AL CALLOWAY SAYS

There are two things already known about African Americans and the coming election: A vast majority will vote for Hillary; Also, enthusiasm is nowhere near the Obama victories of 2008 and 2012, and that may loom as a huge problem. Hillary continues to raise and spend millions of dollars, but cannot shake off Trump who threatens to win on voter turnout.

While liberal white nationalists run Hillary’s African American “outreach” campaign that includes getting Hillary before television cameras at a handful of black churches and at NAACP, Urban League and Al Sharpton’s group conventions, the campaign lacks true nitty-gritty impact through actual “inreach.” If white folks run Hillary’s campaign offices elsewhere, as they do in Fort Lauderdale’s black community, that’s bad news circulating.

White people are trained to lump all people of African descent together. So Hillary’s liberal white nationalists didn’t think to reach black college graduates and millennials, just churches and civil rights groups. For that same reason they negated the black press as an on-going need, utilizing our historic institutions as a last minute throw-in, mainly just for show, like “I’m with you black folks.”

Meanwhile, garrulous Trump, sensing an opening, began dialog with blacks that have not forgotten and refuse to forgive Hillary and Bill Clinton for sins against black people. Most cite the Clinton crime bill and the Clinton refusal to intervene in Rwanda, East Africa to save hundreds of thousands of black lives. Others cite the Clinton Foundation’s control over some $4 billion of Haiti’s earthquake relief funds being withheld from Haitian access.

Trump’s tack to the black vote has made an already worried Clinton camp play defense, including pulling in more millions of campaign dollars for the stretch run. At the same time however, Trump is reinforcing some black stereotypes to his overwhelmingly far-right white nationalist followers. Trump talks about black crime, poverty and bad schools in terrible neighborhoods.

The largely Republican-right white nationalist Trump crowds roar approval when the Donald cites years of African American loyalty to the Democratic Party for which, he alleges, they have nothing to show for it. Trump indicts Hillary’s boast of 30 years in public service and exhorts African Americans to vote for him, stating, “you have nothing to lose.”

If Hillary Clinton becomes President, black people will be climbing over each other, like crabs in a barrel, to be invited to this, that and the other, and I’m talking about after the inauguration. Minds will be on social stuff and jobs in government and quasi-government institutions. The Clintons will be able to manipulate blacks as liberal white nationalists have always done, with the same ol’ gobble-de-gook.

After all, if there is an African American strategy for a Hillary Clinton administration, it has got to be the darkest secret in America! As I’ve previously asked in this space, “What’s the deal?” Who negotiated what, when and where? Hillary gets, perhaps, 87 to 90 percent of the African American vote and we get what, like the hole in a donut?

What’s the black strategy if Trump wins? I appreciate arguments of confidence and faith such as “that will never happen” and “I pray for Hillary to win,” but as strong as belief in hope and prayer is, there has to be a human contingency plan. Had the recalcitrant Negro so-called leaders not jumped out there and showered Hillary with praise and endorsements without permission from a single African American, we could now have a working deal.

African Americans should have deliberated with Hillary and Trump with the Obama legacy on the table for Hillary with a repositioning of the Democratic Party. After an early initial talk with Trump, African Americans would have drained every policy initiative and implementation commitment from Hillary and the Democratic Party. As it stands now, all there is from Hillary is some non-such “I will do all that I can.” That’s nothing more than meaningless dribble, folks.

For my vote, if Trump wins the first thing we need to do is rid ourselves of these backward Negro so-called leaders who are stuck on ignorant. All they do is trot out the same non- workable way of doing things that keep African Americans downtrodden.