photo by: Creators Syndicate

Keith Raffel

It’s the job of a conservative to stand before history “yelling stop,” said the late political commentator William F. Buckley. Former President Donald Trump and his supporters appear to want to go even further.

They are screaming at history to go backward in order to “make America great again.”

Two centuries ago, only white men could vote. If we went back to those days, Trump would not be trailing Harris in the polls but leading by more than 20%.

Before the Civil War, the Supreme Court held that Black people were “so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” Only with the 15th Amendment, which took effect in 1870, was the right to vote extended to people of color, at least in theory. When Jim Crow laws continued to block access to the polling booth, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. An amendment to the act in 1975 prohibited voting discrimination against non-English-speaking citizens which led to widespread voter registration among Hispanics.

Women did not obtain a constitutionally guaranteed right to vote until the 19th Amendment was passed in 1920. Only in 1943 did Congress pass a law giving Chinese immigrants access to citizenship. The door for Asian Americans was opened further by the Immigration and Nationality Acts of 1952 and 1965.

Trump’s rhetoric, past and present, does little to hide his disdain for each of these new groups that have been added to the electorate. He’s called Black Lives Matters protesters “thugs,” “terrorists” and “anarchists.” In his debate against Kamala Harris, Trump lied in accusing legal Black immigrants in Ohio of eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs. Researchers have found that white people who resent Black people are even more likely to vote for Trump than those who agree with him on economic issues.

Women? Trump infamously boasted they let allow him to do anything to them including grabbing them by their private parts. He has referred to his current female opponent as “dumb as a rock” in public and reportedly as a “bitch” in private. He has called other women who opposed him “a dog” and “disgusting.” His choice of a running mate refuses to retract his attack on prominent Democrats as “childless cat ladies.”

In announcing his candidacy for the presidency in 2015, Trump labeled Mexican immigrants as “rapists.” Trump claims illegal immigrants, “not just (those from) South America,” are “poisoning the blood of our country.” At a rally this month, he issued a warning about Hispanic immigrants, declaring that “A vote for Kamala Harris means 40 or 50 million more illegal aliens will invade across our borders, stealing your money, stealing your jobs, stealing your life.”

Trump’s persistent designation of the COVID-19 virus as the “China Virus” fueled anti-Asian rhetoric, according to a study in the American Journal of Public Health. He insulted his own former labor secretary, the Chinese American Elaine Chao, as “Coco Chow” and denounced her as “crazy.”

If actions speak louder than words, voters who are not white males have even more to worry about. Trump’s appointments to the Supreme Court have been decisive in undermining the protections of the Voting Rights Act, women’s rights to reproductive freedom and Black student access to selective colleges.

Polling indicates Black people, women, Hispanic people and Asian Americans know Trump’s record. In a recent New York Times poll, Trump trails his opponent by 12 points among women, by 64 points among Black people and by 12 points among Hispanic people. In a poll focused on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Trump lags by 38 points.

Trump’s electoral strategy of focusing on a core of white men while attacking other segments of the electorate is futile in the long run. The census in 1970 showed the U.S. to be 87.5% white. In 2022, the Census Bureau estimated that non-Hispanic white people were 57.7% of all Americans, and about 2 million more women than men voted in the November election.

In a matter of weeks, we’ll see whether Trump’s strategy to make America great again can win one last time. Or if it will be Harris’ proclamation “We won’t go back” that carries the day.

— Keith Raffel is a syndicated columnist with Creators.