FILE – In this Aug. 27, 2016 file photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks in Des Moines, Iowa. Trump promises on Twitter that he’ll make a major speech on illegal immigration on Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2016, carrying his self-declared “immigration week” into a second. Trump appears unable to make a decision on what his policy on his signature issue ought to be, an odd place for a candidate 10 weeks before Election Day and a dark harbinger of indecision for a potential president. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
Donald Trump just digs himself in deeper by the day.
His latest—telling African Americans that they are doing lousy so “what the hell have you got to lose?” is his way to promise…nothing. He has no legitimate policy changes he swears he will implement to change black youth employment numbers (although one might consider that his buddy Bill O’Reilly says that many slaves were “well fed and had decent lodging.”) Trump will do very well with uneducated white voters in former slave states, supposedly.
So even the Republican party is thinking, um, let’s salvage what we can in down ticket races to make sure we save our control of the Senate and House. After all, when they control those bodies, they have demonstrated that they can even halt Constitutional processes such as Supreme Court appointments.
Which down ballot races are crucial to the hopes of Republicans and which are important in particular to African Americans? After all, even the lone black U.S. Senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina, cannot be quiet about rampant racism that seems to fuel much of the U.S. selective law enforcement system (USSLES), so popular with Trump and most Tea Party Republican types. And if the Rs are noted for anything in recent decades, it would be a systemic effort to suppress the African American vote. That, Mr. Trump, is one thing black Americans would have to lose, and they know they will if you appoint the next Supreme Court justices.
Of course, the Republican wealthy donors know this too and are indeed funneling most of their funds to a number of key races in an effort to staunch the flow of power away from the party that oversaw the quashing of gun control legislation, the radical resistance to universal health care, and the astonishing anti-intellectualist climate-denying science rejection that appealed to the most willful ignorance seen since Hitler’s Jungvolk, the Hitler Youth boys, 10-14, whose “education” focused on racial purity and physical strength.
One key Senate race is the contest between Democratic New Hampshire Governor Maggie Hassan and incumbent Republican Kelly Ayotte. It’s a dead heat right now. The candidates are vastly different in their orientation. Hassan is strongly in favor of measures that increase minority and women employment; Ayotte not so much. Hassan is campaigning for gun control; Ayotte votes against it every time it matters—although when she voted in favor of a doomed gun control bill the Trump-loving Breibart site excoriated her. Ayotte was prescient in seeing Trump’s negative coattails and is one of the few prominent Republican federal office-holders who has adaptively declined to endorse Trump, but tries to have it both ways by saying she’ll vote for him. Hassan has been endorsed by Emily’s List for her women-friendly policies and positions, a decided distance from what the Trump Republicans stand for.
Meanwhile, in Florida’s 18th congressional district, where polls say the race is a toss-up, Republican candidate Mark Freeman says, “Obama has made a bold-faced effort to drive a wedge between the races. He paints a picture of envy to our black citizens and the envy drives hatred. And then he says to them: ‘You’ve got it coming for free. These rich people owe you.’ And on top of that, he gives them free stuff, too.”
His Democratic opponent Randy Perkins said that Freeman should “apologize and retract racist comments.”
These races and many more will affect all of us and African Americans know precisely what they have to lose. Like many of us, it is appearing that many black Americans will be voting defensively this November 8, guarding against the worst of the Trump trend toward open racial condescension and a rollback of civil rights, human rights, and economic advancement.
Keep digging, Donald. You’re a self-described “really, really rich” man. Use a golden shovel. What do you have to lose?
Tom H. Hastings is Founding Director of PeaceVoice.
