America At A Political Crossroads

By Askia Muhammad -Senior Editor- | Last updated: May 11, 2016 - 10:01:10 AM

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Photo: MGN Online

WASHINGTON— The unthinkable. Eleven months ago when he announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, Donald J. Trump was the choice of just one percent of Republican voters, and the prospect of the real estate speculator-turned reality TV host actually winning the nomination was unthinkable.

But in early May, two months ahead of the 2016 GOP nominating convention in Cleveland, Mr. Trump was virtually guaranteed the nomination when the last two of what had been 16 other candidates dropped out of the race, leaving him standing alone.

On the same day Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz suspended their campaigns, the Republican Party leadership hemorrhaged. It was May 4, the day after a decisive Trump victory in the Indiana primary:

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who will chair the nominating convention, and who was the GOP 2012 vice presidential nominee said he was “not ready” to endorse Mr. Trump; former presidents George H.W. Bush (Bush 41) and George W. Bush (Bush 43) both declined to endorse Mr. Trump and announced they would not attend the convention; the Party’s 2012 and 2008 presidential nominees—former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)—also announced they would not attend the convention.

Like the elected Republican establishment occupying the top elected positions, the conservative intellectual establishment has also condemned Mr. Trump, but individual voters within the party in every region of the country are the ones who are putting the Trump campaign over the top.

John McGraw, (inset), of Linden, N.C. assaulted Rakeem Jones, who had been protesting at a Trump rally. Jones was leaving when videos show McGraw punching him. Twitter posts (right) show the racial divide over Donald Trump and the assault. Photo: Youtube

It appears that the racism and xenophobia that is so blatant in the Donald Trump candidacy are the most prominent features of Mr. Trump’s appeal, especially to the “angry White male” voters who make up an inordinate proportion of the GOP electoral base. The Trump campaign has awakened them to recognize their betrayal by their party leaders.

“The Republican elite have received the votes of people they have spent the past 30 or 40 years—ever since Reagan—screwing,” political scientist and statistician Dr. David Bositis told The Final Call, “and those people now are turning against the Republican elite. These are people who are against free trade. They don’t want any changes in terms of Medicare or Social Security. They are against any social liberal stuff like gay rights.”

For “these people this year, there finally is a Republican candidate who is appealing to the people who gave their votes to Republicans like Mr. Reagan,” he continued. “Finally there was a candidate who said he wasn’t going to play the traditional Republican game and it drove the traditional Republicans absolutely crazy.”

Although the Trump campaign has attracted support from self-identified racists and White supremacists—even from the Ku Klux Klan—some of his White voters are voting for Mr. Trump because of what they perceive as their financial interests, according to Dr. Bositis.

“Republican voters are finally, finally acting rationally. Because they’ve been voting for these other people where, once they’re elected—the Bushes, Reagan—they send their jobs overseas. They want to cut their Social Security benefits. They want to cut their Medicare benefits. They want more immigrants in the country, because the more immigrants in the country, the lower wages will be.

“These people voted for them for 36 years. Finally they’re waking up. The problem is they’re waking up too late,” Dr. Bositis said. “They should have done that when Ronald Reagan ran against Jimmy Carter,” in 1980.

The Republican primary contests brought out some of the ugliest rhetoric to be heard in a presidential campaign since pre-Civil War elections, and although pundits have predicted that neither the accusations against him, nor his own bellicose rhetoric have harmed Mr. Trump’s image among GOP voters.

“For the Republican nomination the only thing that matters was immigration and trade deals,” said Dr. Bositis, “and the Republican elite are hot for immigration and hot for trade deals. The (voters) don’t care that Donald Trump is what they used to say: ‘a lady’s man.’ It doesn’t matter because Donald Trump is saying, ‘No more trade deals. I’m going to protect Social Security and Medicare. Hey I’m with you.’ Donald Trump could have the morals of a gigolo, and they wouldn’t care.”

“This has become the election of contradiction and confusion,” Dr. Wilmer Leon, a political scientist, who hosts “Inside the Issues” on Sirius-XM Satellite Radio told The Final Call, “because both parties are about to have as their standard bearers, candidates with unfavorable ratings greater than their favorable ratings.

“The country is definitely more interested in voting its bigotry, its hatred and its xenophobia, than its pocketbook. Because Trump wants to attack Hillary on trade and her supporting NAFTA, when his suits and ties and things are made in China. The country seems to think that Trump will do a better job managing the economy, and the guy has gone bankrupt four times. He can’t manage his checkbook, but somehow he’s going to be able to balance the budget.

“I find it very interesting that the things that his supporters are articulating about why he’s so clever and he’s so different; when you look at the reality, the reality doesn’t support the narrative. They’re so stuck-on-stupid, it’s a matter of, ‘Don’t confuse me with the facts.’

“He’s going to chastise Hillary based on Bill’s infidelities, and he’s on his fourth marriage; and each of his previous wives, he cheated on them with the current wife, but he’s still a good Protestant. He’s the great Christian who cheats on his wives. There are so many inconsistencies and so much hypocrisy.”

Those hypocrisies and contradictions may lead the campaign to the “low road,” rather than a principled debate over issues and policies. “I’m really concerned because Mr. Trump has hit on some very negative things with Mrs. Clinton and her husband. And I think it’s dangerous for the future of politics and for the future of America when we become uncivil in our discourse,” the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan told Final Call Editor Richard Muhammad earlier this year.

“In this dialogue between Mr. Trump as the potential standard bearer of the Republican Party and Mrs. Clinton who has brought her husband beside her in her battle to become the nominee of the Democratic Party, if they start down this road of bringing up negative things about Bill Clinton and they bring up whatever they can discover about Mr. Trump, this political campaign will degenerate into something like two children in a crib.

“Two children in a crib and one child reaches into his diaper and picks up some fecal matter and rubs it in the face of the other one, but the other one’s diaper is hanging lower and he reaches in and gets something and puts it in the face of the other.

“As children you might look at it and laugh and say, oh, that’s funny; but when two adults who are leading parties in the most powerful nation on earth degenerate the dialogue into that kind of personal thing where we knock out each other with the bad of who we are,” Minister Farrakhan continued.

“Whoever will be president, if they wish to save America from the Wrath of God and the course that America is on, which will bring about America’s destruction, they must consider justice for the Black and the Red and the Brown.

“If they do not consider that by separating the Black man and woman and allowing us to go free to build a nation of our own, this and this alone will turn away the wrath of God, will lessen the storms, and lessen the increased Judgment of God using the forces of nature. No candidate at present is thinking of justice for the Black and the Red and the Brown in this manner. And none of them are showing they will accept to let us go to save America from the Wrath of God. So Black and White have to know America now is in the crosshairs of God Himself, the Great Mahdi,” the Muslim leader said.

On paper, all the metrics for predicting the outcome spell defeat for Mr. Trump—just as they did in the primary season when all the expert analysts said Mr. Trump had no chance to win the nomination.

The Cook Political Report, for example has analyzed the Electoral College map of the states looking at the November election. If Mrs. Clinton can manage to win the states that have reliably voted for the Democratic candidate in the last several elections—California, Oregon, Illinois, New York, and Pennsylvania among them—she will have all but a handful of the 270 electoral votes needed for victory.

With the ascension of Mr. Trump, coming out of the bruising campaign, and in light of the organized “never Trump” movements the Cook team has moved some states which might have been considered Republican strongholds into the “at play” column, and other states which were considered “at play” into the category “leaning” Democratic.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who will chair the nominating convention, and who was the GOP 2012 vice presidential nominee said he was “not ready” to endorse Mr. Trump Photo: MGN Online

“With these changes, 190 Electoral Votes are in the Solid Democratic column, 27 are in Likely Democratic and another 87 are in Lean Democratic - enough for a majority,” the Cook Political Report team wrote.

Mr. Trump’s demographic problems coupled with Mrs. Clinton’s expanding map could also give Democratic candidates farther down the ballot—senate and congressional candidates, even state legislative races—a leg up against the Republicans.

In states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Colorado, Florida and Arizona where there are competitive Senate races, the Clinton campaign could be a major support system for Democratic hopefuls.

While several prominent Republicans have endorsed Mr. Trump, and several more have pledged to “support the party’s nominee,” many others are emphatic in their opposition. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, and Senators Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Jeff Flake (Ariz.) Are among those elected officials who say they will not vote for Mr. Trump.

“If Trump becomes the Republican nominee my expectation is that I’ll look for some third candidate— a conservative option, a Constitutionalist,” said Sen. Ben Sasse (Neb.). He was one of the first in the Senate to emphatically distance himself from Mr. Trump.

Part of the threat Mr. Trump poses to “the establishment” is his own financial independence. His primary campaign was mostly self-financed. He appeared to be “unbought” and “unbossed,” and was famously not “politically correct.”

“I said recently that if the American people voted for Trump, he could take them into the abyss of hell. He’s free. He’s rich. He hates political correctness and rightly so,” Minister Farrakhan said in an interview with Internet personality Alex Jones, “but he said some things that I would hope, that he would get around him persons who could help him.”

“I wrote an article recently titled: ‘Trump: the Republican Frankenstein,’ because all that he has done is play to the narrative that the Republican Party has been creating over the last 10- 15 years,” said Dr. Leon. “That’s why you have, particularly a lot of blue-collar White people saying, ‘He’s saying exactly how I feel. He’s saying the things I’ve wanted the others to say, but they’ve just been too afraid to say it…” what Dr. (the late Ron) Walters called the ‘Politics of resentment.’”

“On (one) occasion, I said I liked what I am looking at,” Min. Farrakhan told Richard B. Muhammad, “because I felt he had a strength required of anyone who wished to save America, or move away the Wrath of Allah (God) plaguing not only America but the world with the forces of nature.

“I wanted to make it very clear: Not one of these candidates could I endorse knowing the history of National Elections and the promises that are made to our people that never get fulfilled,” Minister Farrakhan said.

“I want our people to beware that no matter how good the promise is—it is not to be carried out. The only thing I say again that will make America safe is to: Let the Black man and woman go into a state or territory of our own, and help us in that territory for the next 20 to 25 years until we are able to go for self. This will solve the problem between Black and White. And Allah (God) promises that America will get an extension of time and the Wrath of God will be turned aside from this nation.

“Here’s what I see: In this election so far, none of these candidates have spoken of the plight of Black people and the indigenous people of America and this hemisphere. It’s like we don’t exist, but I’m going to put this out and I want it amplified: The Wrath of God that has entered America not just because of what America has done to others, which is much,” Minister Farrakhan continued.

“It’s what America has done to Black people and to the Native People and God has chosen us out of the furnace of affliction to be His people and if we are not considered, none of them can save America from the Wrath of God.”

The Final Call