(File photo: Chris Keane/Reuters)

By courting black voters, Trump could shake up the election.

At last!

A Republican presidential nominee finally has slammed Democrats for abusing black Americans — for decades.

“I am asking for the vote of every African-American citizen struggling in our country today who wants a different future,” Trump said Tuesday night in a sobering policy address near Milwaukee. “The Democratic party has failed and betrayed the African-American community. Democratic crime policies, education policies, and economic policies have produced only more crime, more broken homes, and more poverty.”


Trump then hammered his opponent.

“Hillary Clinton–backed policies are responsible for the problems in the inner cities today, and a vote for her is a vote for another generation of poverty, high crime, and lost opportunities,” Trump declared. “We reject the bigotry of Hillary Clinton, which panders to and talks down to communities of color and sees them only as votes, not as individual human beings worthy of a better future. She doesn’t care at all about the hurting people of this country, or the suffering she has caused them.”


Trump noted who lords over most poor black neighborhoods.


“The Democratic party has run nearly every inner city in this country for 50 years, and run them into financial ruin,” Trump explained. “They’ve ruined the schools. They’ve driven out the jobs. They’ve tolerated a level of crime no American should consider acceptable.”

RELATED: Blacks Mainly Backslide under Obama

Trump cited grim statistics on urban lawlessness: Violent crime up 17 percent in America’s 50 biggest cities in 2015. Homicides have climbed 50 percent in Washington, D.C., this year. In Baltimore, murders are up 60 percent.

Nationally, President Obama’s value to blacks is almost purely symbolic. It’s quite literally two steps forward, six steps back.


‐ The unemployment rate has improved. According to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, joblessness for black Americans has slid from 12.7 percent at Obama’s first inauguration to 8.4 percent in July — down 33.9 percent.

‘The Democratic party has run nearly every inner city in this country for 50 years, and run them into financial ruin.’ — Donald Trump

‐ The unemployment rate for blacks from ages 16 to 19 declined over that interval, from 35.3 percent to 25.7 percent — down 27.2 percent.

‐ But the overall labor-force-participation rate for black Americans has slipped from 63.2 percent to 61.2 percent — down 3.2 percent.


‐ This metric also slumped for black teenagers, from 29.6 percent to 27.7 percent — down 6.4 percent.

‐ The percentage of black Americans below the poverty line has grown under Obama, according to the latest Census data, from 25.8 in 2009 to 26.2 in 2014 — up 1.6 percent.

‐ Real median income among black households during Obama’s tenure, the Census Bureau reports, slid from $35,954 to $35,398 — down 1.5 percent.

‐ The number of blacks on Food Stamps soared under Obama — from 7,393,000 in 2009 to 11,699,000 in 2014 — up 58.2 percent.

‐ Also, from Obama’s arrival through last June 30, the percentage of black Americans who own homes plunged from 46.1 to 41.7 percent, the Census reports — down 9.5 percent.

(To inspect these figures, please click here.)

#share#How would Trump lead black Americans out of this leftist morass?


“On education, it is time to have school choice, merit pay for teachers, and to end the tenure policies that hurt good teachers and reward bad teachers,” Trump said. “I am going to allow charter schools to thrive.”

As the registered property of the American Federation of Teachers, Hillary Clinton may not say those words.

“On taxes, I am going to give a massive tax cut to every worker and small business in this country, bring thousands of new companies and millions of new jobs onto our shores,” Trump stated. “I am going to reform our regulations so jobs stay in America, and new businesses come to America.”

RELATED: Yes, Republicans Can Win Black Voters

Regarding crime, Trump said, “I am going to break up the gangs, the cartels, and criminal syndicates terrorizing our neighborhoods.” He added: “To every lawbreaker hurting innocent people in this country, I say: Your free reign will soon come crashing to an end.”

Trump cited Aetna’s withdrawal from eleven of 15 states in which it now sells Obamacare plans as the latest evidence of this horrendous program’s epic failure.

Instead, Trump promised, “We are going to get rid of Obamacare — which has caused soaring double-digit premium increases – and give choice to patients and consumers.”

#related#Trump should take this message to black churches, civic groups, and business associations and respectfully ask black Americans for their votes. All else being equal, if he convinces 15 percent of them, this election becomes a squeaker. If he scores 20 percent of black ballots, Trump trumps Clinton.

Nervous whites who see Trump meet black voters would find such images a comforting contrast to charges that Trump is a racist. Some will be sufficiently reassured and support him.

And Trump’s unyielding conservative critics — including Hillary Clinton’s enablers in the Never Trump crowd — might reevaluate a GOP nominee who finally expressed some “very difficult truths,” in Trump’s words, that other Republican standard bearers understood but were not brave enough to utter.

— Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor and a contributing editor with National Review Online.


Editor’s Note: This article has been updated since its original publication.