wbur Commentary National Urban League President Vernon Jordan Jr., left, and William F. Buckley Jr., host and inquisitor of the public television show Firing Line, find something to laugh about at the 15th birthday celebration of the show in New York, Tuesday, Feb. 25, 1981. Jordan was one of 48 guests on the show who had come to celebrate with Buckley. (Kaye/AP)

Now that congressional Democrats have settled on legislative total war on Trump, some progressives are worried the artillery is wreaking collateral damage on the presidents working-class base. [D]emocrats often sound patronizing when speaking of Trump voters, demonizing them along with their disdain-deserving leader, lamentsNew York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.

For an example of what concerns him, check out the comments thread to a recent Cognoscenti column urging empathy for the president and his backers. A progressive backlash against preaching empathy for Trump is unsurprising; the anger in some comments against the uneducated people and forgotten men supporting him is something else. In a polarized era of neighbors, family members and protesters screaming at each other over Trumpism, another writer asserts, There is little doubt about our need to find language that illuminates the dark abyss separating those who approve of our new presidents words and executive orders and Cabinet appointments from those appalled by them.

...you might askwhich words should be weaponized to resist an anti-immigrant, anti-environment, anti-safety netchief executive, andshould they be fired at his supporters as well?

If youre in the latter camp, as I am, you might askwhichwords should be weaponized to resist an anti-immigrant, anti-environment, anti-safety netchief executive, andshould they be fired at his supporters as well? To answer this, I found an instructive model from a half-century ago, when another populist double-talker was confronted by a famous wordsmith.

In January 1968, William F. Buckley Jr. featured segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace on Buckleys "Firing Line" interview show. You couldnt have paired an odder couple: Buckley, the Yale-educated, sesquipedalian guru of modern conservatism, and Wallace, the farmers son whod futiley blocked the schoolhouse door five years earlier against black students at his states university. The mens' dust-up, broadcast as Wallace readied a third-party presidential bid, today plays like a toned-down foretaste of the long-runningpublic television program "The McLaughlin Group," with repeated interruptions and efforts to out-snark one another. (Said asmiling Buckley:Youre telling me stuff that I knew when I was 3 years old, governor.)

The program, archived byStanford Universitys Hoover Institution, corroborates the observationthat Wallace was Trump before Trump becameTrump, down to the surly, just-bit-into-a-lemon grimaces at what he calls the pseudo-intellectual Buckley. The latter, coolly, sometimes self-deprecatingly, but relentlessly swatting Wallaces denials of racism, was, admittedly, a problematic defender of racial equality. In 1957, hed suggested that the white South was entitled to thwart African-American aspirations ...because for the time being, it is the advanced race. Like Wallace, Buckleyopposed the 1960s civil rights legislation, a stance hed recant years later.

Destiny, if not Buckley, intended for the Wallaceinterview to beredemptive (the hosts stated goal was to expose Wallace as a non-conservative, not rehash his renowned racial views).

Ive never said that you should have segregation of the school system or any other, Wallace said.

What steps did you take to encourage the enfranchisement of the Negro back before the [federal] government got on your back?" Buckley countered. " Its a clear part of the historical recordthat the South not only didnt encourage its Negroes to vote, but encouraged them not to vote.

In another exchange, when Wallace defended his home region as more law-abiding than the North, Buckley parried that southern law enforcement techniques were, to say the least, unusualthe Ku Klux Klan, for instance...

What does this decades-old brawl teach us about handling Trump? The lesson for liberals seething at the president is that there are more ways to skin a strongman than just venting rage. As necessary as the outrage-fueled mass protests against Trump are, Buckley shows how calm reason andhumor can also dismantle a foe. Anger can go too far; smart liberals know that actions such as blocking Education Secretary Betsy DeVos from visiting a school only sink toTrumps puerile incivility and risk turning off some people who might be open to theirviewpoint.

For their part, Trump voters must understand that theydont get a pass just because theyre genuinely pissed. Wallaces voters sincerely feared their ebbing white privilege; Buckley still called out collective Dixie racism. Today, its fair game to note the data showing that too many Trump supporters are indeed bigots, their Wallace-like disclaimers notwithstanding.

Of course, they're not all bigots.Kristof reminds us that some Trump folks voted for Barack Obama. But their support is even more confounding.If Trump is a con man peddling preposterous promises (Mexico will pay for that wall; Obamacare can be replaced with equal but cheaper coverage; climate change is a dismissible hoax), how gullible can his voters be?

...it's fair gameto hold a reality-reflecting mirror to Trump's supporters when their views are abhorrent or just plain ignorant, as Buckley did with segregationists.

Democratic discourse depends on a common frame of reality among citizens of differing views. I spoke to one pro-Trump friend during the campaign, trying to understand her politics, only to find they relied on half-truths and misinformation.Buckley was right: The voters blow it sometimes, as he said in the Wallace interview.

Should the opposition emulate Trumps rudeness?No.But it's fair gameto hold a reality-reflecting mirror to Trump's supporters when their views are abhorrent or just plain ignorant, as Buckley did with segregationists.

Wallace found the KKK remark insulting to his people. It certainly was. But below-the-belt? I doubt African-Americans living under Jim Crow would have thought so.

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Rich Barlow Cognoscenti contributor Rich Barlow writes for BU Today, Boston University's news website.

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Anatomy Of A Takedown: William F. Buckley Jr. Vs. George Wallace - WBUR