We have all seen Trump’s turn to “LAW AND ORDER!” as he tweeted yet again this morning.

After a day or two of acknowledging the horror that George Floyd suffered, Trump went straight to his comfort zone, the barely coded-over racism, using scare tactics by pointing fingers at Antifa, an organization that no one really knows if it exists, and then Lafayette Plaza, the bunker, and the “confederate” stuff, with Tulsa dabbed on top. Trump went back to racism.

It isn’t working anymore. The country – most of it – is making a dramatic turn that is reverberating around the world. We are all doing some real soul-searching for a change. Trump’s team knows it and is in a panic because they have no other tool in the box. Regarding this sea-change, Mike Tomasky of the Daily Beast writes:

And what do Donald Trump and the Republicans think of it? They hate it. Don’t kid yourself. Some of them pay lip service to embracing this change. I applaud Mitt Romney for joining the marchers last week. He’s behaving quite admirably these days, even though, as the 2012 presidential candidate, he kowtowed to the very forces that gave us Trump four years later (indeed, he kowtowed to Trump himself). …

Yes, he goes on to note that the only real Republican playbook – the one needed to get poorer white voters to align their votes with Wall Street, the racist dog whistles – could well be finished, which would mean they are finished.

What’s happening now terrifies them because they all know one simple thing, which they’ll never admit: If the white middle class rejects en masse racially discriminatory behavior and racially coded messages, they’re cooked. Mind you, as heartening as these last few weeks have been, that’s still a big “if.” Let’s not declare victory here. But we are seeing historic breakthroughs. Polls suggest a good two-thirds of the country will not buy that GOP hoodoo juice anymore.

We could argue that the white middle class largely already has moved on. Consider all the noise made about Trump losing the “suburban women’s vote,” – well, who are we talking about?

Regardless, things are looking bleak for Republicans if this country really does examine where it wants to go from here. This is an energizing point, one in which history might look back to as “when things changed,” when confederate monuments came down, when police stopped racial profiling and killing, and when the nation rejected Donald Trump:

But as I always, always tell you, always, always, remember: It’s not just Trump. It’s never just Trump. It’s the party. Yes, Trump made the racism more flagrant and open. But ask yourself why the party embraced an open racist to begin with. It was because so many predecessors made that road by walking it before Trump came along.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the nation rid itself of Trump by ridding itself of the Republican party – for good? Tomasky suggests #ChokeholdMitch might be a good moniker going forward. #MoscowMitch seemed to touch a nerve. Perhaps we should hammer a nerve and stick it on Trump and Mitch. We are not taking it, or them, anymore. They seem to know it, and are terrified.

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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom