Following the extraordinary jobs report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Friday, the president was exultant. In an impromptu Rose Garden event, President Trump said it was only a matter of time before “we will go back to having the greatest economy anywhere in the world — nothing close.… This is better than a V, this is a rocket ship!”
He then tweeted: “Oh, no, the Dems are worried again. The only one [who] can kill this comeback is Sleepy Joe Biden.”
Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic political strategist, agrees. He said on Friday, “If people think he [Trump] can’t win [in November], they are deluding themselves. He could be reelected. He lives and dies by these economic numbers.”
Opinion polls have consistently shown Trump’s performance on handling the economy winning broad approval. For instance, an Economist/YouGov poll released last week found that half of those polled approve of how he is managing the economy.
Several numbers stand out. According to Juan Williams, writing in the New York Times, 43 percent of black voters are moderates and a quarter identify themselves as conservative. As Williams put it, “These are the black people in church on Sunday. They are proud members of a sorority or fraternity.”
And, according to the latest Rasmussen poll, 41 percent of likely black voters approve of the president’s performance. As a reminder, Trump won just eight percent of the black vote in 2016.
And that 41-percent number isn’t a fluke. Back in December, Rasmussen reported that 34 percent of likely black voters approved of his performance, while Emerson College had it at 35 percent and a Marist poll showed it at 33 percent.
Trump’s numbers are being helped along by black Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. In an interview on Your World With Neil Cavuto last Tuesday, he said,
The fact that we have secured permanent funding for HBCUs [historically black colleges and universities] under President Trump is something that was surprising, I think frankly, to the HBCUs [and] the United Negro College Fund.
The president said clearly that the level of funding the last year was the highest ever. Think about the jobs created. Under this administration, we created over seven million jobs. Two-thirds of those jobs went to minorities and to women.
We had an increase in the labor force participation rate among African-Americans. Home ownership, I believe, was up by two points under this administration. Access to a quality education improved, help for sickle-cell anemia secured under this president.
So when you look at the actual accomplishments — put aside all of the vitriol, all of the rhetoric, all of the things that some may find distasteful — the actual policy positions have been incredibly concrete.
And it hasn’t hurt Trump that rapper and entrepreneur Kanye West has told blacks, “Own your power. Your power is not to just vote Democrat for the rest of our lives. That’s not the power.”
Jonathan Zogby of Zogby Analytics said that all that Trump needs, to win in November, is for between 10 and 15 percent of black voters to support him. When Zogby last looked at Trump’s support among likely black voters, he found that he would receive 12 percent.
Photo: AP Images
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
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