The narrative that anyone who votes Republican is automatically racist, xenophobic etc. is certainly pervasive, but it's also unbelievably insulting and frankly childish.
Yes, it is insulting. Also, if the mainline Republicans kicked out the racist xenophobes, that argument would be completely invalid. As it stands, they need racist votes to maintain their seats.
Hey....Im still waiting to meet a trump voter who's not racist. I know several.....my parents, their friends, my cousin, brother, SIL, my business partner, my best from from elementary school, ect. The crazy shit Ive heard come out of their mouths the last 8 years was horrifying.
I know trump voters who aren't racist. (Then again,
everyone's a little bit racist, right?) I would say most are obtuse when it comes to race, but not outright racist. I'm still working on several to convince them that unconscious bias and white privilege (IMO systemic injustice is a better term) is real and that they should care about it. But these types of conversations have to happen within the context of a relationship...trying to shame people to a certain way of thinking, no matter how right or how convinced you are of your righteousness, isn't effective. On the contrary, dismissing Trump voters as racist is a conversation stopper, code for writing people off as nothing more as "deplorable" and irredeemable. For a Trump voter it just gives them an excuse to completely ignore the content of your message.
But don't take my word for it, FiveThirtyEight has published a number of articles about how yes, some Trump voters are racist (btw,
a decent percentage of Dem voters are also racist, though not clear how many of these ended up voting Trump), but other issues such as
economic anxiety are also important factors, which means there are a statistically significant number of people who voted for Trump who are not racist.
Everyone vastly underestimated the anti-establishment mood of the country leading up to the 2016 election. One party went though great lengths to make sure that a "safe" establishment candidate was on the ticket. The other party was in dismay as the anti-establishment candidate won the nomination. In fact, I remember Democrats gleefully rejoicing the day Trump was nominated because they thought, as did I, that he was unelectable. If the DNC hadn't intervened to make sure HRC got the nomination and it was Bernie v. Rubio (or any number of establishment Republicans) then I think we'd have a Sanders administration and people would asking if any Bernie voters regretted their anti-establishment vote.