TRUMP

192 ANATOMY OF A MONSTROSITY
lives, they’re never wrong, and they’re going to just keep
on being right and losing fights. 595
And while the active contempt has been specifically targeted at the
white working class, the black and Hispanic working class are no less
excluded from the forefront of contemporary progressive politics.
Democrats have tended to embrace racial diversity while continuing
to place little emphasis on the needs, lives, or cultural tastes of poor
people of any race. After the election, the New York Times caught up
with black voters in struggling parts of Milwaukee. 596 What it found
were many people who didn’t vote at all, and others who were disgusted
by the Democratic Party despite its traditionally strong record
of black support. One voter blamed Bill Clinton’s policies for sending
him to prison for 20 years, and another, speaking about why he preferred
Trump’s honest racism to Democrats’ two-faced hypocrisy, said
of Trump: “He was real, unlike a lot of liberal Democrats who are just
as racist… You can reason with them all day long, but they think they
know it all. They want to have control. That they know what’s best
for ‘those people.’” The elitism of the Democratic Party has not just
involved talking down to rural whites, but totally ignoring African
Americans and taking their votes for granted.
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One could see the party’s elitism on full display in the
embrace of celebrity culture during the Clinton campaign. Donald
Trump’s RNC was mocked for being unable to attract sufficiently
glamorous A-listers, 597 the country was flooded with advertisements in
which stars sang Hillary Clinton’s praises. The DNC released a “Fight
Song” in which dozens of celebrities all contributed vocal parts to a
pro-Hillary sing-a-long, and the cast of The West Wing were dispatched
to the campaign trail to stump for Clinton. 598