Culture Wars/Current Controversies

The increase in LGBTQ support for Trump has a silver lining

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Those who interpret Trumpism only in terms of “white rage,” xenophobia, or the evangelicals end up missing a lot of important points. If the Democrats are now two parties within one, neo-Rockefeller Republicans and neo-Ted Kennedy liberals, the Republicans seem to be developing a rainbow of their own that siphons from the left as well as from the far right.
By Giselle Donnelly and James Kirchick, Washington Post

Giselle Donnelly is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. James Kirchick, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, is writing a history of gay Washington, D.C.

That President Trump increased his share of the vote among minority groups in this year’s presidential election is one of the most remarkable developments in a contest hardly lacking in them. The litany of Trump’s transgressions against the spirit of American pluralism and inclusiveness is long and familiar.

And yet despite his demagoguery, Trump managed to grow his support among Black, Latino, Muslim and LGBTQ voters. Writing from the perspective of two Biden supporters — one of us a transgender woman, the other a gay man, both Never Trumpers — we actually see a silver lining in Trump’s gain.

Just as the president’s rising support from racial minorities prompted Democratic polling analyst David Shor to say that “Donald Trump kicked off an era of racial depolarization,” Trump’s improvement with LGBTQ voters looks to us like the harbinger of a similar trend.

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Categories: Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Electoralism/Democratism

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