... Trump is not performing as a Klan grand wizard. Instead, he speaks in
thinly coded terms to his base. Relatively speaking, this is good news.
... an emerging theme among many liberals follows
this reasoning:
“Trump is a racist. If you still support him, so are you.”
... Trump is practicing dog-whistle politics — using rhetoric that operates in code. Terms such as
“
hole countries” or “go back” are silent about race, but they provoke sharp racial reactions.
... the dog-whistling politician uses words that appear to promote ideas of security, pride or patriotism. For these voters, the cloaked language is more comfortable;
it hides the racial character of what the politician is actually selling.
... As the political scientists John Sides, Michael Tesler and Lynn Vavreck report in their book “Identity Crisis,” a study of the 2016 election, support for Trump “was strongly linked to how Republican voters felt about blacks, immigrants, and Muslims, and
to how much discrimination Republican voters believed that whites themselves faced.”