A significant number of African-Americans in New York are cautiously supporting President-elect Donald Trump, according to a writer in the Wall Street Journal.
The article by Jason Riley illustrates some of the reasons Trump won far more support from African-Americans on Nov. 8 than did the 2012 candidate, Gov. Mitt Romney. According to the flawed exit polls, he was supported by one-in-sex African-American men nationwide.
This may come as a shock to the political left, but not everyone who opposed Donald Trump is as angry or despondent as the demonstrators who grabbed headlines nationwide over the past week or the pundits who intellectualized the Democratic hissy fit.
On Monday I took a stroll around New York City’s Harlem neighborhood …“Hillary wasn’t strong enough. She didn’t fight enough,” said a gentleman leaving a drugstore, who introduced himself as Pace. “People saw her as weak and thought she’d be weak in the White House.” He also faulted Mrs. Clinton’s message. “She was talking about what she did in other countries as secretary of state. I can understand the situation around the world, but we live here.” Mr. Trump, in contrast, “was talking about the people who live here—the poor, the veterans.”…
Derrick, an off-duty police officer, told me that he considers Mr. Trump a con artist who tricked people into voting for him and won’t come through, especially on his promise to bring back manufacturing jobs. “But I’ll give him this,” he said. “She was not talking about securing this country, and that’s what he was talking about. People are watching people get blown up by these terrorists, and they’re scared, and she was talking about an open border. She didn’t emphasize scrutinizing the people who are coming in, and he did.”
On Nov. 8, Trump got perhaps 10 percent of the African-American vote. Many fewer African-Americans turned out to vote against him than voted against Romney in 2012.
If Trump can follow through on his 2016 campaign promises — such as controlling the border, curbing drugs, reducing crime — any subsequent shift in African-American voting would have a huge impact on American politics. For example, if Trump bumps his African-American support up to just 20 percent, he gains an extra three percentage points over any Democratic candidate.
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