There is an interesting headline on a piece in the Wall Street Journal's opinion section this morning:

Democrats Are Obsessed with Race. Donald Trump Isn't

The author of the column is Jason Riley, who begins with a question:

Since when does a weekend gathering of “nearly 275” white nationalists in a country of more than 320 million people warrant front-page coverage in major newspapers? Since the election of Donald Trump, apparently.

The media has been working overtime to portray Trump's victory as the result of racism rather than a repudiation of President Obama's policies by people who had previously voted for him.  Riley explains:

“Trump switched white voters in key states who were blue-collar primarily—coal counties, manufacturing counties,” the Republican strategist Whit Ayres told me this week. “These are blue-collar whites who voted for Barack Obama. And that’s a very uncomfortable thing to admit by the left. It’s much easier to say a ‘basket of deplorables’ elected Trump. But I’m sorry, that just does not conform to the data in those states that made a major swing from one party to the other.”

Part of Mr. Trump’s strategy was to turn out lots of Republicans who stayed home in 2012, but the president-elect appears to have won white voters by a margin similar to that of Mr. Romney. However, Mr. Trump was able to muster an Electoral College majority by taking advantage of lax support for Mrs. Clinton in the metro areas of large, consequential states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. That the Democratic nominee failed to speak to the concerns of Obama voters is not the fault of the alt-right.

“Trump swept the areas that keep the lights on and the motors turning,” demographer Joel Kotkin wrote recently. “Trump seized on the widespread sense that American life was destined to get worse from generation to generation. Americans wanted opportunity for the next generation, not a managed decline.”

Trump's win was a blow for the left (and, indeed, for a number of #NeverTrump people on the right side of the aisle), and their freak-out makes Senator Mitch McConnell's vow to fight against President Obama's policies look mild by comparison.

But it is a disservice to a country that has been torn apart over the last few years by racial rhetoric from Black Lives Matter (which no candidate on the Democratic side would even mildly chide, much less denounce) and others, to blame racism for the outcome of the election. To do so is obscenely cynical.

But it may be the best tool at hand for the losing side, which was widely reputiated by the "deplorables," whom they are now francically seeking to befriend (they may be deplorable, but, hey, they have votes).

Blaming racism is so much soothing, however, than blaming themselves.