It was more than the racism or sexism

David Brooks’ arrestingly headlined New York Times column —  "Voters to Elites: Do You See Me Now?" — contains a sentence that stopped me cold, possibly for a reason that both Brooks and I had forgotten. He warns that “There will be some on the left who will say Donald Trump won because of the inherent racism, sexism, and authoritarianism of the American people. Apparently, those people love losing and want to do it again and again and again."

I said precisely that to Brooks and others in a small audience at Washington’s Politics & Prose bookstore on Sept. 9, 1997, during a talk on my book "Liberal Racism: How Fixating on Race Subverts the American Dream." I insisted then that if liberals keep fixating on racism and ethno-racial identity politics, “we’ll keep on losing and losing and losing.”