OK folks - obviously Trump got a lot of attention for a tweet he sent yesterday showing him eating a taco bowl with the tag: "I love Hispanics!"

The image is here: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/728297587418247168/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc^tfw

The best thing about this photo is that it is very ambiguous - the entire media cycle yesterday was eaten up by people trying to explain, understand, discuss, complain, condemn, etc. Yet nobody seemed to catch on to what it was really about - and Trump sure as hell isn't going to explain his game. So I'll do it for you.

This image is what is known as "satire" and because satire is an often subtle former of social commentary, critique, and comedy, it naturally went way beyond the puny brains of our media/pundit/political class.

One of the absolute worst things that politicians do, and something that Hillary specifically is renowned for doing, is pander to racial groups. A recent classic example from Hillary was her "abuela" campaign (http://mashable.com/2015/12/22/hillary-clinton-abuela-twitter/#wHsHaDvmQqq1). This was absolutely blatant, insulting pandering that plays to only the stupidest of spanish-speaking voters. The real audience for such pandering is white people and the media - they accept this to mean she's "cool with hispanics" and repeat that message and they go on to write articles assuming she is popular with the hispanic demographic and all of that. As you can see from the linked article, actual Spanish-speakers weren't having it. Hillary and other politicians play this stupid game ALL OF THE TIME. It's why elitist rich politicians travel to Michigan and try to talk about the football team and frequently make idiots of themselves. It's a blatant attempt to lie and pretend that you understand people who are different from you. It's insulting.

Trump's tweet satirizes this. He's comically eating a taco bowl (widely recognized by Mexican people as an American food product inspired by Mexican food, rather than actual Mexican food) with the non-sequoitor tagline of "I Love Hispanics!" Think about it now with that perspective - he's clearly satirizing politicians who think they can pose with a fucking taco and say they're "down" and get away with it. This is really obvious if you recognize the trope he's playing.

So why did he do it and what is the effect? This is the brilliant part and why Trump is winning this thing: By making it ambiguous and relatively subtle he tricked Hillary and her media parrots into condemning it and making wide proclamations around this topic that they are not trapped by. How can Hillary release another "Abuela" campaign when she's on record mocking transparent Hispanic pandering? Additionally, it underscores to people who catch on that this is how Hillary and other politicians approach things and he makes it into a joke - they're a joke, the way they pretend to care about you and relate to you is a joke, and now I'm going to tell you it's a joke and have a laugh with you about it.

Additionally, he's tricked her into making the VERY RACIST assumption that is the key to this whole thing: he got her to openly connect "illegal immigrants" with "hispanic people." This is the assumption that the white/political class keeps making - it's why they conflat his comments about illegal immigrants as being comments about "Mexicans" or "hispanic people." Trump knows the fucking difference, and more importantly, hispanic people know the difference. Ethnically-Mexican people in the US DO NOT like it when white people assume they are immigrants, legal or illegal. Most of the hispanic population in the US, especially the southwest/California, is actually many generations removed from "immigration" - in fact many of their families in New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, and California, were here when it WAS Mexico. They became Americans when the US immigrated into their homes, not the other way around.

Trump has underscored this issue by tricking the establishment class into openly repeating these views - they have NO idea this is how they come across (see: Bernie and his voters). Thisis what people mean when they say "white liberals are the most racist people in the country." Trump has further boxed out Hillary's technique of lowest-common-denominator pandering as a messaging/framing exercise. She won't be able to use this strategy in the campaign now, and this will mess up her planning.

The taco bowl tweet is an example of Trump masterfully playing a next-generation game against people who haven't even figured out yet that the times have changed.