Trump Black Vote May Be Larger Than You Think: Columnist Explains
The Donald Trump black vote may be more formidable than Hillary Clinton or her supporters think.
In a recent column for Vice, writer Jay Stephens made a startling admission, especially when one considers the commonly repeated idea that GOP candidate Donald Trump’s numbers with minority voters are abysmal.
Stephens says she is supporting Trump for president of the United States.
What makes this remarkable isn’t the fact that Stephens is, in fact, a young black woman, but that she doesn’t fit the same image of others in the Trump black vote.
Up until present, Trump has gotten a small share of support from African-American voters, but most were of the evangelical faith or were the rare outliers who could be linked to the alt-right.
From a voting breakdown, those supporters didn’t mean enough to move the needle with most of the demographic.
With Jay Stephens’ piece entitled, “I’m a Young Black Woman and I Support Trump,” this could be the start of a disturbing trend for Mrs. Clinton.
Donald Trump made pitch to black voters, meeting with a handful of supporters in Ohio: https://t.co/B1P4MUAHQX pic.twitter.com/A6G5qjSbbs
— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) September 21, 2016
That’s because Stephens’ eyes are wide open. She acknowledges Trump is a problematic candidate who says really dumb things. But on popular liberal talking points, like the issue of police violence against African-Americans, she sees eye-to-eye.
“Preventing police abuse is a critically important issue, as the recent murder of Terence Crutcher illustrates,” she explains. “However, it is irresponsible of us to focus our civil rights efforts exclusively on the symptom of police brutality, and not the disease of socioeconomic inequality that infinitely exacerbates the problem.”
Stephens goes on to state that she was able to find common ground with Trump’s rather rough-around-the-edges delivery because he started talking about things like economic crises, which can “trigger violence around the world.”
She credits his insight that falling wages for low-skilled workers “have been directly linked to increases in violent crime.”
“The fact that the unemployment rate is twice as high for blacks as it is for whites should not be considered in isolation from the reality that our 13 percent slice of the population also commits over half of all homicides,” she writes.
For the remainder of the piece, Stephens lays out how the Trump black vote could be higher than expected, noting he is the only candidate talking about issues that could truly make a difference to the voting bloc.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is playing from the same pandering playbook with tired talking points. She is promoting platforms that have done nothing to improve the standing of the African-American community during her 30 years of “public service.”
Pointing to a Los Angeles Times/USC tracking poll that showed the Trump black vote was starting to erode how Clinton does with the demographic, Stephens postulated that Trump’s rhetoric is divisive, “but some divisive policy-driven rhetoric is exactly what African-Americans need right now.”
Trump has a peculiar ability to say things that would force most politicians to reverse course or step down, yet somehow emerge unscathed.
Thus far, it isn’t that Trump has avoided controversy, nor is it that any of those controversies have had an effect. Most have — in the short term. One such example is how he handled the Khan family’s criticisms of him after the Democratic National Convention.
He dropped several points after theorizing that maybe Mrs. Khan “wasn’t allowed to” speak and comparing his own sacrifices as a businessperson to those of the Khans’ — a Muslim family whose son died a hero in the Middle East.
Trump was down for a few weeks after that, but he has managed to erase the deficit and even pull ahead of Clinton in some battleground states.
While Hillary may get a bump from her debate performance, Trump is a master of controlling headlines, and the same plain-speak that can get him in trouble can also result in helping him come back stronger than before.
It’s already working with Stephens, who joined the Trump black vote even though she would ordinarily not consider Trump. If there are more people like her out there, then for Clinton, this could be the beginning of the end.
Just remember, Democrats need 93% of the black vote to win. That’s why they try to smear Trump as a racist. pic.twitter.com/awySyuq4ij
— MADAME (@MagicRoyalty) September 30, 2016
But what do you think, readers?
Is the Trump black vote going to help him win in November? Sound off in the comments section below.
[Featured Image by Gage Skidmore/Flickr Creative Commons/Resized and Cropped/CC BY-SA 2.0]
