“Donald Trump will get over 20% of the black vote.”
That’s what Jack Brewer, a former NFL player who played for the Minnesota Vikings, New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles, tells The Washington Times.
“That is what’s going to win the election. Why? Because there hasn’t been a Republican to even try to go in and talk to the black community. They don’t go there. They don’t even try. I think he’s trying, finally,” Brewer said.
Republicans routinely fare poorly with blacks in presidential elections. George W. Bush got 8% of the vote in his first election, while the late Sen. John McCain got 7% and Mitt Romney got 6%. Trump matched Bush with 8% in 2016 (but Bush got all the way up to 11% in 2004).
Democrats know the large voting bloc is locked in, but Trump is making a push to draw more black votes in 2020. While liberals claim Trump is racist and utters dog whistles almost daily, the Trump campaign is preparing to push its cause to the black community.
“The Trump 2020 campaign has been quietly reaching out to prominent African Americans about joining its latest coalition, intended to boost Republican support in the black community,” Politico reported. “The campaign’s pitch to African Americans is simple: Ignore the president’s words and instead focus on his policies, the state of the economy, the low unemployment rate, the passage of criminal justice reform and the creation of Opportunity Zones, which are meant to bolster investment in underserved or poorer cities.”
Trump has a good case. A strong economy under his hand has pushed black unemployment down to 5.5%, lowest in history. Real take-home wages for blacks has also risen.
The president touted his achievements in rolling out a “Black Voices for Trump” coalition in November.
“With your help, we’re going to travel all across the country to every community, urban, rural, suburban, and we’re going to campaign for every last African-American vote in 2020,” Trump told a predominantly black audience in Atlanta.
“We’ve done more for African Americans in three years than the broken Washington establishment has done in more than 30 years,” Trump said. “We’ve created 6.7 million new jobs since the election… Last month, the African American unemployment rate reached the lowest level ever recorded in the history of our country.”
And Trump went directly after Democrats.
“The Democrats have let you down,” Trump told black supporters. “They’ve dismissed you. They’ve hurt you. They’ve sabotaged you for far too long.”
Twenty percent of the black vote has long been the goal of the Republican. “Twenty percent appears to be the threshold that Republican strategists believe will establish GOP dominance in American politics — not only in presidential elections, which has been the pattern since 1968, but in congressional contests as well,” Louis Bolce, Gerald De Maio and Douglas Muzzio, three professors of political science at Baruch College, wrote in 1992.
Brewer said that there is “an awakening going on right now in the country.”
“I’m going to take the guy who’s actually putting in the policies that are going to make life better for my young black son and my young black daughter, versus somebody who gives me lip service — like, unfortunately, the Democrats have done for our community for years,” he told The Times.
The recent poll by Emerson puts Trump at 35%. And Democrats have a big problem in the fact that rapper Kanye West, who has millions of followers on social media, has become a vocal supporter of Trump.
“I love this guy right here. Let me give this guy a hug,” he said after an Oval Office meeting with Trump.