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Shuffle Up and Steal
Labor Day Has Always Been the Start of Silly Season
In the great poker game that is the race for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, anybody who thinks he or she is going to play an identity card and win big is more likely to go home wearing nothing but a wooden barrel and a pair of suspenders. Come to think if it, that candidate might even lose the suspenders.
Two reasons. The first one is the Trump card. Everybody who has played a hand in the American political game knows the term “wedge issue.” A classic use of a political wedge was the national Republican Party setting up referenda all over the country on marriage equality for the purpose of driving the bigot vote to the polls. That wedge wore out when marriage equality became the law of the land and the marriage police did not show up to burn the marriage licenses of those straight couples not already divorced.
In this election, Donald John Trump attempts to dust off two social wedges that have been reliable in the distant past: socialism and racism. He has more money than God, so he can do whatever he wishes with polling, and there will probably come a time when he will ride one issue or the other if the polling dictates it.
Even if he quit race-baiting tomorrow, there is a sense in which he has set up a national referendum on race, pitting the mythical white…
