Trump called the midterm results a “tremendous success.” Republicans clearly felt the sting anyway. In January, when Representative Steve King set his career on fire by questioning how terms like “white nationalist” and “white supremacist” had “become offensive,” GOP leaders quickly condemned his comments. Their action was remarkable, given that they had mostly ignored the Iowa congressman’s extensive record of racist statements and dubious associations for more than a decade; just last year, he endorsed a Canadian politician with neo-Nazi ties.
川普称中期选举结果是“巨大的成功”。——共和党人显然感到了刺痛。今年1月，当众议员史蒂夫·金质疑“白人民族主义者”和“白人至上主义者”等词汇如何“变得具有攻击性”，他的政治生涯之火被点燃，共和党领导人迅速谴责了他的言论。他们的行动是引人注目的，因为十多年来，他们基本上忽视了爱荷华州国会议员关于种族主义言论和可疑关联的大量记录；就在去年，他还支持了一位与新纳粹主义有联系的加拿大政治家。
The moral authority fell to Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the GOP’s lone black member in the Senate. “Some in our party wonder why Republicans are constantly accused of racism,” he wrote in The Washington Post. “It is because of our silence when things like this are said.”
道德权威落在南卡罗来纳州参议员蒂姆斯科特身上，他是共和党在参议院中唯一的黑人议员。“我们党内的一些人想知道为什么共和党人总是被指责为种族主义，” 他在《华盛顿邮报》上撰文道。“正是因为我们的沉默才说出了这样的话。”
So diversity is the winner, right? Not so fast.
多样性是赢家，对吧？没有那么快。
For all the talk about the Democratic rout, there was no clear message from the midterms. Yes, the new House is historically female and diverse. But in eight white working-class House districts in Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Michigan, where Democrats flipped seats away from Republicans, the winners were all white. Haley Stevens, who worked in the Obama administration on rescuing the auto industry and finding jobs for laid-off workers, took Michigan’s 11th from Republicans after half a century. But she soon distanced herself from her progressive colleagues in February, after she was asked about what one voter saw as the anti-Semitism of her pro-Palestinian fellow freshman classmates.
尽管人们都在谈论民主党的溃败，但中期选举并没有传递出明确的信息。是的，从历史上看，这座新众议院是女性的，包容多样。但在明尼苏达州、宾夕法尼亚州和密歇根州的8个白人工薪阶层选区，民主党人从共和党人手中抢走了席位，获胜者都是白人。曾在奥巴马政府中为拯救汽车行业和为下岗工人寻找工作的海莉·史蒂文斯，在半个世纪后作为共和党一员拿下了第十一区。但今年2月，在她被问及一名选民认为她亲巴勒斯坦的大一同学的反犹太主义是什么后，她很快就与进步同事拉开了距离。
Michigan’s 11th and the other seven flipped Midwestern districts are precisely the sort of places Democrats will want to claw back from Trump in 2020. But Democrats now must decide whether they should either write off the white identifiers who hearkened to Trump’s racial messaging, or try to win some of them over, as Obama did. Those who think Democrats don’t need them look to the rapidly changing populations of states like Arizona, Georgia and Texas. Others see a basic math problem: As much as the country is changing, white working-class voters will still make up nearly half of the electorate in 2020. And they are concentrated in the Midwestern states long considered key to Democratic success.
密歇根州的第11区和中西部其他7个翻转选区正是民主党人希望在2020年从特朗普手中夺回的地方。但民主党人现在必须决定，他们是应该无视那些听到特朗普种族信息的白人标识符，还是像奥巴马那样，试图赢得其中一些标识符的支持。那些认为民主党人不需要他们的人把目光投向了亚利桑那州、佐治亚州和德克萨斯州等人口迅速变化的州。另一些人则看到了一个基本的数学问题:尽管美国正在发生变化，但到2020年，白人工人阶级选民仍将占选民总数的近一半。而且他们集中在长期以来被认为是民主成功关键的中西部各州。
All this has led to a mostly hushed conversation among Democrats about race and who they should nominate from a crowded and diverse primary field. “I think it better be a white male,” said Michael Avenatti, the fleeting White House hopeful and pugnacious lawyer for adult film actress Stormy Daniels in an interview with Time last year. “And I don’t say that because I want it to have to be a white male. I say that because of the realities of the situation. If the Democrats nominate anyone other than a white male at the top of the ticket, they’re gonna lose the election. I’d be willing to bet anything.”
所有这一切导致民主党人之间就种族问题进行了一场几乎是悄无声息的对话，以及他们应该从一个拥挤而多样的初选领域提名谁。“我觉得最好是白人男性，”迈克尔·阿文纳蒂去年在接受《时代》如此表示，迈克尔·阿文纳蒂曾是白宫充满希望和战斗力的短期律师，为情色女演员斯托米·丹尼尔斯辩护。“我这么说不是因为我希望提名者必须是一个白人男性。我这样说是因为实际情况。如果民主党提名除了白人男性以外的人担任总统候选人，他们就会在选举中失败。我敢用我的一切打赌。”
Why? “It’s different when you have a white male making the arguments. They carry more weight,” he said. “Should they carry more weight? Absolutely not. But do they? Yes.”
为什么？“当你有一个白人男性代表在发表意见时，情况就不一样了。会更有分量，”他说。“应该更有分量吗？当然不是。但现实呢？确实更有分量。”
Avenatti soon bowed out of the race after a domestic violence allegation (he denied it and was not charged by prosecutors), but Senator Bernie Sanders struck a similar chord after the midterms, saying that voters in Florida and Georgia grew uneasy with black Democratic candidates for governor amid the race-baiting attacks from their GOP opponents. “There are a lot of white folks out there who are not necessarily racist who felt uncomfortable for the first time in their lives about whether or not they wanted to vote for an African-American,” he told The Daily Beast.
阿文纳蒂很快就退出了竞选，因为他被指控家庭暴力(他否认了这一指控，也没有受到检察官的指控)，但参议员伯尼·桑德斯在中期选举后也发出了类似的声音。他说，佛罗里达州和佐治亚州的选民对民主党的黑人州长候选人越来越感到不安，因为他们的共和党对手发起了煽动种族的攻击。“有很多白人并不一定是种族主义者，他们平生第一次对是否要投票给非裔美国人感到不舒服，”他在接受《每日野兽网》采访时表示。
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
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