobs policy or taxes would have been absurd. Likewise, to think one can defeat Trump with detailed plans for taking on Wall Street, college affordability, or anything else misses the point. His voters did not vote for him over policy. Most voted for him as a walking embodiment of their rage. He hates who they hate, and that is all that matters.

Duke retained over 90 percent of his voters from the first to the second race, and Trump will likely do the same next year. Why? Because turning on Trump now, as with Duke, would require those who voted for him to acknowledge they voted for a monster. Most will never do that, at least not in the short term.

What ultimately stopped Duke was the crafting of a moral message against hate: one that could inspire the progressive base (especially people of color), yet also appeal to reasonable conservatives and moderates. While those folks might never have been able to agree on policy, by uniting to defeat the politics of prejudice, we could all live to fight another day over those things. But first things first.

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https://www.statesman.com/blogs/20190730/on-running-against-trump-advice-from-those-who-defeated-david-duke