Trump Goes 100% Dixiecrat: Dems Should Nominate LeBron James in 2020

Trump's political formula is to maintain a hard-shell lily-white, white-supremacist base at all costs. Attacking NFL and NBA stars will simultaneously solidify that base while expanding his opponents core of support.

Ken Belson and Julie Hirschfeld Davis report in "Trump Attacks Warriors’ Curry. LeBron James’s Retort: ‘U Bum’" that

President Trump took aim at two of the world’s most powerful sports leagues and some of their most popular athletes, directly inserting himself into an already fiery debate over race, social justice and athlete activism and stoking a running battle on social media over his comments.

In a speech on Friday and a series of tweets on Saturday, he urged N.F.L. owners to fire players who do not stand for the national anthem, suggested that football is declining because it is not as violent as it once was and seemed to disinvite the N.B.A. champion Golden State Warriors from the traditional White House visit because of their star player Stephen Curry’s public opposition to him.

Speaking in Huntsville, Ala., on Friday, the president used an expletive to describe players who kneel or sit during the anthem to protest police brutality against black Americans and other forms of social injustice.

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these N.F.L. owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, out, he’s fired,’ ” the president said at a rally for Senator Luther Strange, who was appointed to the Senate this year and is facing Roy Moore in a Republican primary runoff.

While many fans on social media were supportive of the president, the reaction from many athletes was immediate and impassioned, particularly among African-American football and basketball players who have criticized Mr. Trump on race. Many, including LeBron James, among the best-known athletes in the country, denounced the president.

“U bum @StephenCurry30 already said he ain’t going! So therefore ain’t no invite. Going to White House was a great honor until you showed up!” Mr. James wrote on Twitter.

Mr. James later elaborated in a video on Instagram.

Once again, the only reason a Dixiecrat resides in the White House 70 years after Strom Thurmond won four Dixie states in the 1948 presidential race is the Democrats' continued commitment to a zombie neoliberalism. If the party were to run LeBron James on a progressive platform in 2020, the Dixiecrats would be buried in a landslide.