This weekend was significant for many reasons, but I would like to highlight two of them:
1. Vice President Mike Pence accompanied by Senate GOP leaders visited a “detention center” in McAllen Texas for photo ops standing directly in front of cages crowded with unshowered men and alongside children left alone on benches under mylar blankets.
2. President Donald Trump then attacked Democratic Congresswomen who have been critical of the detention camps, telling them, in transparently racist language:
“Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can't leave fast enough.”
Faced with the Trump administration, it may seem easy to dismiss these two moments as just more of the same outrageous behavior, mere attempts at distraction.
However, they are not. Both of these incidents, long in the making, will have serious consequences for the two parties and for the United States of America. I’d like to share my thinking why.
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The GOP, as a party, has now crossed a threshold of racism and white nationalism from which there is no return.
In going to the border and doing a photo op with human rights violations in plain view, the Vice President left no room on the sidelines. This was an endorsement of the inhumane and unconscionable treatment of refugees. This was white elected officials overlooking brown people held against their will in conditions that put our nation to shame.
There is no way to say that any of us in this nation “haven’t seen this” or that we “don’t understand” what it means. The meaning of men crammed into cages and children left alone on benches is quite clear. Silence equals a tacit endorsement. Equivocation equals acceptance of this status quo.
And this is deliberate. The GOP, as a party, wants us to accept this as normal and acceptable.
It is not.
The President’s tweets, as always boorish and rude, were just as clear.
Elected Congresswomen, representatives of hundreds of thousands of Americans, were told in no uncertain terms to go back where they come from.
The implication from the President is simple and clear: the only legitimate American citizens are white. The only legitimate voters are white.
That’s the message. There’s no other way to take it.
It does not matter that these women are all citizens (they have to be to serve in Congress.) It does not matter if they were born here, or not (it’s not a requirement to serve in Congress.) It does not matter to Trump, even, that they won election to represent hundreds of thousands of Americans from their districts.
To Donald Trump, the GOP and their white nationalist ideology, these Congresswomen are illegitimate because of one thing that they have in common, they are not white.
Donald Trump has had years to criticize Hillary Clinton and he has never told her to go back to Europe.
Of course, every last American knows what Donald Trump said repeatedly about President Barack Obama.
So, yes, white-centered racism is now the mainstream ideology of the GOP.
For every Republican in the country, there’s nothing you can do to blur this. You either leave the party, or you have endorsed it. It has been clear for years that this is exactly where Trump and Pence were leading the GOP. There have been ample opportunities to stop them, but the GOP has not.
It’s too late now.
The United States is moving forward with one of the two major parties as an explicitly white nationalist party.
There is no going back.
That is the meaning of this weekend, whether any of us like it or not.
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For Democrats, the moment is significant, as well.
The challenge now is to build a coalition to defeat the GOP and banish this blatant racism from our public life.
Some will try to steady an ancient ship with the refrain of working together with the GOP.
How can you call to “work together” when one side does not view large portions of the other as American, as equal, as having human rights?
You can’t.
We’ve known this all along. This weekend one political party made it explicitly clear. That was the GOP’s choice.
The Democrats choice is up to us.
The whole world is watching.
Let us come together now and organize like we never have before.
So many are counting on us.
So many are relying on the Democratic party to get this right.
Donald Trump and Mike Pence have made their choice clear.
The next steps are up to us.