claim: "Trump is running on a set of policies and promises that are white supremacy."
white supremacy: "a political ideology that perpetuates and maintains the social, political, historical and/or industrial domination by white people" (thanks wikipedia)
The most direct support for the claim comes in the form of specific policy proposals. There are two sorts: those that serve to enrich or empower white people and those that serve to diminish other races seen as in opposition to white people. Of course, these policies need not be perfectly direct, specific, or clearly articulated as white supremacy in order to qualify. E.g. I'm assuming that we can all agree that poll taxes were a form of white supremacy, despite not specifically targeting people on the basis of race, not directly harming anyone, and (in some cases) not motivated out lout by a desire for racial dominance.
The second lines of support for the claim is more personal evidence. Whatever his policies, Donald Trump as a person and as a brand has cultivated an image of one who protects and strengthens systems of white domination. Additionally, white supremacist groups have consistently voiced support for Trump's campaign in a way that is totally novel for modern campaigns. Whether or not these two lines of evidence would be sufficient alone is irrelevant as they are not alone, but they do add weight to the more policy-oriented lines of evidence.
There's work showing that in political and moral discourse, people tend to make arguments using their own moral foundations and that arguments made that way are not very convincing, and sometimes even polarizing, to others with different moral foundations. There's also recent work suggesting that re-framing ones argument to include the moral foundations of those one disagrees with makes them somewhat more compelling (Here's a series of six studies about this. ).
So, I want to do this but I also want to be open about it. As I make this argument I'm going to do my best to incorporate the moral foundations of those who tend to disagree with me. My hope is twofold. I hope that the resulting argument is more accurate because it will contain fewer ideas that survive only on my moral foundations. And I hope that the resulting argument is more convincing to others.
Vox has a good review (here) of the political science research into how elected politicians hold to their campaign promises. My takeaway is that, in general, politicians should be expected to do their best to make good on their campaign promises. This won't always happen, but when a campaign promise fails it is more likely that the failure is caused by external political factors (like a president and congress controlled by different parties) than by deceit.
The review above does not go into the structural reasons why this might be the case but I think it's worth speculating on the reasons why, so that we might recognize when those reasons do not apply. My sense is that campaign promises are generally kept because of democratic structures. When a politician makes a clear promise, they presumably do so because they think that promise will get them elected in one way or another: either the politician thinks voters are more likely to select a candidate who plans to do the promised things, or the politician expects some other resources, e.g. that certain donors will be more likely to contribute to a candidate who plans to do the promised things. And, yes, after the election the context for that strategic move might seem to disappear. After all, the election is over and that was the primary purpose.
But I don't think this happens. Politicians tend to want to be reelected. Imagine a constituency that wants to see X happen. There are a few combinations of promises and outcomes that we can consider. A politician might promise to do X, make no promises whatsoever, or promise not to do X. For outcomes, a politician might actually accomplish X, might try and fail at X, and might decline to do X. Sure, this is an oversimplification but stay with me.
| promises to do X | makes no promise | promises not to do X | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Does X | very good | good | okay |
| Fails to do X | good | okay | okay |
| Declines to do X | very bad | bad | bad |
The important thing to realize is that voters and donors and whoever else is involved in the political process do not just want X, they want X and X' and X''. If I think the US needs gun control, I likely don't just want the "gun show loophole" to be fixed, I probably also want firearm licenses, buyback programs, and/or other policies. If I think border control is a problem, I likely don't just want a fence, I probably also want to increase deportations, restrict legal immigration, and/or other policies. Everyone will be different in the set of policies that they want but the important point is that if a democratic participant wants something, their preferences are never limited to just that thing.
So, my explanation for the findings that politicians tend to keep promises is that democratic participants are trying to predict (at least) two things: will the politician try to make X happen? and can I predict the politician's future actions? The first is pretty straightforward. Voters might consider if the politician has a record of supporting similar policies to X and the plausibility of the politician's case for X. For the second one, voters are going to look at the politician's track record on issues in general as well as X-like policies. If we think of a Y policy that is the opposite of X and an X and Y constituency, then the worst thing a politician can do is promise to do X and then do Y. The X constituency will infer that the politician is both unlikely to support X-like policies in the future and generally unpredictable (as bad as possible) while the Y constituency will have been glad to see Y happen but when Y' comes up, unsure of how the politician feels about Y' and unsure about how predictable the politician is.
And reelection is not the only factor at play here. A president in his final term has similar pressures. We often treat the individual president as a synechdoche for the presidential administration but in a thousand ways that matter, that simplification is not true. An administration must be staffed with actual party politicians whose future depends in large part on the success of the party. And a present depends on the cooperation of every part of government outside of the federal executive branch. To do anything at all in a president's last term requires the president to internalize the wants and desires of their party. Furthermore, a retiring politician's future depends on their reputation when leaving office. So, independent of any democratic pressures, it is in a politician's self-interest to maintain that reputation.
From this point on, my default assumption is that when a candidate makes a promise on the campaign trail, that we should expect the candidate to attempt to keep that promise. There are various conditions that might seem weaken this assumption, such as if a politician is less connected to their party or not up for reelection, but I don't think those matter quite as much.
Trump has cultivated a narrative of a racial struggle. The explicit nature of this narrative is always opaque: We are asked to "make America great again" but never told clearly which America was great when nor told clearly what got in the way. Here I'm going to argue that there is a narrative that spans not just Donald Trump's career but his modern public life. I'm going to argue that this narrative is certainly about race and ultimately one of white supremacy.
The narrative includes several events and each are on the basis of race:
- dehumanizes and others the opposed race
- promotes entitlement for the favored race
- cultivates a sense of loss for those entitled things
- embraces shame at that loss
- proposes harsh, often violent solutions
The original events of the Central Park 5 occurred at a time where it was generally acceptable to participate in such a racial narrative. A woman was brutally raped and beaten in Spring of 1989 This was during the peak of the late 20th century crime wave
http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/donald-trump-and-the-central-park-five
"Sadly, the overwhelming amount of violent crime in our major cities is committed by blacks and hispanics-a tough subject-must be discussed." https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/342190428675796992
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/donald-trump-white-supremacists-216620