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At last!
A Republican presidential nominee finally has slammed Democrats for abusing black Americans --- for decades.
"I am asking for the vote of every African-American citizen struggling in our country today who wants a different future," Trump said Tuesday near Milwaukee. "Democratic crime policies, education policies, and economic policies have produced only more crime, more broken homes, and more poverty."
Trump then hammered his opponent.
"Hillary Clinton-backed policies are responsible for the problems in the inner cities today, and a vote for her is a vote for another generation of poverty, high crime, and lost opportunities," Trump declared. "We reject the bigotry of Hillary Clinton which panders to and talks down to communities of color and sees them only as votes, not as individual human beings worthy of a better future."
Trump noted who lords over most poor black neighborhoods.
"The Democratic Party has run nearly every inner city in this country for 50 years, and run them into financial ruin," Trump explained. "They’ve ruined the schools. They’ve driven out the jobs. They’ve tolerated a level of crime no American should consider acceptable."
Violent crime is up 17 percent in America’s 50 biggest cities in 2015, Trump said. Homicides have climbed 50 percent in Washington, D.C. this year. In Baltimore, murders are up 60 percent.
Nationally, Obama’s value to blacks is almost purely symbolic. It’s quite literally two steps forward, six steps back.
• The unemployment rate has improved. According to the latest data, joblessness for black Americans has slid from 12.7 percent at Obama’s first inauguration to 8.4 percent in July --- down 33.9 percent.
• The unemployment rate for blacks from ages 16 to 19 declined over that interval, from 35.3 percent to 25.7 percent --- down 33.9 percent.
• But, the overall labor force participation rate for black Americans has slipped from 63.2 percent to 61.2 percent --- down 3.2 percent.
• This metric also slumped for black teenagers, from 29.6 percent to 28.8 percent -- down 6.4 percent.
• The percentage of black Americans in poverty has grown under Obama, the Census Bureau reports, from 25.8 in 2009 to 26.2 in 2014 -- up 1.6 percent.
• Real median income among black households during Obama, the Census says, slid from $35,954 to $35,398 --- down 1.5 percent.
• The number of blacks on Food Stamps soared under Obama -- from 7,393,000 in 2009 to 11,699,000 in 2014 -- up 58.2 percent.
• Also, from Obama’s arrival through last June 30, the percentage of black Americans who own homes plunged from 46.1 to 41.7 percent, the Census reports -- down 9.5 percent.
How would Trump lead black Americans out of this Leftist morass?
"On education, it is time to have school choice, merit pay for teachers, and to end the tenure policies that hurt good teachers and reward bad teachers," Trump said. "I am going to allow charter schools to thrive."
As the registered property of the American Federation of Teachers, Hillary Clinton may not say those words.
"On taxes, I am going to give a massive tax cut to every worker and small business in this country, bring thousands of new companies and millions of new jobs onto our shores," Trump stated. "I am going to reform our regulations so jobs stay in America, and new businesses come to America."
Regarding crime, Trump said, "I am going to break up the gangs, the cartels and criminal syndicates terrorizing our neighborhoods."
Trump should face black Americans directly and ask for their votes. All else being equal, if he convinces 15 percent of them, this election becomes a squeaker. If he scores 20 percent of black ballots, Trump trumps Clinton.
Nervous whites who see Trump meet black voters would find such images a comforting contrast to charges that Trump is a racist. Some will be sufficiently reassured and support him.
And the Never Trump crowd might re-evaluate a GOP nominee who finally expressed some "very difficult truths," in Trump’s words, that other Republican standard bearers understood but were not brave enough to utter.
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