Can Democrats diminish the bigotry that Donald Trump has unleashed in this country? That is the question posed by Thomas B. Edsall in his opinion piece. This article dives into the rhetoric that has been perpetrated by Donald Trump’s campaign into and during his presidency. In response, Democrats and other left-of-center advocacy groups are developing tools to counter the long history of Republican success in exploiting race, crime, welfare, social disorder, family breakdown, and homelessness. 

This piece mentions a recent research study conducted by UC Riverside professors: “The Trump Effect: An Experimental Investigation of the Emboldening Effect of Racially Inflammatory Elite Communication” published earlier this month by four political scientists. The authors, Benjamin Newman, Jennifer Merolla, Sono Shah, Loren Collingwood and Karthick Ramakrishnan, all at the University of California-Riverside, and Danielle Casarez Lemi of SMU, wrote:

"We find that exposure to racially inflammatory statements by Trump caused those with high levels of prejudice to be more likely to perceive engagement in prejudiced behavior as socially acceptable. In other words, if the president of the United States denigrates Muslims, or Hispanics, or African-Americans, then anyone can.”

Significantly, Newman, Merolla and their colleagues determined that “the magnitude of this effect is enhanced when exposure to inflammatory speech by Trump is coupled with information that other political elites tacitly condone his speech,” as leading Republicans have done through their continuing acquiescence.

While Trump’s rhetoric improved his prospects in 2016, Merolla wrote by email, in 2020 the result may be mixed:

"When individuals experience feelings of anger in relation to the political environment, they are more likely to participate in politics so I suspect that it did help drive increased turnout. However, his rhetoric has also led to increased anger on the other side of the aisle, so it has also likely driven higher turnout on the left, especially during the 2018 midterm election.”

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