In the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement and the Great Society, opponents of the post-war welfare state found themselves in a novel position: federal social programs, which under the New Deal had largely been reserved for whites, had now been much more widely extended to Blacks by Great Society legislation. To thread this needle, the effort to systematically dismantle our federal social programs would turn to coded racist political messaging, known as "dog whistles," to appeal to white voters as taxpayers. This weaponization of racist dog whistle politics had a profound impact on American society, and continues to define our political discourse and public institutions in underappreciated ways that the Democrats would be wise to confront as they take power.