Kanye
West at an event in Los Angeles, California. (Getty Images)
A fascinating development has passed relatively under the
radar.
A recent Rasmussen Poll showed that Trump’s approval
rating among black voters is 35%.
This time last year, his approval rating among black
voters was 23%.
No matter how you feel about polls, twelve points in one
year is significant.
This is especially true (and surprising) considering the
constant drum beat from the press that Trump is a racist somewhere south of Democrat
George Wallace.
Somebody isn't buying it -- and it's not just Kanye West.
If this number grows just a little bit, the Democratic Party is in deep
trouble.
The party relies for its electoral power on
overwhelming support from African-Americans, a dependency in itself inherently
racist and suffused with reactionary identity politics.
Blacks are starting to #WalkAway from the
Democratic Party. See the video at this
link as an example:
"Why I voted Trump after 12 years of not
voting" #WalkAway
Without the black vote, the Dems might as well rename
themselves the Celluloid Party and run Hollywood agents for mayor of Malibu. It'll
be their best chance for success.
No wonder Maxine Waters hates Trump so much and no wonder
Snoop Dogg has his nose so far out of
joint he's attacked Kanye with that hoary cliché "Uncle Tom."
C'mon, Snoop, you can do better than that. You're a
creative artist.
Actually, it's a dead giveaway.
Today's Democrats are the natural
heirs of Democrat George Wallace: "Segregation now!
Segregation forever!" Only their brand of segregation means
segregated dorms at Harvard and a blacks-only graduation ceremony.
Talk about reactionary.
Is that what MLK wanted?
Gimme a break.
Who am I to say that as a white man, you might ask?
Well, nobody, but I did live in a rooming
house owned by MLK's cousin in Sumter, South Carolina, in 1966, working for, of
course, integration as a northern agitator civil rights kid, 22 years
old.
What happened to the civil rights movement after that
became increasingly depressing, increasingly exploitative, and increasingly
mired in victimology over the years.
In short what happens to so many idealistic movements,
for example Carlyle's French Revolution.
Bravo, Kanye, for helping to right the ship.
Bravo, too, all those truly brilliant black conservatives
from Thomas Sowell to Shelby Steele and my friend Larry Elder.
You are true American heroes and the true heirs of Dr.
King. You are the best, bar none, of our country.
And bravo, Donald Trump, as well.
African-Americans have their lowest unemployment figures in decades.
The welfare rolls are down, incomes are up, etc., etc. The times they
really are a-changing -- and African-Americans, not surprisingly, get it.
Hence the rise to 35%.
Integration, the original goal of the civil rights
movement when I was in it, is beginning to eke out a small comeback.
Segregation, which has held sway for some
time, reaching its apotheosis under former attorney general (and wannabe
presidential candidate) Eric Holder, is finally on
the wane.
The rise of Kanye, and a new generation of
African-Americans who aren't buying the tired Waters message, is one of the
most heartening developments in our country in years.
But since the Kavanaugh hearing is still on everybody's
mind right now, I’ll hazard a guess of what at least some black people might have
thought while watching that charade.
African-Americans are not strangers to false accusations.
No more horrific case exists in our history than the
Scottsboro Boys. In 1931, these nine African American teenagers were falsely accused of raping two white women
in Alabama.
And then there was 14-year old Emmett
Till, lynched in Mississippi 1955 for looking askance at a white woman in
her family's store.
Obviously there are other cases, but equally
obvious is that many black people might view Dr. Ford's accusations differently
than whites.
It will be interesting to see where the black
vote will be in 2020.
Roger
L. Simon - co-founder and CEO Emeritus of PJ Media - is a novelist and an
Academy Award-nominated screenwriter.
_______________________
RELATED STORY
By Glenn Reynolds | Instapundit
Bishop Jethro James, leader of an 86-member black
pastors’ association, is upset the Menendez camp seems to assume they have the
black vote wrapped up.
“The Democrats have been taking the African-American vote
for granted for too long,” he said in his office at Paradise Baptist Church in
Newark. “It’s an insult. Some folks in the two-party system think this is like
a political plantation: ‘You do what we say.’ We are long past that.”
The source of James’ ire was a call he received from T.
Missy Balmir, a senior adviser for Menendez and veteran player in Democratic
state politics. The call came after James hosted Hugin in his 400-member church
a few weeks ago.
“They basically said, ‘Why did you invite him to your
church? Why did you have a Republican in?’” James recalled.
The pastor didn’t appreciate this communication from Team
Menendez, especially since the incumbent has not exactly been a fixture in Rev.
James’ community. According to the Star-Ledger report:
“You know how many times I invited Bob Menendez to my
church?” James said. “You know how many times he’s come? None. But at election
time, they want our endorsement.”
… And, as it turned out, James seemed to like a lot of
what Hugin — the former chairman and CEO of Celgene Corp., a New Jersey biotech
company specializing in drugs for cancer and chronic disease — had to say.
“We (African-Americans) are 40 percent more likely to get
cancer,” James said.
“I’d say about 40 percent of the women in my congregation
have had breast cancer. I myself had prostate cancer. Bob Hugin’s company made
the drugs that saved my life.”
The issue of health care makes for a rather stark
contrast between Messrs. Hugin and Menendez.
While Mr. Hugin was working in
biotechnology, Mr. Menendez was famously seeking to help Medicare fraudster
Salomon Melgen capture more funding from federal health programs.
Weird how all the #MeToo stuff has given Menendez a pass,
though.
