Donald Trump spent the past week doing his level best to hit all the hot-button issues that helped him win over a small but ultimately decisive slice of the electorate through the Rust Belt region in 2016. But as November approaches, the very same issues that wooed white working class voters to his side are galvanizing a coalition on the left that promises to overwhelm Trump’s 35 percent sliver of dead enders.
What Trump largely tapped into in 2016 was an ugly and virulent strain of anti-immigrant sentiment that represented something bigger than immigration. It was a festering nostalgia for a bygone era in which the promise of America’s future gleamed brighter in the eyes of white men. Everyone else was left to benefit from that promise by degrees of how closely situated they were to the white patriarchy. But the forces that once churned in Trump’s favor have produced an equally powerful and emotionally resonant set of issues that are driving 2018 in the exact opposite direction. And just like the emotional charge that helped Trump shock pollsters and defy political gravity, the countervailing jolt promises to be just as extraordinary.
Much of that force has been driven by Trump’s comportment as president continually putting an exclamation point on two major issues—racism and misogyny. Last week was no exception. When the White House convened a roundtable on law enforcement last Tuesday, Trump framed immigration purely as a debate about stopping violence. He repeatedly referenced “killers” and the notorious Salvadoran gang MS-13, as if they were representative of the greater immigrant population.
“If we don’t change the legislation, if we don’t get rid of these loopholes where killers are allowed to come into our country and continue to kill—gang members,” Trump said, linking immigration measures to the government funding bill, “If we don’t change it, let’s have a shutdown. We’ll do a shutdown. And it’s worth it for our country.”
Naturally, it was all a stunt for him. Congressional lawmakers ignored him entirely—a necessity for passing legislation these days—and when a spending bill reached his desk that included nothing about immigration, he signed it anyway. For Trump, the essence of his rant existed outside the machinations of government. Indeed, it was the racist spirit of his message rather than the letter of the law that mattered to him.
But what Trump hasn’t factored into his electoral equation going forward is that voters who vehemently reject his nativism have now tuned into the real import of his words, even if he doesn’t know the first thing about legislating. As Matt Barreto of the polling firm Latino Decisions wrote for the New York Times Monday, hateful Trumpian attacks on immigrants have been hurting GOP candidates such as Virginia’s Ed Gillespie more than it’s been helping them in key elections.