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Trump’s attacks on Cummings are vile, and they give me sickening feeling that as raw power politics, they’re a winning strategy for 2020. Each tweet triggers (rightful) outrage from Dems who spend valuable news cycles condemning Trump’s racism and not selling their policies 1/
Trump ran this strategy successfully in 2016. Trump advisers told me how thrilled they were by Hillary‘s “deplorables” speech. 2/
Trump’s shamelessness and racism presents Dems with a moral and political problem. Morally, calling him out is the right thing to do. But politically, the 2nd order consequence is that it mobilizes his base (and other white working class voters) who resent being called racists 3/
So Dems wind up not talking about they’re better policies plus they push working class white GOP voters who don’t like Trump into his corner because most people don’t like being told they’re racist assholes. 4/
This morning @maureendowd argued a similar point. The counter argument is you can walk and chew gum at the same time. Calling out racism doesn’t mean abandoning a positive policy message. But in the war for attention, Dems need to make choices 5/
And right now they seem to be making the choice that they’re willing to be on right side of history even if it means losing again 6/
