Donald Trump is sending a big non-verbal message. Senator Jeff Sessions for Attorney General.
Donald Trump understands non verbal communication. Hillary Clinton may have understood it but didn't know how to do it. Donald Trump rallies communicated that a great man was ready to shake things up: booming music, grand entrances, the big man at the big lectern. Hillary talked policy proposals.
You had to listen to Hillary to hear the battles she expected to soldier through. Trump projected that he would fix things, quickly, easily, and we would all be really, really happy winning so much.
Trump won the election. He is still communicating.
An official photo released by the Trump transition team, his first meeting with a head of state, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, shows Trump looking monarchical. The room is big, lavish, gold encrusted, and Trump is accompanied by his daughter.
What is communicated: majesty, regal, wealth, dynasty--and by implication, the experience and competence to exercise great power. Note what it is not communicated. Trump is not communicating down home honesty, modesty, and virtue--he is not Jimmy Carter at his peanut farm. He is king, he will rule his own way, and he says he will be benevolent to us and cruel to our enemies. Lots of voters were comfortable with that. We wanted a confident bully as long as he is our bully.
Some Trump supporters assert that the election can be explained by the rising up of the un-protected people against the protected elites, and that observations about race are an unfair slander. They deny a racial component to Trump's victory, except insofar as blacks voted on the basis of racial identity and there are not enough black voters to win.
Rush Limbaugh said the election had "nothing to do with white people wanting their country back on racial concerns."
This blog has commented frequently that a subtext of race consciousness was essential to understanding Trump's appeal--for a great many people although not for all people. Some white voters did indeed perceive the racial dog whistles and voted for Trump despite them,not because of them. Nevertheless, there was a dramatic split between the white vote and the votes of blacks and Hispanics. Obama's victory in 2008 was both a milestone and a shock wave. His election as president coincided with an economy in crisis then a slow recovery, plus long term trends in automation, in global trade, and in American demographic changes. Globalism works well for people who can get graduate degrees in something requiring a license. It works against people whose jobs can be put offshore. The free movement of labor and capital works better for the 1% than for blue collar workers. Trump captured their vote, but not all of their votes. He won the votes of white working class people and lost heavily the votes of black and brown working class.
Rush Limbaugh said the election had "nothing to do with white people wanting their country back on racial concerns."
This blog has commented frequently that a subtext of race consciousness was essential to understanding Trump's appeal--for a great many people although not for all people. Some white voters did indeed perceive the racial dog whistles and voted for Trump despite them,not because of them. Nevertheless, there was a dramatic split between the white vote and the votes of blacks and Hispanics. Obama's victory in 2008 was both a milestone and a shock wave. His election as president coincided with an economy in crisis then a slow recovery, plus long term trends in automation, in global trade, and in American demographic changes. Globalism works well for people who can get graduate degrees in something requiring a license. It works against people whose jobs can be put offshore. The free movement of labor and capital works better for the 1% than for blue collar workers. Trump captured their vote, but not all of their votes. He won the votes of white working class people and lost heavily the votes of black and brown working class.
Why? Trump accentuated the "Southern Strategy" and moved from hints and suggestions of white backlash thinking to language more overt than had been the GOP style. This is not just the accusations of Democrats and progressive critics. Paul Ryan called it "textbook racism." Other Republican leaders said similar things. Trump won anyway, and for many people because of what he said. It was time for white people to vote their ethnicity in a struggle against immigrants, enemies from abroad with strange customs and religions, and from the criminal types who have infected immigrant communities here in the US.
How does a leader communicate that he understands the white consciousness that pulled together a white voting bloc? You don't talk about it, you show it.
There are a lot of people Trump could have appointed to be Attorney General. He picked Jefferson Beauregard Sessions.
Trump chose to pick someone noteworthy for his early and sustained support of Trump, for his long association with the southern tradition of opposition to racial integration, and to his vigorous opposition to immigration.
Jeff Sessions has a history. He was born in Selma, Alabama. He was not named for Thomas Jefferson, but for Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president. Beauregard comes from the Confederate general associated with the Confederate battle flag. Sessions was one of the rare appointees to the federal judiciary to be rejected by the US Senate because of racial comments he had made as a young man. Now he is a senator in the very body that had rejected him. He is a leader on the side of stopping expanded protections on voting rights, on immigration, on crime, on guns, against gays.
There are any number of people Trump could have chosen to be Attorney General--people with a reputation for virulent hostility to crime or terrorism or any of the other themes Trump projected in his call to make America safe from terrorism and crime. Sessions is not just anyone. Sessions is southern, white, and he communicates the tradition of opposition to northern, integrationist, equal protection values.
Some significant number of people agree with that sentiment and they voted for Trump. Without saying a word Trump just communicated that he is with them, that he "gets" them, that he is in sync with their concerns.
There are any number of people Trump could have chosen to be Attorney General--people with a reputation for virulent hostility to crime or terrorism or any of the other themes Trump projected in his call to make America safe from terrorism and crime. Sessions is not just anyone. Sessions is southern, white, and he communicates the tradition of opposition to northern, integrationist, equal protection values.
Some significant number of people agree with that sentiment and they voted for Trump. Without saying a word Trump just communicated that he is with them, that he "gets" them, that he is in sync with their concerns.
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