OPINION:
Democrats, ten of ’em, took to the debate stage for their third debate on Thursday to offer up the best and the brightest and the most of their mostest means of beating Donald Trump for the White House, 2020 — and they came up with this: The president’s a racist.
The president’s a gun-loving, immigrant-hating racist whose gun-loving, immigrant-hating racism has led to mass shootings and killings.
Really?!
Let the congratulatory parties for Trump’s reelection begin now.
Democrats, short on policies and long, very long, on socialist, authoritarian, all-hail-the-low-information-voter soundbites, ought to compose their concession speeches now.
Here’s a sampling of what the best of the Democratic Party brings.
“We know Donald Trump’s a racist, but there’s no red badge of courage for calling him that,” Sen. Cory Booker said.
And from Mayor Pete Buttigieg, tossed a softball about Trump’s wall-building project — specifically, if it were racist: “Anyone who supports this is supporting racism. The only people who actually buy into this president’s hateful rhetoric around immigrants are people who don’t know any,” he said.
And this, from Sen. Kamala Harris, on recent mass shootings in America: “Obviously, [Trump] didn’t pull the trigger, but he certainly tweeted the ammunition,” she said.
Her point? That Trump’s racist, and it’s his racist views that have stoked racial tensions — which in turn have brought about racially-based mass shootings.
As attacks on the president go, these aren’t exactly stealth.
Julian Castro, for example, bought advertising time in mid-August in which he bluntly said: “President Trump, you referred to countries as sh—holes. You urged American congresswomen to ’go back to where they came from.’ You called immigrants rapists. As we saw in El Paso, Americans were killed because you stoked the fire of racists. Innocent people were shot down because they looked different from you. Because they looked like me. Because they looked like my family. Words have consequences.”
Castro made the same point from the ABC News debate stage.
“Donald Trump,” he said then, “has a dark heart when it comes to immigrants.”
But here’s the thing. If Democrats are in it to win it — if Democrats truly want to have a chance at taking back the White House in 2020 — they have to focus on something that’s bigger than name-calling. Particularly when the name-calling is pulled from thin air, absent factual basis.
“Black unemployment rate falls to a record low,” CNN wrote, just a week before the debate.
“Over the weekend, the unemployment rate amongst African Americans hit a record low … to 5.5%, which is the lowest rate recorded since the Labor Department began tracking the progress back in the 1970s,” Black Enterprise reported, a few days ago.
“Women of color are surging into the U.S. workforce,” The Washington Post just reported.
“Minorities ages 25 to 54 make up most new hires in workforce,” CNBC just wrote.
And back in July, The New York Times reported this: “Hispanic women have emerged as the biggest job market winners in an economy that has now grown for 121 straight months.”
All that would seem to put a dent in the Democrats’ ongoing accusations of racism against this president — yes? Or, another way to ask: Would a true-blue racist pol actually press policies that help minorities? Logic, people. Think about it.
All that would also seem to explain just why Democrats are so reluctant to go after this president on policy. They can’t. They can’t win on that. This White House, by even some of the Trump-hating media members’ own admissions, has overseen a massive surge in economic good times.
A massive surge that has benefitted the very voters Democrats count as their bread and butter — blacks, Hispanics, women.
So what’s a poor Democrat to do? Cry racism, cry foul, and accuse this president of the most heinous of crimes, including inciting the murders of innocent American citizens.
The extreme rhetoric may make for good television news drama. But in the end, the left’s cries are based on lies, and that certainly won’t win Democrats the White House.
In the end, Trump’s reelection team has little to fear.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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