“He’s throwing gasoline on a fire. He knows what he’s doing. He’s making a political calculus that by stoking the worst parts of the American psyche that he can somehow gain political leverage from that,” said Isaac Wright, a Democratic strategist who specializes in rural campaigns and southern voters.
READ THE FULL STORY: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/05/donald-trump-richard-nixon-southern-strategy
Following Biden’s decisive victory in South Carolina on Saturday, his main moderate rivals within the primary, the former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg and the Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar, quickly dropped out of the race and endorsed him. Other endorsements, including the coveted backing of former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, Barack Obama’s US ambassador to the UN Susan Rice and former candidate Beto O’Rourke, flooded in for Biden.
“That substantive victory in South Carolina is what set off a chain reaction in the next few days – the Buttigieg endorsement, the Klobuchar endorsement and what amounts to all but a clean sweep on Super Tuesday,” Wright added.
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Isaac Wright, a veteran Democratic strategist and partner at the Forward Solution Strategy Group, said he expected even more candidates struggling to register in the presidential race to drop out and run for other offices instead. That, in turn might help some of the remaining candidates who hold executive office.
"I think more and more longshots are going to see good opportunities to go ahead and get out," Wright said. "It may actually help the bids of [Montana Gov. Steve] Bullock and [South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete] Buttigieg as the only other people with executive office credentials."
Wright added, "as the road gets narrower towards the nomination, the exits get more and more frequent, and we're going to see more and more folks taking advantage of them."
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From the Wall Street Journal:
“Democratic strategist Isaac Wright said that members must balance their constituents’ concerns with the constitutional oversight responsibilities.
“‘They’re doing what they think is right for the country and right for their constituents, and sometimes that involves making tough choices,’ Mr. Wright said. ‘But I don’t think anybody can hold that against them.’”
“We need to have a serious adult conversation about race in this country,” said Isaac Wright, a Democratic strategist who ran an army of fact-checkers for the pro-Hillary Clinton group Correct the Record during the 2016 election.
“At the same time, we have to recognize that Donald Trump is probably never going to be part of that constructive conversation,” Wright said. …
“The unintended consequences of Trump’s actions is that he has galvanized a lot of Democrats and a lot of the broader progressive movement against his vile statements about elected representatives of this country,” Wright said.
But while denouncing Trump’s rhetoric, Democrats also must have their own dialogue about race, Wright said.