The brilliance of going to rural white areas to get the black vote

Dimondale, Michigan, sounds a lot like Poca, West Virginia. Population 1,243 (Poca 974), it is near a state capital, and 93% white. It is an odd place to campaign for president, as Democrats have carried Michigan the last six times. It is an odd place to make a pitch to black voters. But as General Teddy Roosevelt Jr. said on D-Day when they landed on the first wave a little off course, "We’ll start the war from right here!"

And so on Friday, Trump made his pitch from Dimondale:

Tonight, I am asking for the vote of every African-American citizen in this country who wants a better future.

The inner cities of our country have been run by the Democratic Party for 50 years. Their policies have produced only poverty, joblessness, failing schools, and broken homes.

It is time to hold Democratic Politicians accountable for what they have done to these communities. It is time to hold failed leaders accountable for their results, not just their empty words.

Look at what the Democratic Party has done to the city of Detroit.

Forty percent of Detroit’s residents live in poverty. Half of all Detroit residents do not work.

Detroit tops the list of Most Dangerous Cities in terms of violent crime.

This is the legacy of the Democrat politicians who have run this city. This is the result of the policy agenda embraced by Hillary Clinton.

The only way to change results is to change leadership. We can never fix our problems by relying on the same politicians who created our problems in the first place.

A new future requires new leadership.

Look at how much African-American communities have suffered under Democratic Control. To those hurting, I say: what do you have to lose by trying something new?

It was a good speech David Horowitz called Lincolnesque:

In the boldest imaginable way, Donald Trump is doing what Republicans have been talking about doing for a generation but have failed miserably to achieve – creating a “big tent” and opening up the party to new constituencies, in particular to minority constituencies. The fact that at the moment he is nonetheless distrusted by minorities is partly the result of his flamboyant carelessness with language during his extemporaneous riffs, but mainly because of the vicious distortions of his words and character his unscruplous Democratic enemies and their media whores. These progressives pretend to care about African Americans but are content to let generations of inner city minorities and their children live blighted lives so long as they can be bussed to the polls every November and cast the votes that keep them in power.

Trump's speech followed up on a speech about race he gave on Monday in West Bend, Wisconsin, population 31,695 --- 95 percent of whom are white. Wisconsin last went Republican in 1984. His speech followed riots in Milwaukee. Trump said:

Law and order must be restored. It must be restored for the sake of all, but most especially the sake of those living in the affected communities.

The main victims of these riots are law-abiding African-American citizens living in these neighborhoods. It is their jobs, their homes, their schools and communities which will suffer as a result.

There is no compassion in tolerating lawless conduct. Crime and violence is an attack on the poor, and will never be accepted in a Trump Administration.

The narrative that has been pushed aggressively for years now by our current Administration, and pushed by my opponent Hillary Clinton, is a false one. The problem in our poorest communities is not that there are too many police, the problem is that there are not enough police.

More law enforcement, more community engagement, more effective policing is what our country needs.

Just like Hillary Clinton is against the miners, she is against the police. You know it, and I know it.

So what gives? Why is he campaigning in Democratic strongholds, and speaking to rural white crowds about the problems inner city black people face?

First, we are still in the dawn of the general election campaign. Trump is trying to stretch and widen the battlefield by adding Michigan and Wisconsin to Hillary's list of woes.

Second, Trump is training his troops. To counter the rote trope of racism used against any Republican candidate, Trump is showing his followers how they must frame the issue as a failure of Democratic Party policy.

Third, Trump is showing black voters that he is not dropping his G's when he speaks to them. No, no, no, when he was in Dimondale, he said the same thing.

And really, how different is the pitch to whites and blacks? I mean for 14 months now, his pitch as been on every subject, "What do you have to lose by trying something new?"

Trump recognizes the race problem as no other Republican candidate has in my lifetime. Even Eisenhower needed prodding from Louis Armstrong to send the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas, to protect nine black teenagers who were integrating Central High School in 1957. Armstrong was from New Orleans and was practically raised by a Jewish family. When he finally spoke up about race, Eisenhower heard. Satchmo was not quick to complain. That should be a lesson in choosing one's battles, a lesson I have failed to learn.

But unlike previous Republican contenders, Trump has experience in dealing with black people as equals. Let the Never Trumpers laugh at the photos of Trump and Don King, Trump and Herschel Walker, and even Trump and Al Sharpton. Republicans have not had a presidential candidate as cosmopolitan as Trump. His conservatism is a little dearer because it grows out of the cracks of the sidewalks of Manhattan, and not the fertile fields of Texas.

Teddy Roosevelt Jr.'s landing on D-Day was stunning. They did not want to send him with the first wave, but he insisted. Arthritic with a heart condition, he walked with a cane at 56. But he would not be denied. They thought he would be dead before the rest of the generals arrived after the troops established a beachhead. But when they got there, he was the first to greet them and brief them on the situation on that chaotic day. His first-hand accounts as well as his command of the establishment of that beach-head were blessings.

So Trump starts the war for black votes in rural white communities, in states that are not on that vaunted Electoral Map.

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