Trump’s ‘go back’ racial strategy could boost Dems

President Donald Trump isn’t a racist. Just ask him. He’ll tell you.

“I am the least racist person there is anywhere in the world,” he told reporters at the White House.

That’s a statement that doesn’t sound like it is to be taken seriously by anyone except perhaps his mostly white and very conservative support base.

Lately, as the president might say, “a lot of people have been talking about” whether Trump is racist or just playing one on TV. Allegations about Trump’s racism go back to his early days as a rising New York real estate developer and ravenous publicity hound in the 1970s.

But his latest self-promotion as “least racist” of all of the planet’s 7.5 billion people comes after a couple of weeks of tweets and sound bites that are loaded with racist tropes and stereotypes against certain lawmakers of color.

First he called on four progressive Democratic congresswomen of color to “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places” they came from. In fact, all four lawmakers are American citizens. More recently he targeted Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., calling him a “racist” and declaring the black congressman should return to take care of his Baltimore district, which Trump described as “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”

That’s another way of saying “Go back to where you came from,” as if Cummings’ job description includes pest control.

Trump sounds a lot more agitated by Cummings’ real job as chair of the House Oversight Committee, which currently includes oversight of whether Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, illegally used private email and text message accounts for official purposes.

It is no big surprise Trump might find it easier to light emotional fires under his old supporters than to try to win new ones.

It is also apparently easier to make up black support in his head than to produce evidence to back it up. “The African American people have been calling the White House,” he said last week. “They have never been so happy about what a president has done.”

Right. Never mind that new Quinnipiac poll that asked quite simply, “Do you think President Trump is racist?” About half, 51%, of the voters surveyed said yes. The breakdown: 46% of whites taking part in the survey said yes, 55% of Hispanics and 80% of African Americans. If Trump thinks demonizing black leaders is enough, his scheme could backfire by enraging and motivating other voters of color to turn out in larger numbers against him on Election Day.

Trump might be doing Democrats a big favor by reminding them about what may be the least appreciated cause of Hillary Clinton’s electoral loss in 2016: Black voters who didn’t show up to vote.

Those stay-at-homes could have made a big difference for Clinton. President Trump won Michigan, for example, by only 10,700 votes. Similar stories of black falloff and white conservative surges unfolded in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

A New York Times analysis last year found that while 9% of Obama 2012 voters went for Trump in 2016, 7% — or more than 4 million missing voters — stayed home. So the best way for Democrats to beat Trump’s strategy may be to motivate their base to show up and vote.