The 2020 campaign isn’t pausing for us to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, so President Trump’s campaign would do well now to drive a plow through the wall of support his likely opponent needs most— black voters.
It’s taken for granted that black voters are an unshakable concrete foundation for Joe Biden, but, as fate would have it, the pandemic has elevated the plight they face, and Trump is perfectly positioned to address it in a way that would win many of them over.
Biden, perpetually locked in his basement wearing a suit, can’t do anything to make a difference in the lives of black people whose lives have been disproportionately devastated by the coronavirus. Trump, in the White House and with every resource at his disposal, can!
The New York Times on Tuesday reported that the Trump campaigns current black voter outreach (“Black Voices for Trump”) has “run into one of the grimmest realities of the coronavirus: It is killing African-Americans at disproportionately high rates, and depriving them of jobs in high numbers as well.”
There is only so much the government can do in the immediacy as it relates to limiting the spread of the virus and death among blacks, but that we know they’re the ones bearing the brunt of the COVID-19 disease means they’re the ones, particularly in densely populated areas, who need an outsized proportion of help.
Rather than blanketing the country from shore to shore with monetary relief and testing capacity that the vast majority of it doesn’t need, those resources could go to communities with high poverty rates, which is where minorities tend to condense. The administration could do it by asking that Congress pass block grants for nonprofit groups that serve these areas, with money going to food banks, rent relief, more testing capability, or other areas that can reduce the health and economic consequences of the pandemic.
It doesn’t have to be done that way, but it’s an idea, and Biden hasn’t shown that he has any.
Would any such thing win Trump a majority of the black vote? Almost certainly not. Would it rob Biden and the media of the opportunity of calling Trump a racist who stood by as black bodies ravaged by the virus stacked up in morgues across the United States? Yes, and that in turn, it could very well shave off enthusiasm for Biden among black voters, which, as Hillary Clinton knows, would be catastrophic to his campaign.
Biden can’t do anything right now for the very people he’s going to count on to win the election. Trump can.
