have been widely interpreted as a tacit appeal to Southern white voters who were part of the "Southern Strategy" of the Republican party.

Failure

Atwater knew he was already getting those votes if he appealed to national security and the economy. It’s liberal wishful thinking to keep repeating same quote from Atwater over and over and over again.

All you gotta do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues his campaigned on since 1964. And that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cutting taxes, you know that whole cluster, and being tough with national defense. And it's going to be very hard for Reagan to lose.

Indeed, Lee. liberals haven’t been for national security since LBJ. It’s just not a thing for the left.

Your “favorite” (golly gee, wonder why since it feeds your prejudices) left out what Lee says next:

And subconsciously maybe that *is* part of it. I'm not saying that, but I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract and that coded, that we're doing away with the racial problem one way or the other.

Oopsie! And let’s continue:

Do you follow me?

Because obviously sitting around saying, 'we want to cut taxes, we want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of lot more abstract than, 'nigger, nigger.'

So anyway you look at it, race is coming on the back burner.

Atwater’s playing Devil’s Advocate here, but that doesn’t play to the left wing narrative, which must be that the Republican Party is little more than the modern Klan. Never mind the raw cultural incompatibilities that liberal political thought has with oh, 75% of actual Americans that really drive elections. Quaint things like a strong economy and good foreign policy.

Stuff the democrats left behind decades ago and show no sign of returning to any time soon.