The Dog Whistle

The “Dog Whistle”.  The political playbook that in the south, in the Jim Crowe south, meant the Democratic Party dominated for over 100 years after the Civil War, was, as LBJ so famously stated, “You got away with saying “N”...”N”..”N” for years to get elected, now (he had just signed the Civil Rights Act) you are going to work for your votes.

Not so....the south simply switched parties, used the Republican Party’s frustration in their quest to over turn the New Deal, to switch to the “southern strategy” and the Republican Party started the “NNN” chant that worked to elected a solid south; only this time as Republicans.

The Party of Lincoln, the Party that won the Civil War, shifted to the racist party, the dog whistle party.

It took years for it to mature, and it culminated with the Tea Party, a nakedly racist organization ostensibly against taxes, but really against people of color.

And the Democratic Party obliged, by veering into the diversity camp.

What did it?  Pete Wilson.

Good ole Pete realized that the only way he could continue the Republican Party’s presence in California was to use the immigrant dirty Mexican ploy....Rather than chanting N N N, he chanted Mexican Mexican Mexican.

He mis-calculated however, taking advice from the Hoover Institute (that should be kicked off the Stanford Campus by the way) about the numbers.  He stupidly forgot that California had once been a part of Mexico and the fifth generation Californians were often of Mexican descent.  And the “dirty Mexican” chant backfired!

And pow.....the Republican Party became an after thought...the party of Reagan controls about 25% of the vote in California right now and is declining still.  

The national Democratic Party saw that, saw the diversity of California’s Democratic Party and decided that template would work nationally.

And with the election of Obama, it sure looked that way. 

But California did not have a Deep South, a Bible Belt, and the  Evangelical  base.  And the Tea Party started within weeks of Obama’s election.

They used the Health Care Bill as a rallying issue, but really the issue was N...N....N..The real reason for radical conservatives is using race to regain power for the whites in this country!

And along came Trump, who started the Birther Movement to dovetail with the Tea Party, and took over the Republican Party completely from the remnants (there wasnt’ much left) of Lincoln’s Party.  

It isn’t that the Democrats are bad strategists or bad planners, it is that the Republicans are now using the dog whistle of N...N..N...and Mexican Mexican Mexican to rally the white supremacy base.  It has always worked, especially when the other party is run by people of color.  

And of course this uneducated ignorant Republican base does not know that this formula the Dixiecrats used for years meant economic deprivation for millions of poor white “trash” (as the rich southerners  delighted in calling poor whites) and riches for a small white privileged elite (many descendants of plantation owners).  

Slavery was never fair, especially for poor whites.  Slaves took all their jobs, leaving them to starve.  

But the threat of being below the “darkies” was always enough to keep the ruling white privileged elite in power.  The south was economically depressed, still is in many areas, because the wealth is not distributed even close to fairly.

And now we have Trump, who wins because he uses the same dog whistle of white supremacy to gain power.  It doesn’t take an rocket scientist to figure this out, and Trump is no rocket scientist.

And the Democrats cannot do much, because they adopted the “California Model” and have sold out for diversity and justice...not a bad idea, a moral one indeed, but it loses in America because racism wins in America...IT ALWAYS HAS!