Washington • President Trump is a horrendous racist. And it’s time for Democrats to stop calling him one.
Counterintuitive? Yes. But substantial evidence shows that labeling Trump “racist” backfires against Democrats. It energizes his supporters without providing any additional motivation to Democrats, and it drives soft partisans — voters who could be up for grabs in 2020 — into Trump’s arms.
This doesn’t mean letting Trump off the hook for being the racist he obviously is; I’ve been using the term for four years because it objectively describes him. But this means talking about his racism in a different way:
Say that he pits Americans against each other by color and religion to distract from his cruelty.