Yes, Donald Trump has Black and Latino supporters. Democrats can learn from it

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on Nov 6, 2020

Trump fared less well in traditionally Democratic Illinois, winning only 5% of the Black vote and 23% of Latinos, according to AP’s VoteCast.

Contrast that with pivotal Florida, where south Florida’s historically conservative Cuban American community has been joined by Venezuelans and other escapees from Latin American unrest. Trump’s campaign focused on their outrage over the idea of Democratic “socialism” and, helped along by some late aid to Puerto Ricans in central Florida, apparently paid off in a state so unpredictable that a one- or-two-point swing is called a “landslide.”

In short, labels like “Black vote” and “Latino vote” can blur our vision to a world’s worth of diversity.

Biden’s campaign seemed sometimes to discover that the hard way.

Remember, for example, when he was questioned sternly by a Black student in a televised Harrisburg, Pa., town hall in October as to what he had to offer young Black voters “besides ‘you ain’t Black.’ ”

That was a reference to Biden’s breathtaking gaffe on Charlamagne Tha God’s “The Breakfast Club” program when he said in a peculiar parting shot, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black.”

Trumpers eagerly helped that unforced error to go viral, along with Biden’s earlier tough-on-crime positions, as evidence of Democrats' taking Black voters for granted.

The remark was particularly damaging in opening up a generational divide with young Black male voters, a group with which Trump in his own way had been making cultural inroads since the 1990s. After his Atlantic City casinos collapsed along with his creditworthiness on Wall Street, Trump cozied up to the prospering hip-hop community, including P Diddy and other rap stars, dozens of whom name-checked him in their lyrics as an iconic image of gaudy affluence and swagger.

Years later, we have seen this relationship revived in his dialogues with Kanye West and Ice Cube, among others who endorsed his “Platinum Plan” for Black American economic development.

Imagine how well Trump might have done as a candidate if he had started that dialogue earlier.

Labels like “Black vote” and ”Latino vote” can be helpful in understanding group dynamics, but don’t get carried away. As I’ve often said, racial-ethnic communities have a variety of people, many of whom share conservative and Republican values. Don’t shortchange people today who could provide your margin of victory tomorrow.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)