DEMS/ELECTIONS/RACISM/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump made race an overt issue in American politics. Now Democrats are ready to meet him head on. Some of the party’s top potential 2020 candidates are testing a barrage of early — and unusually explicit — race-related appeals in the run-up to the next presidential campaign. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) pledged not to be ‘shut up’ by critics of ‘identity politics.’ Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), has drawn attention to the disproportionate number of nonwhite people incarcerated in a system he said has ‘criminalized poverty’…Democrats with 2020 aspirations are preparing for an uncharacteristically overt, racially pointed campaign against Trump, seeking to capitalize on major points of contrast with the Republican president. It’s a marked departure from the last Democratic president, Barack Obama, who often downplayed race, long an undercurrent in presidential politics…Advisers to several prospective Democratic candidates say that issue of race is unavoidable in a campaign against Trump. They’re buoyed by polling suggesting widely held concerns about the state of race relations.”
–David Siders, “2020 Democrats take a page from Trump’s playbook on race,” Politico, August 14, 2018 5:14 am