At a rally in Akron, Ohio, this week, Trump described the lives of American minorities this way: “Poverty. Rejection. Horrible education. No housing, no homes, no ownership. Crime at levels that nobody has seen. You can go to war zones in countries that we are fighting and it’s safer than living in some of our inner cities that are run by the Democrats.”

(Because, of course, Democratic mayors are the real problem.)

Trump added: “Look, it is a disaster the way African-Americans are living, in many cases, and, in many cases the way Hispanics are living, and I say it with such a deep-felt feeling. What do you have to lose?”

That’s his deep-felt feeling? African-Americans have it so bad that they might as well vote for Trump, even if they think he’s a racist?

In a conference call on Tuesday with reporters arranged by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Representative G.K. Butterfield, Democrat of North Carolina and the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said that after a record of “insulting and ignoring our community,” Trump has decided to “finally reach out.”

But, Butterfield added, “he is not talking to us, he is talking at us.”

This is not the first time the Republicans have noticed their razor-thin support among minority voters. In March 2013, after Mitt Romney’s loss to President Obama, the Republican National Committee issued a post-mortem that talked about the need for better outreach.

But it contained no real policy prescriptions, because the Republican Party had none. What the nation got was four more years of escalating racial and social division.

I have to wonder whether Republican leaders are worried now that Trump’s attempt to pivot, at least stylistically, from the torch-bearing racism of his primary campaign will fail. Or are they afraid that his candidacy will so harm the overall Republican ticket that the party will lose the Senate and some of their House majority?