Bannon seems to have discovered something that for members of the American intelligentsia is not only strange, but practically incomprehensible: Racism is not an issue that interests the majority of Americans. The economy, not racism, was the issue of the election. What truly interests Americans is not the Mexicanness of illegal migrants, but the illegality of so much Mexican migration. “The Democrats,” Bannon told an infuriated Robert Kuttner at The American Prospect a few days before he was sacked from the White House, “the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”