2016 August 20^th

Donald Trump, who now recognizes that he is getting just 1 percent of the African-American vote, believes that with hard work he might be able to double that figure. That is certainly possible. To that end Trump has begun directing his comments to the Africa-American community. Yesterday, for example, he held a rally in Dimondale, Michigan, a town north of Detroit. He said the African-American community had not benefited from its Democratic allegiance and so they should give Donald Trump a chance.

This is a reasonable message but it is addressed to the wrong audience. Dimondale, Michigan, where Trump held forth, is 95 percent white.  Why wasn’t this message, and Trump’s rally held in Flint, Michigan, where just over half of the residents are black and the water crisis has made national news? No one knows, but a start might be that the poisoning of Flint’s water supply was arguably caused by  Republican Governor Rick Snyder trying to save a few bucks. Could it be that Trump knew that a Republican presidential candidate might get a very rude reception in Flint? Donald Trump is not going to risk getting a rude reception anywhere. This aversion to rejection might also account for Trump’s failure to accept speaking invitations from black organizations like the Urban League and the NAACP. Never mind how much he needs the black vote.

Trump is said to be speaking to The African-American community in an attempt to woo them into the Republican voting bloc. He isn’t doing that at all, he is speaking about the African-American community and what he believes they should do but he is not speaking to the black community, he is speaking to the white community. The purpose is to convince the white community that he is not a racist, that he welcomes African-Americans, indeed he pleads with them to come over to the Republican Party. If they are unwilling to recognize the failure of their allegiance to the Democratic Party, well he has done his best and now can’t be blamed for the loss of black votes. If some black voters hear his message and come over to the Republican party, so much the better.

Off to Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Donald Trump’s generous gift of a semi-truck load of…toys to the flood victims. There might have been other more appropriate things on that semi but the photo op Trump produced showed him and Governor Spence busy helping unload toys from that semi. That didn’t last very long because Donald Trump had many more important things to do than physically help anyone. The result was that Donald Trump and Mike Pence spent all of 47 seconds being photographed helping to unload that truck: hey, how long does a photo op take; what great guys!