Donald Trump’s “speaking” to African Americans.

Leave it to Donald Trump and his new Breitbart enablers.  Who else could figure out how to pretend to appeal to African American voters in a way that would be read by the press as a subtle appeal to moderate whites while actually doubling and tripling down on appeals to white resentment ? Yet although this has gone largely unnoticed, that’s the message of Trump’s most recent week.

       Think of it this way.  No matter how many problems a people may have, no matter the struggle, almost no one sees him or herself as having “nothing to lose”.  It is with this fundamental truth in mind that Donald Trump’s “outreach” to African Americans needs to be seen.   Donald Trump described the African American Community as having  “No health care, no education, no anything.”  And that their lives were a “ total catastrophe.”  He also did this in almost entirely white spaces.   Given African Americans loyalty to the Democratic Party, affinity for Clinton in the primary and just generalized disdain for all things Trump, the Donald’s strategy here cannot genuinely be to gain African American votes.  If he wanted Black votes, he would show up and talk to Black voters.  So what is really going on?

      Some are seeing this as a display of compassion to upscale whites to show that Trump cares about the poor and inclusiveness.  This indeed may be an added benefit of this week’s remarks.  However from where we sit something far more insidious/clever is going on. Trump is actually intensifying his effort to play on white fears.

Trump is going to almost all white enclaves in places where the central cities, Detroit and Milwaukee are disdained by the surrounding suburbs. Trump even went in the middle of a riot.  While the pitch was purportedly made to African Americans, it was actually much more about them.   Trump portrayed the African American community as so stupid as to vote for Democrats who had failed them.  This was yet one more way to blame them for their own problems, while massively highlighting their downsides and challenges. Trump was speaking to and powerfully reinforcing the stereotype that many whites have about Blacks --  not to the lived reality of the African American Community. If he had given a speech hitting the African American community for the failures he so gleefully detailed, the press and many voters would have condemned him for racist remarks.  But the way he did it in this speech let him hit all the same notes while pretending to be singing a different song. Although Democrats understandably struggle with white voters susceptible to race based appeals, they still get some such voters in these suburbs.  Trump is trying to separate the Democrats from these votes and change the math in Michigan and Wisconsin.   The math in both states is exceptionally difficult for Trump.  But what unites a surprising number of whites in these states is fear and disdain for the cities.  In Michigan such thinking led to elected leadership that stripped local government away from places like Detroit and Flint.  Trump’s backhanded appeal to suburban resentment is a difficult strategy, a bit like threading a needle while driving a car. But this reading of his recent “pivot”, a pivot he denies is happening, makes much more sense than the other explanations we are seeing floating around on cable news.