Yes the Clintons failed black people, but Donald, you're no savior

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/07/clintons-black-people-donald-trump

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Last week, Donald Trump spoke directly to a black Republican group in Philadelphia and at a televangelist’s church in Detroit; his smallest crowds of the campaign compared to those where we’ve seen black women and men among others physically attacked. This recent effort was made after failing miserably at what sounded at times like an attempt to become a black spokesperson, chiding and speaking bluntly on issues of concern to black voters in a manner traditionally reserved for ministers, comedians or motivational speakers with credibility and rapport – and an actual black audience.

Just how convincing are these overtures to black voters? Are his attacks concerning the Clintons’ “tough on crime” policies reaching their intended targets? Who indeed is the audience of Trump’s black talk?

The 12% support among black voters he once briefly enjoyed, according to a February 2016 Quinnipiac poll, has been completely squandered during a run of offensive incidents too numerous list in this small column. Over the summer it fell to 1%. So he projects.

“Hillary Clinton is a bigot!” He now roars.

Some of his remarks seemed aimed at the unabashed bigotry to which the Clintons appealed as the cornerstone of their centrist Democrat ideology in the 1990s.

Bill Clinton was the most powerful of the law-and-order Democrats, and actually more punishing than the law-and-order Republicans. Many of us at the time called this out, wrote, talked, and rose against it.

“She’s going to do nothing for African Americans, she’s going to do nothing for the Hispanics. She’s only going to take care of herself, her husband, her consultants, her donors. These are the people she cares about,” he continued.

But is Donald Trump really a righteous messenger, given his mob-leading role in the tumultuous racial politics of 1980s New York City? Given his lack of apology or remorse over the five lives devastated by his one man campaign against “crazed misfits” in New York in 1989? Given his “southern strategy” and apparent embrace of the white identity movement, including his new campaign team led by Lee Atwater protégé Roger Ailes and alt-right tribune Stephen Bannon of Brietbart News?

“The Democrats have taken you for granted!” Trump trumpets.

This is everyday talk in any barber shop, parlor or sports bar, about most politicians. It has been for a good part of Donald Trump’s 70 years.

Minus her name, what part of the words, “Hillary Clinton is a bigot who sees people of color only as votes, not as human beings worthy of a better future”, didn’t Malcolm X himself utter a time or two in messages like The Ballot or the Bullet?

Regarding Trump, there is a saying about broken clocks being right on time twice a day. But Trump’s not on time in his message to African Americans. He’s simply restating a known known.

People also know Trump intends to promote a “new civil rights agenda” for our times in the same way they trust Clinton plans to follow through on the “new ‘New Deal’ for minorities in the United States!” mentioned once so far only in an early Democratic debate.

Did anyone else hear that?

What these aspirations have in common is that either would be “new”, coming from them.

A politics of limited options leaves Black America (and all of the country) between the rock of Hillary “super-predator” Clinton and a hard place called Donald Trumps’ America: hostile, white-ruled, chauvinist and unreconstructed. Likely African American voters, from both parties, not just Democrats, are almost unanimous, in critical Ohio and Pennsylvania, in rejecting the message and campaign of Donald Trump. Never has a Republican nominee been so soundly rejected by a key segment of the electorate. His attempt to prosecute the undeniably devastating impact of the Clintons falls on deaf ears because he lacks all credibility.