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Schaffner’s research isn’t in conflict with those other studies that found a white backlash against Obama before Trump arrived on the scene; it’s complementary. Schaffner says that before Obama’s election, political scientists believed that “when candidates used language during a campaign, or during a debate, that was explicitly racist, voters would indicate that they liked that candidate less and were less likely to vote for them. So the idea was that if politicians wanted to make racial appeals, they had to do it in a subtle, implicit way.” But more recent studies... found that those penalties were no longer showing up. It appears that both are true: Obama’s election activated white voters’ racial grievances and anxieties about being displaced by other groups. But it was Trump’s nasty rhetoric that gave them permission to say what they might have kept quiet out loud—and in some cases, to act on those feelings.