WaPo: It’s hard to imagine a much worse pitch Donald Trump could have made for the black vote

[EricMaundry]

At a rally Friday night in Dimondale, Mich., Donald Trump repeated a version of a plea to black voters that he'd offered 24 hours earlier in North Carolina.

"No group in America has been more harmed by Hillary Clinton's policies than African Americans," he said, apparently pointing to individuals in the crowd. "No group. No group. If Hillary Clinton's goal was to inflict pain to the African American community, she could not have done a better job. It is a disgrace."

"Detroit tops the list of most dangerous cities in terms of violent crime, number one," he said from a city 90 minutes away from Detroit with a population that is 93 percent white. "This is the legacy of the Democratic politicians who have run this city. This is the result of the policy agenda embraced by crooked Hillary Clinton."

(sliced)

Consider: Black Americans are not "living in poverty" as a general rule. A quarter of the black population is, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, about the same as the percentage of Hispanics. In Michigan, the figure is slightly higher. Most black Americans don't live in poverty, just as most white Americans don't.

Consider: The unemployment rate in the black community is higher than that in the white community, as it has been since the Department of Labor started keeping track. Among young blacks, though, the figure is not 59 percent — unless (as PolitiFact noted) you consider not the labor force but every young black American, including high school students. Many young black high school students are unemployed. This isn't a metric that Labor typically uses, for obvious reasons, but calculating the rates for young whites gives you about 50 percent, too.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/20/its-hard-to-imagine-a-much-worse-pitch-donald-trump-could-have-made-for-the-black-vote/

[Happyhippychick]

1. You mean insulting an entire population by calling them ignorant, poor and uneducated

is a bad strategy.

I posit this.

The fact that Donald Trump polls at 0-1% of African Americans tells me that they are far more intelligent and engaged in the political process than the average Trump voter. With far superior critical thinking skills.

[piechartking]

2. He's not pitching to black people

I think it's much sneakier than that. He's just trying to make himself look less a racist to white voters in the suburbs, who only need the flimsiest of justifications to give themselves permission to vote Republican.