Reports that the Trump campaign is working to suppress the votes of black Americans, young women and white liberals would mark the most rational move the Republican Party presidential nominee has made in months.
Of course, I would never advocate discouraging Americans from voting. But a decision to actively deter people turning out would mean Donald Trump has given up the ghost of reaching the voters he’s spent this election cycle — and much of his life — alienating with his curious mix of bigotry and misogyny.
It would also confirm that Trump is taking the route laid out by the Republican Party in ignoring its own post-2012 election autopsy, which had urged the GOP to try to connect with particular groups of voters. Instead, the party has turned to retrograde efforts to make it harder for these groups — including blacks and Hispanics — to vote.
In short, wanting to suppress the vote among certain minorities means Trump has truly become the Republican Party’s standard-bearer. The GOP presidential nominee, like the party he represents, is too concerned with the chance for short-term political gain to do the hard work needed to diversify in a diversifying nation.
Of course, the GOP has already tried to suppress the vote through a series of photo ID and other laws it says are designed to tamp down on the kind of voter fraud that is all but nonexistent. The Trump camp, meanwhile, had doubled down on those efforts by trying to turn off young women by harping on Bill Clinton’s past, and Bernie Sanders’ young devotees by talking up Hillary Clinton’s past support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.
The most recent example, though, has been alleged in a Bloomberg article citing an unnamed senior Trump official as saying the campaign planned to undermine Clinton’s support among black people by bringing up the specter of Clinton’s 1990s embrace of the term “super predators” by “placing spots on select African-American radio stations” and employing a stealth Facebook campaign.
“It will dramatically affect her ability to turn these people out,” the official told Bloomberg.
A Trump spokesman told CNN the reports weren’t accurate. But, actually, they are. How do I know? Because as I was driving through the swing state of North Carolina earlier this week, I heard a spot on a popular black radio station in the Charlotte area. The voice of what sounded like a young black man sang the praises of Trump after excoriating Clinton for using the super predator. (For the record, Clinton didn’t invent the term. It was the brainchild of a then-Princeton professor based upon faulty science to explain a high crime rate.) This was occurring as Trump was unveiling a supposed new deal for black people in North Carolina.
But the gambit won’t work for what should be obvious reasons.
For a start, Trump’s brand is so toxic among voters of color — especially black voters — his campaign’s use of the specter of race will only reinforce the idea that it is he who is a unique threat who must be defeated, no matter those voters’ hang-ups about Clinton.
His proposed policies, which include support for widespread stop and frisk, his garnering the support of the Fraternal Order of Police in the era of #BlackLivesMatter, and his “law and order” talk, are all in stark contrast to Clinton, who has pledged to push for policing and criminal justice reform and to undo 1990s-era policies that many blame for much of today’s mass incarceration.
The voters are smart enough to understand that it is Trump, and many of his supporters, who are essentially raising the idea of super predator from the grave, which is why they are quick to embrace policies that reinforce the idea that young black men are guilty until proven innocent.
Clinton used a term thought up at an Ivy League school in the 1990s, one which she now regrets. Trump has vowed to resurrect policies in the 21st century that will hurt young black men far more than a decades-old debunked term ever could.
Black voters haven’t forgotten that Trump is the man who rose to national political prominence on the back of birtherism and who is the preferred choice of David Duke. The difference between the two candidates is stark. There’s no papering over that.