Hillary Clinton’s observation to a private meeting of financial backers that the majority of her opponent’s supporters are “a basket of deplorables” triggered a tsunami of commentary. Some admonished her; others defended her. Still others advised her to move beyond Trump and lay out a positive vision for the country. And a few to their credit, New York Times opinion writer Charles Blow being one, made mention of the rest of her remarks in which she spoke of the “other basket” of Trump supporters in complex and nuanced ways.

I should elaborate on Blow’s observation, and perhaps I will later, but in this post I will do what others did: focus on the term, “basket of deplorables,” but from a slightly different angle.

The political constituency that catapulted Trump to the top of the Republican Party heap didn’t materialize overnight, nor is it the product of mainly economic distress. There are, after all, a lot white working people who are unhappy with the slow, uneven, and unequally shared economic recovery that don’t show up at Trump rallies or sign on to his politics.

While some new faces, including some traditional Democratic voters and white workers on the losing end of economic change, are in Trump’s camp, the majority of his supporters have long associated with Republican Party candidates and politics. A few surely go back to Nixon’s Southern strategy that carried him into the White House in 1968. Others to Ronald Reagan’s successful presidential campaigns. Still others to the right-wing evangelical movement that climbed on the political stage three decades ago and remains there. And a good number likely had a hand in the Republican takeover of the House in 1994 and the campaign to impeach Bill Clinton a few years later, while even more for sure threw their support to George W. Bush in his successful presidential bids. And, of course, the rise of the Tea Party in 2010 became the political baptism for a new wave of right-wing voters and activists who now find in Trump a kindred spirit and captivating voice for their deeply felt resentments.

In other words, most of Trump supporters – sections of big, medium, and small sized capital included – were the electoral base and motor of the ascendancy of right-wing extremism – an ascendancy that began four decades ago with a mission – still to be realized – to impose on the country a particular brand of neoliberalism that is raw, mean-spirited, bellicose, and anti-democratic in every sense. If anyone is a rookie here – as dangerous, erratic, reckless, hate-mongering, and demagogic as he is – it’s Trump.

Many things provided the adhesive to bind this motley multi-class, far-right coalition together in its battles against its center-progressive opposition, but nothing figured larger than the language and practice of racism. Racism energized the base, as it submerged otherwise competing class and social interests within this heterogeneous political bloc. It’s enough to recall such tropes as “law and order,” “reverse racism,” “welfare queens,” the “Bell Curve,” Willie Horton, “culture of pathology,” War on Drugs,” “post-racial society,” and “voter fraud” to to be reminded of the powerful and enduring function of racist discourse in the unification and mobilization of a grassroots right-wing constituency – and the pushing of U.S. politics to the right – over the past half century.

In recent years, we have seen a surge in racism and racist discourse (more on what triggered this surge in my next post). One of its distinguishing features is that the language (more covert) of “color blind” racism and “dog whistle” politics has increasingly yielded ground to racist rhetoric that is unrestrained and unapologetic. Language that was once spoken in hushed tones and confined to small circles has invaded the public square.

And, no one has done more to amplify and legitimize this surge than Donald Trump. He has no inhibitions in making vile racist pronouncements, no matter what their destructive and deadly consequences. In fact, he takes delight in mocking  “political correctness,” and then turns it into his entry point to peddle an unfiltered raw racism as well as sexism, anti-immigrant nativism, homophobia, big power chauvinism, and white supremacy. In doing so, he has become the leader of a loose right-wing populist movement to turn back the clock to times that we thought were long past as well as the poster boy of the Ku Klux Klan and other openly white supremacist groups – the “alt-right.”

Which brings me back to Hillary Clinton. It’s to her credit that she is calling attention to this racist, reactionary, and well financed cancer growing in our body politic and the imminent danger it presents to our democratic rights, institutions, and governance. Late last month, her speech in Reno shined a bright light on this danger in a way that no other politician in the mainstream, including President Obama and Bernie Sanders, has.

And her comment a few days ago that “you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables” may have been a bit injudicious, but there is no doubt that she bravely put her finger once more on a truth that should be sobering and disconcerting to most people. For this we should thank and defend her as well as step up our efforts to register, educate, and mobilize people in our communities to elect her – the first woman president in our country’s history. Much hangs on the outcome!

Sexism was in “fine” form last night as NBC host Matt Lauer grilled and interrupted Hillary Clinton in his interview of her, while giving Donald Trump in most instances a free pass when he quizzed him. I would like to say I was surprised, but sexism toward Hillary has a long history and in the current elections it is widespread. It’s a core element of Trump’s talking points and campaign strategy, but it also finds expression in the mass media, other points on the political spectrum (the left included), and in “guy” talk. When I mentioned this in an earlier conversation this morning with a woman who is a keen observer of gender relations, she replied, “On some molecular level, men don’t like women in authority. And to think that sexism doesn’t operate in this election, in which a woman could be elected president for the first time, is incredibly naive at best.”

I have always liked Colin Kaepernick. As a quarterback, he has a flare for the unexpected, the dramatic, the improvisational. But now I Iike him even more, not for his football prowess, but for his humanity and courage. It takes guts to sit when you’re expected to stand for the national anthem, while millions are watching. But in sitting he has reminded our country that it will not be let off the hook until it attends to the racism that is deeply embedded in the criminal justice system and every other aspect of American life. Agitation for justice isn’t always pretty, but history tells us that it is absolutely necessary.

In a recent article, Robert Reich writes:

“Does Hillary Clinton understand that the biggest divide in American politics is no longer between the right and the left, but between the anti-establishment and the establishment?

“I worry she doesn’t – at least not yet.

“A Democratic operative I’ve known since the Bill Clinton administration told me, ‘Now that she’s won the nomination, Hillary is moving to the middle. She’s going after moderate swing voters.’

“Presumably that’s why she tapped Tim Kaine to be her vice president. Kaine is as vanilla middle as you can get.

“The most powerful force in American politics today is anti-establishment fury at a system rigged by big corporations, Wall Street, and the super-wealthy.

“In fairness, Hillary is only doing what she knows best. Moving to the putative center is what Bill Clinton did after the Democrats lost the House and Senate in 1994 …”

I often admire Reich’s advocacy on behalf of progressive causes, but I find his analysis here to be smug, superficial, and sexist.

To be fair, he doesn’t get everything wrong; Bill Clinton did move to the “putative center.” There is rising anger against “big corporations, Wall Street, and the super-wealthy.” And Tim Kaine is no radical.

Beyond that, however, I can’t find much to agree with here.

First: His observation that Clinton fails to understand that “the biggest divide in American politics is no longer between the right and the left, but between the anti-establishment and the establishment?” is wrong in a double sense. The biggest divide – and Hillary clearly understands this well – has never been between the right and left. And the main divide is not the clash between the “anti-establishment and the establishment.” Sure, the establishment/anti-establishment idea has increasingly fractured U.S. politics and shapes popular thinking. Bernie Sanders especially echoed this sentiment in his campaign. But it hasn’t replaced the main political division. And that division is between right-wing extremism on the one side and a broad, diverse, multi-class people’s movement on the other.

This divide between ultra-right extremism and the rest of us dates back to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and nearly 40 years later, shockingly, it remains our overarching reality, structuring politics, political possibilities, and the current elections.

Indeed, the main and immediate political challenge at the moment is to defeat Trump and the rest of the right wing down the ticket in a landslide. Such a rout would cause people here and worldwide to breathe a sigh of relief. But more: it would give a fresh impulse and a popular mandate to secure badly needed political, economic, and social reforms in the near term and over a longer horizon to vigorously challenge globalized production and financialization in their neoliberal form.

Second: Reich, who was Secretary of Labor in the Bill Clinton administration, complains that Hillary is “going after moderate voters.” But is there something wrong with reaching out to moderates? Should she ignore them? Dismiss them? Or cede them to Trump and the right wing? If there a pathway to a landslide victory in November that doesn’t include “moderate” as well as – this may sound heretical to some who are lost in pure and uncomplicated categories of class and social struggle – a chunk of traditional Republican voters, I’m not sure what that path is.

So the question isn’t why is Hillary reaching out to such voters, the question is why wouldn’t she? And the follow up question is: how can we help her? Of course, her campaign and the broad coalition that supports her should reach out to “first time” and “stay-at-home” voters – not to mention register new voters, too. In other words, employ, with some updating and on a broader scale, the playbook of President Obama’s two successful presidential runs.

Third: Reich – and he unfortunately has plenty of company on the left – locks Hillary into a tightly constructed political category from which he allows her no space to escape, when he writes, “Hillary is only doing what she knows best. Moving to the putative center is what Bill Clinton did after the Democrats lost the House and Senate in 1994 …”

Other than a conversation with a “Democratic operative,” Reich brings no evidence to bear on his claim that Hillary is tacking to the right. Perhaps, bowing to the Hillary-hating that is nearly a national pastime, that is all he thinks is necessary. Sorry Bob, it isn’t. Some facts have to be offered. But none are and a good part of the reason is that the facts strongly suggest otherwise. From the tenor of her primary campaign, to her search for common ground with Bernie Sanders, to her embrace of the unprecedentedly progressive convention platform, to her acceptance speech at the Democratic Party convention, and to her election campaigning so far, she has been breaking in a progressive direction on a broad range of class and democratic issues. (And the wall between “class and democratic issues” is very permeable; I use “interpenetrate” to capture their interaction and dynamic).

Despite this reality, Reich (and some others on the left) are stingy with their praise for Hillary and seldom if ever mention the significance of the glass ceiling that she will break if she is victorious. Instead, they are far more likely to critique – at times blast – her. I guess they think that to do otherwise might leave them open to criticism from others on the left, thereby tarnishing what is most precious to them – their progressive and radical credentials.

Moreover, Reich, without any qualification, assumes that what Bill did Hillary will do. In other words, she has to not only pay for the sins of her husband, but, as a dutiful woman and wife, she is programmed to repeat them, according to Reich. That kind of pigeon-holing insultingly dismisses HER and the possibility that HER thinking may have evolved in the face of the global economic crash, or sluggish recovery and persistent income stagnation, or the epidemic of shootings of young Black men and the challenges to the criminal justice system, or the upward climb of the planet’s temperature, or the growth and surge of popular movements, or policy failures of previous Democratic administrations, or even the narrowing limits of U.S. power projection in the global theater.

I’m sure Reich wouldn’t put himself into such an ideological iron cage, but he has no hesitation to dump Hilary there and turn her into a creature of the past destined to do what her husband did. It seems that in Reich’s world, once in the dog house, always in the dog house, especially if you are a smart woman who I’m guessing clashed with Reich on one thing or another in the past. This is a sexist and sloppy analysis. We should expect better from Robert Reich.

Below is a comment I made to someone who argued that “although elections are important, the mass movement is more important.”

This is a very poor way to frame things at this moment, or any moment for that matter. Don’t elections have a mass character, don’t they draw into them some of the main class and social movements without whom the country will never move to higher ground; and don’t they – and especially their outcome – create more or less favorable conditions for struggle on a broad range of issues. I have to think that the electoral and political arena will figure prominently in any kind of swing of the country to the left in the future – much like it did in Latin America. Damming electoral/legislative struggle with faint praise is no sign of political maturity nor a measure of one’s radicalism.