Donald Trump wants to use Detroit, black voters

You couldn’t blame black voters for feeling used in the world of presidential politics.

Most of the time we’re the targets of pander, or the victims of scapegoating.

Candidates say enough to placate African Americans without adhering specific policy imperatives to big promises. Or we’re invoked in ways that might scare white voters into casting ballots for or against a candidate. (Think Willie Horton in 1988.)

Almost never does a candidate, in a general election, speak to African Americans in a sincere way about the core issues that afflict them — underemployment, lousy educational opportunities or crime. They definitely don’t address poverty, racism and the confluence of the two that swirls around the urban centers where most blacks live, or call for the long-term, high-investment policies that might address those issues.

Now comes Donald Trump, marching into Detroit on Labor Day weekend, ostensibly to repair his relationship with black voters. He’ll tour the city with Ben Carson, an African-American native of the city and former GOP rival. He’ll meet with a black pastor, if not his congregation.

This is a third type of political folly: the proxy.

Trump has already been pummeled for his speeches to white voters about black people and their issues — a subtle form of the scapegoating that Republicans have turned to in the past.

But even in coming to Detroit, he’s not going to address black voters or deal with our issues. He has no interest in that — as his rhetoric and actions have shown.

►Related: Detroit pastor on Donald Trump visit: 'I owe this to my viewers'
►Related: Detroit church supplies Trump with list of questions

Instead, he's aiming to use his appearance in a black city, with black people, to boost his stock among white middle-class voters, a swelling number of whom also believe he’s a racist, and whose votes he is more likely to recapture with a softening of that image.

Shane Goldmacher, a political reporter with Politico, explained last week on Detroit Today, the radio show I host on the local NPR affiliate, WDET 101.9 FM.

Trump Continues Effort To Win Black Votes Ahead Of Detroit Visit

“He can’t win the general election with the share of white, middle-class voters who think he’s a racist,” Goldmacher said. So he’ll come to Detroit, be seen with black people — a popular and likable former GOP rival and a pastor.

And he’ll hope that it's just enough to satisfy some white voters' concerns that he's a bigot. Black voters don't really figure into the equation — because he has so alienated them so far.

The numbers bear this out. A recent Quinnipiac poll  found nearly two-thirds of likely voters, 59%, say bigotry is at the core of Trump’s message — a percentage far too high for him to win in November.  Meanwhile, Trump’s support among African Americans is at historic lows — 2% nationwide, and zero in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to a July NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll.

► Related: For Trump, wooing Detroit may be Mission Impossible

Trump doesn’t have a chance with blacks because of his policy shortcomings and the racist appeals he has already made to black voters. He’s not going to adopt a slate of policies that would encourage investment in the things that would ease suffering in places like Detroit; that would lose him too many white voters.

But for white voters who are concerned that he’s a racist, there may be a simpler way to back them down. Coming to Detroit’s a gesture of outreach. Touring the city with Carson and meeting with a pastor are symbols — empty, but visible — of connection with the black community.

It could be good cover for some voters: “He went to Detroit. He met with black people. He’s not a bigot.”

Of course, this is beyond cynical strategy — not just in terms of black people, but also whites.

Think of the heated rhetoric that Trump has pumped out consistently since deciding to run, the courting of the politics of “otherness” he has indulged.

And just a few weeks ago, Trump was lecturing black people about supporting him because our lives were so bad. Now he wants to be seen holding hands and commiserating in the largest majority African-American city in the country.

But nearly every policy he embraces would be like hell on black people.

His anti-immigrant tirades won’t stop the otherness with just Muslims or Mexicans. His call for renewed “law and order” coincided with high-profile violence against police, but also with incidents in which black men were gunned down for trivial reasons. We haven’t heard a peep from Trump about increasing the currency for black life in America; at his convention, he invited former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani on stage to assail the Black Lives Matter movement.

And even Trump’s hyper-protectionist trade policy would take a huge toll on American manufacturing, which is still the core of economic activity in the urban centers where most blacks live.

And all this is a huge, missed opportunity.

Not everything Trump says about African Americans is untrue. We do face crises of economics, of culture, of authoritarian oppression. And the Democratic Party, even with a black president over the last eight years, has been unable to deliver what it promises in the way of change.

Republican policy, unfortunately, has been to block Democratic efforts, and that’s some of the problem. The GOP has also put all its faith in the righteousness of markets, which aren't designed to counter the inequalities that are baked into so much of the American system.

Trump, were he sincere, could speak to these issues. He has said from the start he’s a maverick. This was a chance to prove it, with a genuine approach to the problems that black Americans face.

We haven’t seen it so far. I don’t expect to see it Saturday, when Trump arrives in Detroit.