A mood of nativist discontent and racial scapegoating, married to actual economic displacement among a broad cross section of American society, has up to this point lacked a determinate and focused ideological articulation. It is a mood that is easily captured by a demagogue like Trump. The only way to counter this kind of capture are forms of organizing that intervene to disrupt the sense that only Trump is speaking into and giving voice to this mood. Such organizing helps dis-identify potential supporters from either a right wing populist like Trump, or explicitly fascist groups, through creating alternative political scripts that disarticulate the reasons for discontent from the interpretative frameworks the likes of Trump provides.
But the kind of engaged, relational organizing that does not begin by denouncing people as a "basket of deplorables" requires leftists to stomach building relationships with people they don't like and find scandalous.
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