The Genius of Steve Bannon

A Trump-hating Democrat laments:

‘The Democrats, the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ‘em,’ Bannon gloated to Kuttner. ‘I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.’

Rare does a political strategist so explicitly reveal his game plan. Rarer do his opponents utterly fail to recalibrate their tactics in response. From the day Trump announced his candidacy for president with a smear maligning Mexicans as rapists, to the release of a tape in which he joked about groping women, the American left has campaigned against Donald Trump largely on claims pertaining to identity: that Trump is a racist, a misogynist, a xenophobe, an Islamophobic bigot. ...

Notwithstanding the merits of these charges against Trump – which I happen to agree with – it was clearly an unsuccessful strategy, as Trump not only won the election, but did so with a higher portion of the black and Latino vote than his Republican predecessor, and with a respectable 42 percent of women.

This result came as a shock to people living in Democratic Party redoubts, like major metropolitan areas and college towns. And it came as a particular shock to the media, which had predicted with utter certainty that Donald Trump could never be elected president. ...

And so we should have every expectation that Trump will continue the Bannonite strategy of playing the role of culture warrior-in-chief. This appraisal of Bannon’s political acumen should not be interpreted as a moral judgment on the policy prescriptions he has advised Trump to follow. For what it’s worth, I disagree with Bannon and Trump on the travel ban, the transgender ban, and the removal of Confederate icons. But I’m not the sort of person Democrats need to win future elections.

Yes, the Democrat Party is focused on race and identity, while Trump and Bannon talk economic nationalism and what is good for the USA.