Re-elect George Wallace

"If you really love your country here's what you'll do.

You'll stand up for America, you'll vote to keep it free.

And help to make a much better land

For folks like you and me."

        Campaign song for George Wallace for President 
         Campaign jingle

George Wallace

George Wallace carried five southern states in the 1968 presidential election, but his appeal went beyond Deep South open segregationists. He also did very well among blue collar workers in the Upper Midwest. One in three union workers supported Wallace. David Frum's book on the 1970s reports that Wallace was more popular than either Hubert Humphrey or Richard Nixon among young men. His loss in 1968 did not end his political career. In 1972 he won the Democratic primary in Michigan.

Wallace had a history as an open segregationist, so he came to the 1968 campaign with a history and reputation. 

I heard him speak on the Boston Common in 1968. He knew better than to talk about race directly.

He talked about crime, especially urban riots.
He talked about patriotism.
He talked about states rights.
He accused his political enemies of being socialists and communists.
He baited students and talked about long hair and hippies and spoiled student elitists.

He said his opponents hated America and that the average hard working American taxpayer was sick and tired of people like lazy welfare chiselers, liberal officeholders, and clueless entitled young people spitting on the flag of the United States of America.

George Wallace had the mixed blessing of a southern accent. It gave him credibility as a spokesman for white America as distinguished from black and brown America. His southern accent made it unmistakably about race.

Patriotism

Trump, with his tabloid New York accent and manner, can say what George Wallace could not say, and has some arguable credibility when he says he is the least racist person in America. He says it with indignation and apparent confidence. 

Besides, some Mexicans, he assumes, are good people.

The Send-Them-Back message was an attempt to hit the sweet spot in racial messaging, handled as he is handling it. He says it, then he backs off from it, then recants back. He puts it out there as an unmistakable message, but give listeners who are uncomfortable with it a way out.

So he switches focus to crime and patriotism, as did George Wallace. He isn't against the race or religion of the Four Congresswomen, it is that they are communists, that they hate America, that they are anti-semitic and hate Israel, that they support terrorists over Americans, that they want to destroy the economy, that they want to tax the hard working and productive people and give it to undeserving outsiders. 

People who do not want to hear prejudice do not have to hear it. They hear patriotism and law and order. 

The Trump theme of love-it-or-leave-it has a subtext: we versus they, inside versus outside the group. He implies the Squad are are houseguests here getting from "us" the hospitality offered to "them," and yet they criticize America. How presumptuous. People like Trump--insiders who belong--we can criticize, but houseguests should be respectful. They are lucky to get what they got.

Democrats considering the 2020 election who take comfort in popular vote totals nationally need a reminder of the electoral college reality. It does Democrats no good to run up the vote in California and New York. A Democrat almost certainly needs to win back the Upper Midwest and that requires the votes of working class white males, who create the marginal voters in those states that tilted toward Trump. Democrats have been abandoning them in favor of college educated urbanites. 

They want the woke vote. The feminist vote. The people comfortable with the word "socialist."

During the Trump presidency those working class whites have not recoiled from Trump. They have moved toward him. They have pick up trucks, with a flag sticker on the rear window. They don't want their tax money going to subsidize people who have come here illegally to work under the table to take their jobs. They live in the states Democrats need to win.