Left’s racism fixation could re-elect Trump

I had been thinking that there was no way President Trump would be re-elected. He was elected to shake up Washington, and he has certainly done that. But nothing is getting done, and his superficial leadership is much to blame. After four years of having a tweeter in chief, surely the American people would want some stability from their president.

Of late, however, I’ve revised my outlook. I now believe that the left will re-elect Trump. The ruckus over NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem illustrates the point.

The left has talked itself into believing that Trump’s alleged appeals to white racism were what put him over the top. More astute analysts have pointed out that people in industrial states who had voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 but switched to Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016 made the difference. Hard to attribute those decisions to white racism.

Nevertheless, the left now interprets all of Trump’s actions through the prism of perceived appeals to white racism.

Which brings us to the NFL fracas. Players began kneeling during the national anthem reportedly to protest what they regard as racial injustice in the United States. Trump denounced them in Trumpian fashion.

According to the left, because the players were protesting racial injustice, Trump was endorsing racial injustice by criticizing them. There goes that dog whistle!

To most Americans, that’s nuts. You don’t have to be a racist to find galling the spectacle of pam- pered athletes ostentatiously exempting themselves from the traditional display of fidelity to our country.

The argument by some that the protest isn’t really about the flag and national anthem rings hollow. If you do it during the national anthem, it is about the flag and the national anthem.

People have a constitutional right to refuse to say the pledge of allegiance or stand during the national anthem. Contrary to what some commentators have said, the owners couldn’t require the players to stand. And it is doubtful that the owners could fire them for failing to do so.

Of course, the owners would never even give a thought to doing that, and they shouldn’t. Instead, they have signaled solidarity with their protesting players against Trump.

What is bewildering is that the NFL and the left seem to believe that they are winning this fight with Trump. Let’s see. Honor the flag and the national anthem. Or not. Yep, Trump is certainly on the wrong side of that issue.

A reaction against political correctness was certainly part of what propelled Trump to victory. Most leaders on the right flinch from it. Trump is impervious, even contemptuous, of it.

There are small pockets of white supremacists in the United States. They are unimportant.

Generally speaking, white Middle America isn’t racist. People don’t long for a return to Jim Crow. They’re just sick of having identity and grievance politics thrown in their faces all the time.

If the left continues to tell Middle Americans they are racists, Trump will be re-elected.