Donald Trump treads tricky ground

Former president Donald Trump, who is the presumptive Republican presidential candidate in the November election, is doing things which he would have hesitated to do. He reached out to the Christian evangelicals in Washington on Saturday, and told them that they go to church but they do not go to vote. He told them they must vote this time and he assured them that then victory is his. And to win them over as it were he supported the new Louisiana law that said that the Ten Commandments, part of the Old Testament in the Bible, should be placed in all the schools, state-run and the private ones. The evangelicals have been suspicious of Trump for the not-too-reputable, from the evangelical point of view, marital life with two divorces, and did not vote for him in 2016.

It was his then vice-presidential candidate, Mike Spence, who was respected for his Christian conservatism. So, Trump is making his pitch to the evangelists. But he is in a dilemma. He is unable to give assurance, something that the evangelists want, that there would be a federal law to abolish abortion after the Supreme Court, with three of his conservative judges, struck down the 50-year-old Roe vs. Wade which declared access to abortion as a fundamental right. But Trump is not committing himself on the issue because analysts say that this is not a popular one even among the Republicans, and this was reflected in the November 2022 mid-term Congressional elections. The Republicans expected to win in a big way, but they did not, and the much-feared ‘red tide’ was stemmed. All that Trump is willing to say is that let each state legislature vote on the issue, which is what the Supreme Court had said. This means, Trump would not be able to get a whole-hearted support from the evangelists.

The other major Trump outreach has been to the blacks. First, he visited a black church in Detroit weeks ago, and then recently addressed the black issues in Philadelphia. He spoke in a black majority town square but reports say most people in the audience were whites. But he told the blacks that he would increase federal spending to control crime and violence. These are the two issues, which are important, but critics point out that crime has been on a downward curve in Philadelphia, and therefore he was harping on the wrong issue. Trump while sticking to his favourite anti-illegal immigrant subject, said that the illegal immigrants were robbing the jobs of American Blacks and American Hispanics. And on the other hand, he has promised that immigrants who pass out from an American college will be given green cards. That is a surprise indeed. He seems to understand the complexity of the issue that America needs immigrants and that it needs the immigrant talent for the United States to remain the top global economy. It is evident now that Trump cannot hope to run a simplistic campaign with a bludgeon in his hand. He has to adopt nuanced stances as he has done on the issue of abortion, and one on green cards for immigrant college graduates. In 2016, it was seen that it was Americans in rural areas and who did not have a college degree who had supported Trump. But Trump now realizes that he has to appeal to a wider electorate, which includes blacks, Hispanics and the immigrants who have a college degree. It does not mean that Trump has transformed himself into a consummate politician walking a fine line between extreme positions. He remains wedded to his wild generalisations.