> It was a visceral emotional response to the most powerful man on earth being a black man.
This is exactly the sort of mentality that led to Democrats thinking Hillary Clinton was a viable candidate.
Leftists all over the world spent the 2010s creating a coalition of the fringes, for whatever reason assuming that young majorities would not take notice. This was a very uncomfortable time to be a young man, even after Trump was elected. Young guys these days don’t have any expectation of being allowed to sit at the table, which is why they are so open about wanting to burn it all down now; a lot of them felt this way when Obama was president, too, but the risk of getting cancelled on Twitter still seemed like a serious threat back then.
Look, we can talk about how the political views of Democrats and Republicans shook out over the last 15 years but trying to dispute that the Tea Party was founded and fueled by an intense racism laser focused on Barack & Michelle Obama is like trying to argue the Civil War wasn't over slavery. This wasn't some liberal media spin, this was straight out of the mouths of prominent conservatives posting on their own websites and ranting on their own talk shows.
I was fascinated by these people in the '08-'12 era. I watched so much Fox News, listended to Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, and kept up with Breitbart and The Drudge Report. I got so many free civics papers from my weird obsession. They were racist as hell. I saw it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears. And it's not like it was just talking heads, conservative online spaces were worse.
> but trying to dispute that the Tea Party was founded and fueled by an intense racism laser focused on Barack & Michelle Obama
The statement I replied to was:
> It was a visceral emotional response to the most powerful man on earth being a black man.
This isn’t true. The racists you’re describing were (literally) dying out by the time Obama was elected. The resurgence of white identity politics in America was a reaction to a series of riots (e.g. Ferguson, Baltimore, Kenosha, Seattle, Minneapolis), affirmative action policies in higher education as well as in the public and private sectors, and renewed activity in the grievance industry (e.g. Anita Sarkeesian, Ibram Kendi, etc.).
> The racists you’re describing were (literally) dying out by the time Obama was elected. The resurgence of white identity politics in America was a reaction to a series of riots
This is both inaccurately describing the protests and also way off on timing – for example, Ferguson was 2014 but the white identity politics was on display before the first time he was elected.
> but the white identity politics was on display before the first time he was elected.
Among klansmen. These are the people I alluded to who were dying out. Young people and the general public at large didn’t take interest in these movements until the summer of 2015, and even then it was just a thing for the terminally-online until the latter half of Biden’s presidency.
There were plenty of off ramps throughout this whole period, leftists opted not to take them because they were operating under the assumption that they would be in control forever.
Yes, and had been since 2009. I’m still not sure how you expect the racist backlash starting in 2008 to have been triggered by time travelers from 2014. People were threatening to lynch him before he was sworn in and the mainstream Republican Party leaders weren’t willing to give those people the treatment David Duke got in the 90s - McConnell tried to spin all of that “one term president” talk as solely about policy but all of the context made it quite clear that they wouldn’t have been so motivated for, say, Kerry.
I’m denying that this was a significant force in American politics until the latter half of Obama’s presidency. These people existed; they were not influential.
> McConnell tried to spin all of that “one term president” talk as solely about policy but all of the context made it quite clear that they wouldn’t have been so motivated for, say, Kerry.
What context are you referring to? Would you attribute black Republicans like Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell to political tokenism intended to appeal to black voters? I know that the prevailing sentiment (among the media I consumed back then, anyways) was that George Bush was a racist who hated black and brown people, but looking back, I just don’t see it. That element of American society doesn’t look influential until the late 2010s and early 2020s when Thiel started buying his way in, and by that point it’s an entirely different cohort.
This is exactly the sort of mentality that led to Democrats thinking Hillary Clinton was a viable candidate.
Leftists all over the world spent the 2010s creating a coalition of the fringes, for whatever reason assuming that young majorities would not take notice. This was a very uncomfortable time to be a young man, even after Trump was elected. Young guys these days don’t have any expectation of being allowed to sit at the table, which is why they are so open about wanting to burn it all down now; a lot of them felt this way when Obama was president, too, but the risk of getting cancelled on Twitter still seemed like a serious threat back then.