President Trump did so well with black voters and other minorities that Al Sharpton can not deny that success. In fact, Sharpton is sounding an alarm to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. If the Democrat ticket is successful in the election, Sharpton says they have much work to do.
On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Sharpton said today that President Trump appealed to minority voters by addressing their “entrepreneurial aspirations”. That’s true, as anyone who has paid attention to Trump’s message since his first campaign can tell you. Trump is the guy who dared to address audiences and specifically ask black and minority voters, “What the hell do you have to lose at this point?” In 2016, that was a refreshingly honest approach. Democrats have taken the black vote for granted and rightly so – black voters have a history as a block, of voting for Democrats. The group mentality is so ingrained that when a black or other minority voter supports a Republican, that person is mocked and shunned by Democrats. Progressives are only open-minded if everyone believes as they do. There is no room for individuality.
“He has done better than, in my judgment, he should have with Black men and Hispanics, which means that we’ve got to really look in the civil rights community, both on the Latino and the African American side, on a real conversation in our communities on what it is to be different in terms of being entrepreneurial aspirants and being fair in terms of how we look from the whole,” Sharpton said on “Morning Joe.”
“I think he appealed to some that wanted to feel that they had to be a certain kind of way to be aspirational and that you can be that and still be centrists,” Sharpton continued.
That last sentence by Sharpton is gibberish. He’s twisting like a pretzel to justify why a black voter would be interested in a candidate who reaches out to his community and says he’ll work to provide an atmosphere of increased opportunities for all, including communities often overlooked by Republican candidates. For years Republicans simply wrote off minority communities and Trump didn’t take that approach. He saw an opportunity to expand the Republican Party even while Democrats labeled him a racist, a white supremacist. It is a sweet irony that Trump successfully increased the black vote and the Hispanic vote, too, especially in the crucial states of Florida and Texas.
Black voters took notice of Trump’s friendship with Kanye West and of Kim Kardashian West’s work with the Trump administration on criminal justice reform. Democrats trashed them for working with Trump. Rapper 50 Cent endorsed Trump when he realized he’ll be paying a lot more taxes with a Biden administration. He caved a bit when he came under fire for that. A young rapper got a meeting with Trump and endorsed him. And, Ice Cube said he met with the Trump campaign because they took the meeting with him, while the Biden campaign told him they’d meet with him after the election. All of these stories add up. Does that mean there is a seismic shift with black voters toward the Republican Party? No. But it’s a start. It didn’t happen with a traditional Republican president, who often talk the talk but don’t walk the walk and put in the work. It happened with an outsider, a man with a life long career in the private sector.
Support for the Democratic presidential candidate reached a new low among Black men this year, according to the NBC News poll of early and Election Day voters.
There were a few groups that appear to have driven this shift toward President Donald Trump among Black men. Over half of Black men (52 percent) who identified as ideologically conservative cast their vote for the president, and 1 in 3 Black men living in the Midwest also voted for him.
There was an unusual relationship between education and how Black men voted this year. About 26 percent of Black men who had a high school diploma or less supported Trump. But 22 percent of Black men with bachelor’s degrees and 20 percent of Black men with advanced degrees also supported him. Black men with some college education broke for Biden at levels comparable to those of Black women.
So, yeah, Al Sharpton is right to notice black voters with “entrepreneurial aspirations”, the same happened with Hispanic voters. They aspire to start their own businesses, to build a family business to pass on to the next generation. They want to work within the system to achieve their own American dream. They are aspirational voters. It is logical that they drifted to Trump. What do Biden and Harris offer them? Less opportunity due to bigger government, more regulations, higher taxes, higher energy costs, and a grievance-based political ideology. That isn’t inspiring.
Joe Biden, who was attacked by Kamala Harris during the Democrat primary as a racist, had to walk back and apologize for his support of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. He told the audience in a town hall with ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos that his vote in favor of the bill was “a mistake.” He went on to justify his vote at the time because everyone else was supporting it. That doesn’t exactly scream leadership qualities, does it? Others were voting for it so he followed along with them? Biden has no record of leadership. He’s a follower.
Another liberal who is known for his severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, NYT columnist Charles Blow, was shocked by Trump’s number of black and Hispanic voters.
“This is so personally devastating to me: the Black male vote for Trump INCREASED from 13% in 2016 to 18% this year. The Black female vote for Trump doubled from 4% in 2016 to 8% this year,” Blow tweeted. “Also, once again, exit polls show a majority of White women voting for Trump.”
He continued, “Also, the percentage of LGBT voting for Trump doubled from 2016. DOUBLED!!! This is why LGBT people of color don’t really trust the White gays. Yes, I said what I said. Period.”
“Also, the percentage of Latinos and Asians voting for Trump INCREASED from 2016, according to exit polls. Yet more evidence that we can’t depend on the “browning of America” to dismantle White supremacy and erase anti-Blackness.”
The party that lives by division and identity politics, dies by division and identity politics. It will be a shame if Trump is defeated by a status quo Democrat and his running mate who was scored as the most liberal U.S. Senator according to her voting record. They offer the country a vision of socialism bordering on Marxism that will provide no room for individuality.
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