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Clinton was speaking at a fundraiser, in this case one hosted by arch-liberal Barbra Streisand in a room packed with wealthy progressives. They were the intended audience of her comments — as well as others who might hear her words quoted afterwards and react similarly. Which is to say that Clinton was speaking to people who already consider Trump and his voters to be bigots and who would never consider voting for him.
We usually describe that kind of political speech as rallying the base. That's exactly what Clinton was doing.
There's nothing shameful about that. It's part of politics. A big part, especially in these days of sharp polarization and negative partisanship (in which many voters are motivated more by intense hostility to one of the parties than by support for either of them).
But analysts should never lose sight of the part their own words are playing in the political ecosystem. And the fact is that a Charles Blow column or a Greg Sargent tweet that doubles down on Hillary Clinton's anti-Trump-voter remarks is merely helping to whip up anti-Trump enthusiasm among people who already loathe Trump and everything he stands for.
It's Trump haters telling other Trump haters that it's the height of virtue to hate Trump and those who love him.
That's politics not as persuasion or policy argument but as masturbatory expressivism: one team intensifying its own political arousal to ensure that everyone does what he or she would have done anyway, though with even more enthusiasm than before.
Clinton was speaking at a fundraiser, in this case one hosted by arch-liberal Barbra Streisand in a room packed with wealthy progressives. They were the intended audience of her comments — as well as others who might hear her words quoted afterwards and react similarly. Which is to say that Clinton was speaking to people who already consider Trump and his voters to be bigots and who would never consider voting for him.
We usually describe that kind of political speech as rallying the base. That's exactly what Clinton was doing.
There's nothing shameful about that. It's part of politics. A big part, especially in these days of sharp polarization and negative partisanship (in which many voters are motivated more by intense hostility to one of the parties than by support for either of them).
But analysts should never lose sight of the part their own words are playing in the political ecosystem. And the fact is that a Charles Blow column or a Greg Sargent tweet that doubles down on Hillary Clinton's anti-Trump-voter remarks is merely helping to whip up anti-Trump enthusiasm among people who already loathe Trump and everything he stands for.
It's Trump haters telling other Trump haters that it's the height of virtue to hate Trump and those who love him.
That's politics not as persuasion or policy argument but as masturbatory expressivism: one team intensifying its own political arousal to ensure that everyone does what he or she would have done anyway, though with even more enthusiasm than before.
