But the arguments he made as a president still run the tables in the press and they must not be strengthened by carelessness, nor the the hatred and fear they represent be absolved, by Democrats and progressives.

Reagan has become so sainted that it was much less jarring to hear Obama speak OBJECTIVELY, people, about Reagan, than it was to hear Hillary object to any invocation of Reagan whatsoever.

I actually had to give her some credit.

The public wasn’t concerned about how government had “grown and grown” until Reagan made government a symbolic stand-in for brown people, poor people, ‘lazy’ people, immigrants (who were also lazy, except when stealing our jobs,) gays and uppity women.

I couldn’t agree more, and couldn’t have said it anywhere near that well. From my perspective as a white Southerner in a place where I saw whites cheering JFK’s assassination, Reagan simply used the coded language of segregation to carry the South. It was like draggin’ a $100 bill through a trailer park (thank you James Carville). “States rights” simply meant “get the federal gummint out of telling us how we can treat our darkies.”

Your perspective as a Southern Californian is far more inclusive than mine.

Thank you.