racism is so deeply embedded in America that the Republican response to a brilliant, moderate, technocratic black man becoming President was to build a cult of personality around the single worst white man in the country and attempt to make him dictator for life
It was so ugly, and so crudely BLATANT that it shocked me so much I re-examined all my political beliefs, and ended up on the opposite side of the spectrum.
Until the Obama admin I'd been an (uneasy) conservative and reliable R voter for two decades. Since then I'm a fire-breathing lefty D voter.
I feel like I was suckered by the "conservative" con game (because I was) I was raised in, and I could tear up every vote I cast for those first years.
Best I can do is never miss a chance to vote against the bastards again. I don't, and I won't.
This is exactly it... the citizenry was ready for a Black president, Barrack was popular and had good approval among the majority of voters, but for the rich elite who run this nation and the bigoted groups that simp for them they were not ready at all and collapsed the system that made it possible.
I didn't come up with this, though I can't recall where I read it. But the belief is out there (and I'm sold) that Donald Trump is truly the last president of the Confederacy.
I still think about how the Republicans wrote that strategy about how to reach minority voters and then 4 years later threw it in the garbage when Trump was winning the primary
The can't really prevent another one, of course, just as they couldn't stop him then.
But they can leverage him as precedent to cement the idea that Barack freaking Obama is how much farther out of the ball park a black man must hit it than a white dude.
Which is the point of the "DEI" shouting.
