COLUMN: Trump is relying on voters to ‘cleanse’ America of non-Whites.
NEW YORK: Businessman Donald Trump’s tweet today ‘They will soon be calling me MR. BREXIT!’ shouldn’t come as a surprise to voters. He’s just come out clean with his ulterior motives. With a poker game face (if such a thing is possible on twitter). So what are those motives when he calls himself ‘Mr. Brexit’? (I’ll avoid the exuberant exclamation mark for now, dumb down the exultant caps).
One: Trump is gathering his flock of trusted supporters (read white uneducated males and all whites who hate non-whites) into his abode of virtual reality, also known as computer-simulated reality – the one where you put on headsets that look like night vision goggles. He then will chant his mantra softly, to hypnotize befuddled voters, as in a communion for the dumb, ‘Vote for Donald Trump.’
Two: Trump is making a direct appeal to undecided voters to help him in his mission to cleanse America of non-White voters, heave-ho immigrants of color, including Indians, Chinese, Mexicans, et al. He’s banking on the Brexit effect, where contrary to all pre-election polls, rural voters sprang a surprise, voted Britain should leave the EU, left the cosmopolitan Londoners gobsmacked.
Trump reckons he’s the successor, the crown prince-in-waiting to that phenomenon of Brexit, which emboldened conservatives and far right groups from America to Europe.
Trump is banking heavily on his campaign of anti-immigration rhetoric to work in his favor, land him the White House. Same as the key to Britain leaving the EU. Also, Trump is silently hoping that president Barack Obama’s two successive terms apart, the so-called political phenomenon known as the ‘Bradley effect’ comes into play in the November presidential elections, to make a heady combination with the Brexit effect.
The ‘Bradley effect’, named after Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African American who lost the 1982 California governor’s race despite being ahead in voter polls going into the elections, is a theory which proposes that some voters who intend to vote for the white candidate would nonetheless tell pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for the non-white candidate.
However, even if you really despise Mrs. Hillary Clinton, the fact remains that she’s as Caucasian as Donald Trump. Not that Trump doesn’t know that. But he’s trying with a one line tweet to remind voters the ramifications of voting for her: living with more despicable immigrants of color, turning America brown and black, yellow and mixed white. Not White. No gentrification here folks, is what his chorus line is. Vote for Trump, to keep America pristine White.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Trump’s revealing one-liner of a tweet comes on a day when a new poll shows him lagging behind further, with voters slowly getting disenchanted with his constant barrage of divisive language and loads of insult, his relish in making more people feel sour towards him in a day’s time than a normal human being would make in a lifetime.
A new Pew Research national poll has Clinton leading Trump by four points, 41-37, in a four-way race for president. Polling averages have the race going Clinton’s way by 43-37 (RCP) and 43-36 (HuffPost pollster), according to the Guardian. Notably, women in the poll support Clinton over Trump 49-30 and black voters support her over him 85-2. Hispanic respondents supported Clinton over Trump 50-26.
Also, worryingly for Trump, The New York Times reported today that support among white men, the linchpin of Trump’s presidential campaign, is showing surprising signs of weakness that could “foreclose his only remaining path to victory in November”.
The Times noted: “If not reversed, the trend could materialize into one of the most unanticipated developments of the 2016 presidential campaign: That Hillary Clinton, the first woman at the head of a major party ticket and a divisive figure unpopular with many men, ends up narrowing the gender gap that has been a constant of American presidential elections for decades.”
According to the Times report, surveys nationwide indicated Trump was even with or below where Mitt Romney, the Republican Party nominee four years ago, was with white men when he won that demographic by an overwhelming 27 percentage points.
Two national polls conducted this month have Clinton catching up to Trump among men over all, the Times reported. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows Clinton with 43 percent support among men to his 42 percent. A Bloomberg Politics survey put Trump with a low-single-digit lead among men.
So for Trump, ‘Mr. BREXIT’ might end up after election day in November as “Mr. EXIT!’
(Sujeet Rajan is Editor-in-Chief, The American Bazaar. Follow him @SujeetRajan1)