The Democrat Party has left black voters behind in its mad dash to the left. While the Democrat presidential candidates tailor their messages to the sensibilities of white uber-liberals, President Trump is running for re-election on a record of delivering unprecedented opportunity and prosperity to African-Americans.
Left-leaning commentators have begun to notice that the political views of white Democrats are now significantly to the left of the opinions held by the Party’s black voters on a wide range of topics. The Democratic Party has undergone a massive leftward lurch during the Trump era, but this embrace of far-left extremism has been driven almost exclusively by its far-left, mostly-white fringe. Black voters, who represent about a quarter of the entire Democrat electorate, are finding themselves increasingly out of step with a Party establishment that is rapidly abandoning traditional liberal values in favor of radical proposals that would completely upend American society.
This is borne out by recent polling. Nearly 70 percent of black Democrats, for instance, insist that candidates must explain their plans to create jobs, compared to only 39 percent of white Democrats.
When the Democrat presidential candidates mention job creation on the campaign trail, however, they usually do so as an afterthought, or else they cite grossly inflated projections of job creation in an effort to justify their plans to spend trillions of taxpayer dollars on big-government boondoggles, such as the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. That approach may be all it takes to satisfy most white liberals, but it gives short shrift to one of the primary concerns shared by a huge proportion of African American voters.
Similarly, 55 percent of black Democrats say they would only consider voting for candidates who propose plans to reduce taxes, compared to only 25 percent of white Democrats. In fact, a full one-third of white Democrats don’t want to hear candidates talk about tax cuts at all, which helps to explain why the left has been so open about its desire to dramatically raise taxes on the American people.
The racial divide within the Democrat base works in the opposite direction, as well. The issues that white Democrats care deeply about — such as climate change, open borders, and government-run healthcare — are completely secondary in the eyes of black voters. As an example, more than three-quarters of white Democrats rate “reducing global warming” as a vital priority, while fewer than half of black Democrats report strong feelings on the issue.
As the Democrat candidates have largely left black voters out of the conversation in this election by emphasizing the priorities of white liberals, President Trump has done far more than just talk about the issues that African Americans care about — he’s backed up his rhetoric with results, implementing pro-growth economic policies that have produced enormous benefits for the African American community. For instance, we’ve achieved the lowest African-American unemployment rate in history — and then we did it again. As a result, the disparity between black and white employment is now at the lowest point it has ever been.
President Trump created the conditions for that success with policies such as Opportunity Zones, which incentivize investment and development in economically-distressed communities. Nearly 35 million Americans, including millions of black Americans, will benefit from a $100 billion influx of capital investment that will finance things such as affordable housing, new manufacturing facilities, and commercial development to combat inner-city problems such as “food deserts.”
And, of course, President Trump also signed the landmark FIRST STEP Act into law last year. That law is a historic accomplishment, implementing criminal justice reforms that traditional politicians tried and failed to enact for decades. Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, we finally eliminated the harsh mandatory minimum sentencing laws that disproportionately affected African Americans — even retroactively applying the new guidelines to existing prisoners — and thousands of unfairly imprisoned men and women have already been released.
While Democrats obsess over issues that primarily matter to white, liberal elitists on the two coasts, President Trump is offering black Americans a record of real-life results on issues that impact them the most. The President has already started making that very pitch to the African American community as the 2020 campaign gets underway.
Liberals will eventually come to regret abandoning black voters in their extreme lurch to the left, because if the Democrats are just going to blithely ignore us, we’ve got a perfectly able champion in President Trump.
Candace Owens is the host of “The Candace Owens Show” and is the founder of Blexit, a movement that encourages black Americans to break from the Democrat Party.