"Donald Trump's willingness to specifically go after Democratic leaning constituencies was a kind of process of community formation. It was a way of saying, we're us, and they're them. And because the them is trying to destroy us, we're justified in anything we do to them. That remains, for the moment, the animating purpose of Republican politics.

My theory of that is that it is a manifestation of racial polarization in the electorate and the ability to use the counter-majoritarian levers of the American system to maintain power without winning over a diverse constituency."