One moment that I remember from the 2012 campaign, a moment of singular awkwardness in the history of presidential campaigns, was the episode of Mitt Romney’s address to the NAACP in July of election year. In his speech, which earned a largely chilly reception from the Houston audience, Romney sought to reach out to voters of color, appealing to their willingness to give him a “fair hearing”:
Romney made a direct appeal for support from black voters, who polls show overwhelmingly back the reelection of the nation’s first black president. Romney said his policies would help black families succeed in a sputtering economy, with rising federal debt and poor schools.
He also highlighted his father’s civil rights legacy as governor of Michigan and tried to build a bridge with black voters by talking about their shared faith in God and support of strong families.
“I believe that if you understood who I truly am in my heart, and if it were possible to fully communicate what I believe is in the real, enduring best interest of African American families, you would vote for me for president,” Romney said. “I want you to know that if I did not believe that my policies and my leadership would help families of color — and families of any color — more than the policies and leadership of President Obama, I wouldn’t be running for president.
There are, at the very least, several dozen things one could say about Romney’s appeal, which received dubious reviews by Kossacks at the time — for good reasons. First off, Mitt’s undeserved comparison of himself to his Republican father would be worth a rant by itself. George Romney was active during a very different moment in the history of the Republican party, one that was infinitely more moderate than the present one, given his crucial role in housing policy and the like. Mitt’s politics stand at a considerable distance from the civil rights stances of many “Rockefeller Republicans” in the 1960s.
The assertion that Mitt Romney’s policies would bring about economic improvements in African American communities must also have been a surprise to members of the NAACP, many of whom followed the news and were therefore no doubt familiar with the distinctive private equity business model of Bain Capital and its history of “creative destruction.”
Perhaps most pertinently, there was the fact that numerous observers at the time felt that Mitt’s true audience for the speech was not African Americans, but rather white GOP voters themselves: the boos from black voters, it was thought, would be played repeatedly on the cable news stations, and would help to gin up antiblack resentment among the Fox News set, and drive those voters to the polls.
But! But….. But. Before we get too hard on old Mitt, I do want to extend to him a modicum of the benefit of the doubt. Because whatever we may feel about the sincerity of Mitt’s visit, however we may feel about the potential cynicism of the effort, one thing we can’t rely deny is that Mitt actually spoke to the black membership of the NAACP, in person. He had to stand there and face the dubious looks, and have the boos wash over him.
This becomes important, because once again, the 2016 GOP presidential nominee, in a late-campaign gambit, has sought to engage in a clumsy, ham-fisted, and outrageous effort to reach voters of color. In speaking to voters of color as if addressing the downtrodden inhabitants of a sprawling shanty town, Trump engages in pernicious stereotyping, in the same moment that he telegraphs his own disengagement from the lived experience of countless African American families. In a transparent dogwhistle to less-racist white fence-sitting voters, Trump belligerently asks black voters, “what have you got to lose?”
This is all bad enough, but today, Kellyanne Conway has decided to add insult to injury. In a short piece in The Week, we learn that Conway sees a degree of bravery in Trump’s outreach. And the reason for this bravery may come as a surprise to you:
Trump campaign spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway thinks Donald Trump "deserves credit" for going where most Republicans haven't: into "communities of color." "Republican presidential nominees usually are not bold enough to go into communities of color and take the case right to them and to compete for all ears and compete for all votes. They've been afraid to do that," Conway said Friday onGood Morning America.
Yes, you read that correctly. It turns out that Trump’s campaign has been venturing “into communities of color.”
The reason this may come as a surprise to you is because, well, that’s not at all what he’s been doing.
Trump’s first little adventure in voter outreach took place in West Bend, Wisconsin, about 45 minutes outside of Milwaukee. I can’t give you the demographics of those attending Trump’s speech, but a quick glance at Census data for West Bend tells us that African Americans account for 1% of the town’s population. One subsequent Trumpian speech aimed, nominally, at black outreach took place in the town of Dimondale, Michigan, a town of 1,234 souls of whom 9 are African American. If the demographics of Trump’s most recent speeches have taken a turn, I have yet to hear about it.
None of this will come as news to you if you’ve been perusing any kind of political coverage over the past week. But I bring it up to highlight the astounding tone-deafness of the Trump campaign — even of its most savvy political operative. Here’s the thing: I don’t think she thinks she’s lying about “going into” communities of color; I think she honestly believes that shouting faintly condescending appeals to black voters over the airwaves is somehow no different from doing the work of meeting with black constituents; delivering speeches in venues and institutions with close connections to the black community; meeting with black community leaders and hearing their concerns.
So… this is where we’re at. In 2012, Mitt “checked the box” of making a perfunctory and ill-received speech in front of a key institution associated with the black electorate. In 2016, even that bare-minimum commitment to voter outreach is a bridge too far for the Trump campaign. So much so, that Conway is barely even aware of the low bar that the Trump campaign has set for her candidate.