Rob Horowitz: Trump Goes Back to the Racial Well

Rob Horowitz: Trump Goes Back to the Racial Well

The juxtaposition of the last hold-out, Mississippi adopting a law to remove the stars and bars, the Confederate battle emblem, from its state flag at the same time the president of the United States is engaging in a full-fledged flirtation with the “Lost Cause” tells us just how far Donald Trump is willing to go in his flailing attempt to re-energize his base and reel back in older white voters by returning to his political comfort zone of promoting racial division and making racially divisive appeals.

The beating heart of the Old South--where Emmett Till was lynched, Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman were murdered, that proudly sent to the US Senate the unrepentant racists and segregationists, Bilbo, Eastland, and Stennis, to repeatedly filibuster against civil rights legislation- -has finally recognized in the wake of George Floyd, that now is the time to sever its symbolic link with the Confederacy. Yet, President Trump is using this same moment of potential racial reconciliation, healing, and progress to threaten to veto a defense appropriations bill, if it includes an amendment to remove the names of Confederate generals from forts.

In the last week or so alone, along with his championing of Confederate monuments, President Trump has weighed in against an Obama era regulation designed to better bring about the elusive goals of the Fair Housing Act in suburban areas, falsely tweeting that it is having a “devastating impact on these once-thriving suburban areas,” even though it has never been implemented, called the painting of the words Black Lives Matter “a symbol of hate” and referred to the coronavirus as the “Kung flu.”  Over the 4th of July weekend, he gave two highly divisive,  us versus them, speeches, not once mentioning George Floyd or police reform and falsely depicting America as overrun by violence and looting, when the overwhelming majority of the protests were and continue to be peaceful and the incidents of violence, which are certainly to be deplored, are by and large receding.

GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST

The politics of racial division and resentment are well-trod ground for President Trump. He was an unapologetic birther until he reluctantly and grudgingly conceded President Obama was born in this county in the fall of 2016.  He launched a presidential trial balloon in 2011 and continued to build up his political brand over the next few years by falsely accusing President Obama, our first African-American president, of not being born in this country, along with questioning his academic credentials.  Trump claimed that he had sent a team of investigators to Hawaii to uncover the real story about the birth records. “They cannot believe what they are finding,” Mr. Trump told ABC’s The View in 2011. Of course, if he actually sent anybody, which is a highly debatable proposition, they never found anything, because there was nothing to find.

His climb to the Republican nomination in 2016 in a crowded field was propelled in part by his calling for a ban on all Muslims coming to the United States and his broad-brush depiction of Latino immigrants as murderers and rapists.

In this case, however, the president is misreading the public mood.  As Democratic pollster Peter Hart told the Lost Angeles Times, “What voters are looking for is a way to get balance and peace back in the nation and in the White House.  Everything he does is confrontation.”

More to the point, a substantial majority of Americans now support the Black Lives Matter movement.  And only a little more than 1-in-3 registered voters have confidence in President Trump to effectively handle race relations, according to a recent Pew Research Poll.  In an election where the president not only needs to win back some voters that are drifting away, but also must expand beyond his base, serving up more racial division is not a recipe for success.

America is ready for a president that doesn’t view racial divisions as something to exploit.  Today, Americans want a president who in the spirit of Lincoln will “bind up the nation’s wounds.”--a president who will straightforwardly work to realize the promise of America, a nation founded on an idea--not on the crabbed blood and soil vision so often proclaimed by the incumbent. 

The American ideal--one that we continue to progress towards, but of which we still fall short-- is spelled out  in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  

The overwhelming majority of Americans embrace that vision, understand we have yet to fully realize it, and want to continue to strive for a “more perfect union.”  That bodes well for our nation; but not for President Trump’s political future.

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits, businesses, and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.