On the surface, Donald Trump’s escalated race-baiting looks self-destructive. The US economy is growing. Middle-class wages have been picking up. Mr Trump’s re-election aim should be to broaden his base to include non-whites — or at least reassure moderate white voters who are queasy about reliving the US civil war. Yet he is steaming in the opposite direction. Telling US-born Democrats to go back to the countries they came from is a departure even by Mr Trump’s standards. In 2016, he attacked immigrants, chiefly Muslim and Mexican, as a threat to national security. Now he is portraying opinionated non-whitecitizens as un-American. Their citizenship is performance-based.
表面上看，唐納德?特朗普(Donald Trump)變本加厲的種族攻擊似乎是在自毀長城。美國經濟在增長。中產階級的工資一直在上漲。特朗普要贏得連任，目標應該是去擴大自己的選民基礎，爭取非白人選民——或者至少是讓溫和派白人選民放寬心，后者回想起美國內戰就感到不安。然而，他卻反其道而行之。讓出生在美國的民主黨人回到故國，即使按照特朗普的標準，也是有悖常情的。2016年，他攻擊移民——主要是穆斯林和墨西哥人——對國家安全構成威脅。如今，他形容固執己見的非白人公民不算美國人。這些人的公民身份要看他們的表現。