It's time for Republicans to chase black voters

It shames me as an American to see how the Democrats take black voters for granted. It shames me further when Republicans can’t be bothered to protest. Wouldn’t it be fun to puncture that balloon of Democratic entitlement, and make our rivals feel they should at least have to work for those votes?

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This would be a beautiful time to take the offensive, because Democrats are already shaken up. Hillary is on the ropes, and the stable is frighteningly empty. Black Lives Matter is making things hard on the racial front by trumpeting a more radical message than most mainstream voters want to hear. Why not intensify the nightmare with another challenge to the mainstream Democratic narrative in the form of a hopeful and reasonable-sounding appeal from the Right?

The great thing about this game is that a very partial victory would really be a win. Democrats can’t settle for just being fairly popular among black voters. They need the overwhelming majority. Their electoral calculus depends on that, which is an Achilles heel we should exploit. On top of that, claiming the mantle of the not-racist party is hugely significant to the Democrats’ moral narrative. If we challenge them for that mantle, it might spark a crisis of confidence, of the sort that could really put their party into disarray. Riley’s “20 percent” would be a landslide defeat, from the perspective of Democratic strategists who are used to counting on a solid 90 percent of the black vote.

Too often, conservatives just seem defensive and flat-footed when racial questions arise.

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