Opinion by Marvin A. McMickle
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following opinion artilce, and the views expressed in it, are the author’s own.
Black voters are shifting to Donald Trump? The New York Times reported in early November that 22% of Black voters in six key battleground states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) told pollsters they would support Donald Trump over Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential election.
Four years ago, only 8% of Blacks nationally voted for Trump, the Times noted.
This must be a great concern for the Democratic Party in general and for President Joe Biden in particular.
For me, this shift in the voting patterns is impossible to understand.
What is it about the rhetoric and resume of Donald Trump that might cause Black voters to shift their support from 8% in 2020 to 22% in 2024?
What do these Black voters find so appealing in this twice-impeached, four-times-indicted candidate who lost the 2020 election by over seven million votes?
Do these Black voters agree with Trump’s “Big Lie” that he actually won in 2020, but the election was stolen from him through voter fraud? Never mind the fact that over 60 courts and judges from across the country looked at Trump’s claims of fraud and dismissed them as baseless.
Why would Black voters support someone who referred to Haiti and many nations in Africa and Asia as “s***hole nations? Why would Black voters support someone who said in 2017 that there were “very fine people, on both sides” after Nazis, white nationalists, and KKK members marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting “Jews will not replace us?”
Why would Black voters support someone who is currently invoking the language of Adolf Hitler when he refers to some persons already living in this country as “vermin” whom he will “root out,” and speaks about some people seeking to immigrate to this country as “poisoning the blood of our country”?
Why would Black voters support a candidate for president who has consistently assaulted the competence and integrity of three Black law enforcement officers seeking to hold him accountable for his words and deeds?
They are: Fani Willis, who is the District Attorney in Fulton County, Georgia; Alvin Bragg, who is the District Attorney in Manhattan in New York City; and Latisha James, who is the Attorney General for New York State?
Why would Black voters support someone who peddled the false “birther” narrative claiming that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya and should have been disqualified from serving as president?
Let’s approach this shift to Donald Trump in another way.
What is it about Joe Biden that prevents these Black voters from staying with him in the next election? Are Black voters unaware of or unimpressed with the jobs created through the American Rescue Plan and Bidenomics?
During Trump’s administration from January 2017 to January 2021, more jobs were lost than were gained. Are these Black voters not concerned that Trump’s biggest political accomplishment was a massive tax cut for the wealthiest Americans?
Meanwhile, Biden has signed into law bills that have reduced childhood poverty, begun the major renovation of this nation’s infrastructure, initiated the first meaningful gun control legislation in 30 years, and addressed the COVID-19 pandemic that Trump largely ignored?
Are Black voters who might be struggling with diabetes unmoved that Biden has successfully capped the cost of insulin at $35 per month? Meanwhile, Trump is talking about repealing the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), with no other plan to take its place.
Are Black voters concerned that Joe Biden is too old to serve as president even though Donald Trump is only three years younger and quite a few pounds heavier?
Do Black voters want as their president a man with strong authoritarian tendencies and an affinity for dictators in Russia, Hungary, China, and North Korea?
Do Black voters realize that, in “Making America Great Again,” they are embracing a return to white supremacy and a loss of many of the rights many Americans now take for granted? Is this the future that these Black voters want for themselves and their children? I certainly hope not! As Aretha Franklin once sang, “You better think!”
The Rev. Marvin A. McMickle recently began serving as interim senior pastor of the First Baptist Church of Greater Cleveland in Shaker Heights. He is the retired president of the Colgate Rochester (N.Y.) Crozer Divinity School and pastor emeritus of Antioch Baptist Church in Cleveland.
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