He lost it four years later, by three-tenths of a percent. Maybe the blue-collar voters who still lived there had seen the hollowness of his populism. Maybe they simply grew tired of the chaos Trump had caused. But there is a darker reading than the one Gerstle’s fine book suggests. Maybe the fact that the election had been so close, despite the year’s upheavals, shows that what matters most in American politics isn’t the shape of the nation’s economy but the enduring appeal of its racism.
-Kevin Boyle in the NYT
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