Why SHOULDN'T Black Voters Pick Trump?

In a rather interesting and dramatic speech last week, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump made a fairly impassioned plea for black voters, who have historically ignored the Republicans, to vote for him and not for Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.

We've all seen the clips, of course.  Trump was clearly very serious, and made the sort of "why not" argument that Republicans should have been making for decades to black voters.  Essentially, his pitch was logically unassailable.

Black Americans, particularly in the cities of the USA, have been voting Democrats in as mayors and city leaders for as long as they've been alive.  It has, over the years, been made to be a badge of infamy when a black American claims to have voted for a Republican.

Trump's pitch, though, resonated -- or should have -- in two ways very different from the past and that we need to pay a lot of attention to.

First, he made the pitch in the first place.  Likely because black voters have consolidated into a set of lock-step Democrats for so long, Republican candidates at the national level, as well as Senate and House candidates, have simply said nothing to the community.  No "black voters should vote Republican" kind of pitch, nothing.  So it was unique in that Trump said anything at all, let alone make an actual case.

Second, though, is probably more important.  We have had a (half-) black president for the last eight years.  During that time, it can pretty safely be said that, certainly in terms of economic benefit, jobs, safety at home, family stability, peaceful cities and opportunity to lift oneselves up, everything is worse for black America since Barack Obama became president.

In other words, the Democrat one would think to be most helpful to the community -- the first "black" president -- has done more for caddies on Martha's Vineyard in eight years than he has done for black Americans.

Obama's legacy to the black community -- spiking murder rates in the cities, huge black unemployment, dissolved families, gargantuan illegitimacy rates, and letting even more immigrants in to compete for jobs and drive down wages -- is now, therefore, a legitimate topic of discussion.

The candidate's pitch, given that, was pure Trump.  "It is awful right now, and you keep electing the same Democrats every time.  They're doing nothing for you and they're just lining their pockets at your expense.  All they want is your votes, and the day after Election Day they forget you exist.  It's not going to get any better, and it's lousy now.  I, at least, won't take your votes for granted!"

Or words to that effect.

So I would like to think that, being anything but an establishment Republican, Donald Trump, in this election, is the one guy, at the one time, to whom black voters should say, "OK, I get it, but I'm only doing this once.  You I'll vote for, but I need to see results."

Trump later went out on a typical Trumpian flight of fancy and "guaranteed" that he would get 95% of the black vote for his reelection in 2020.  Now, we know that isn't going to happen, but it was important for him to say it.

Why?  Because by saying, in effect, that he was going to turn things around, or at least show dramatic progress in his first four years, he was saying something more important to the black voter.  "After Election Day", he was essentially saying, "you are a priority.  I will help you with an expanded economy that will provide you good, private-sector jobs.  I will protect you from competition.  I will defend citizens first.  And you can count on me to do that because I have now said that I expect to do enough to earn your 2020 vote.  So you can go ahead and take that risk in 2016."

No Republican has done that in my lifetime.  It's about time.  And, black America, to paraphrase Mr. Trump one last time, what the Heck have you got to lose?

After all, if you had anything before, after Obama, you lost it already.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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