Black apathy key to Trump's poll success
This is from the Telegraph in Calcutta, India. The writer has a very startling personal impression of Washington, DC that I felt compelled to share it. Pardon the quoted length, he rambled some but made some provocative points through out.
"A few metro rides through downtown Washington and the suburbs of America's national capital are enough to grasp why Donald Trump, the unlikeliest of presidential candidates, now stands a heartbeat away from occupying the White House.
In all the years when suburban Washington was my home and metro rides were my preferred means of commute, I have not seen beggars in the metro system like, say, in Mumbai's local trains. At the height of winters, homeless African Americans buy a metro ticket and spend the entire day on heated trains to shelter themselves from sleet and icy winds. But beggars, no!
These days, however, beggars on the capital's metro trains are not an uncommon sight. Among these beggars are a sprinkling of deprived white Americans with their arms outstretched for any handouts.
"When I first arrived in Washington to make it my home, U Street was considered dangerous although it was once the fountainhead of America's black culture: the jazz legend Duke Ellington was born there. In those years, any place lower than 14th Street even in the well-to-do north west of Washington was considered unsafe.
Today, all these areas of the city have been gentrified. U Street will soon be home to the Indian embassy's swanky new cultural centre being built to reflect the present heady heights of Indo-US friendship, often described as a "natural alliance". U Street no longer sleeps, at any rate, on weekends.
Yesterday I took a walk along 14th Street towards U Street and beyond. Many black residents have left because they can no longer afford to live there. Farther in the city's southeast and northeast, which were once entirely black, homes are now increasingly owned by white people.
African Americans who made way for gentrification have not just moved out of the city, they have gone to towns in neighbouring Maryland state, as far away as Hancock near the border with Pennsylvania or Hagerstown in the state's far away Washington county.
If the turnout of black voters next Tuesday is low, as expected, it may well propel Republican Trump into the White House. An enthusiasm deficit for Democrat Hillary Clinton would be a reflection of how black Americans are disappointed by one of their own: America's first black President Barack Obama.
What startled me was the profusion of beggars along 14th Street. Washington has always had a smattering of beggars, almost entirely African Americans. They usually sat outside metro stations. They were permanently there and they had regular benefactors.
Both sides engaged in banter and these beggars never sent anyone into bouts of depression the way child beggars or maimed men and women at traffic stops in New Delhi do.
Not any more. There is hopelessness writ large on faces of today's beggars in the capital of the most powerful nation on earth. Such hopelessness may turn into apathy on voting day and help Trump. These black men and women wallowing in misery have no cellphones and are not covered by opinion polls."
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1161106/jsp/foreign/story_117711.jsp#.WB56PBSTXoA
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Woah. I take issue with this comment:
"An enthusiasm deficit for Democrat Hillary Clinton would be a reflection of how black Americans are disappointed by one of their own: America's first black President Barack Obama."
No, I disagree. How could there not be a drop in enthusiasm for African-Americans after voting in two elections for the first black President? Sorry, but any drop in turnout is very natural now that the President Obama is not on the ballot -- its not a negative reflection on him or Hillary.
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