Back in July, there was great laughter and knowing nods when some polls showed that then-GOP presidential contender Donald Trump would get 0 percent of the black vote. This seemed about right. Trump seemingly earned and deserved the goose egg with his horrendous record of slamming the door on blacks in his apartment rentals, his relentless birther savaging of President Obama, his non-stop trash of the Central Park Five, wild enthusiasm for stop and frisk, and his thinly disguised race-tinged cracks and digs at his rallies. But a funny thing happened between the near gag line 0 percent Trump supposedly would get if the election were held in July, and the actual election. That 0 percent of the black vote, magically transformed into some real numbers that actually had some significance for the election, and maybe beyond. The 8 percent of the black vote he got which numbers wise factors out to roughly a half million votes topped the total that GOP presidential contenders Romney in 2012 and McCain in 2008 got. Another 4 percent of black voters did not support Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. This factors out together to over 1 million black votes lost to Clinton. This does and should raise eyebrows.
The drop off in the black vote for Clinton from what Obama got is easy to explain. One, she’s not Obama. He’s black and his campaign became a virtual holy crusade by blacks to make history and put one of their own in the White House. No white Democrat could hope to match that spine-tingling exuberance. A lot more blacks repeatedly ripped and nagged at Clinton for hubby Bill’s alleged racial sins as president, those being his shove through of the draconian omnibus crime bill that soared the numbers of blacks in federal and by extension state pens, and a welfare reform bill that seemed more punitive than helpful, and Hillary’s own one-time offensive branding of black lawbreakers as “super predators.” This also hurt.
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