A black running mate for Trump would transform the GOP’s image from white exclusivity to

In Theodore H. White’s monumental The Making of the President 1964 he canvasses the racial unrest of that election year. He makes the point that the black riots were not actually interracial rioting, but for the most part involved black destruction of their own property in their ghettos out of frustration with their lowly socio-economic status in urban areas:

Despair incubated the riots but dogma created the thought climate which released them.  The first dogma best summed up by ‘power structure’… not only government but every system of decision making in American life and every crevice of privilege within it.

The Republican candidate at the time, Barry Goldwater, epitomized this power structure concept in every way possible: a white, ultra-conservative Southwesterner who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A Republican Party viewed as the mainstay of country club exclusivity, the rich, and big business. The fact that Goldwater was not a racist and voted as he did out of a passion for small government and states’ rights was as nothing to the impression of him and his party by blacks.

LBJ was correct when he purportedly stated, “I think we just delivered the South to the Republicans for a long time to come”; that he also said, “I’ll have those ni*****s voting Democrat for 200 years” is debatable, but most certainly (in character), apart from the Carter and Clinton special cases, the Southern switch from Democrat to GOP happened; Goldwater actually carried six southern states, and the change became locked in with Nixon’s “Southern strategy.”

Conversely the black support for the Democrat party became adamantine, especially with black women, which reached its zenith at 98% for Obama and its nadir at 4% for McCain. But change has come.

Trump’s first election saw him receive around 10% of the black vote, mostly a black male shift with black voting numbers dropping in key urban areas (plus stay-at-homes), which also assisted his Electoral College win by small margins in the key “rust belt states” where factory closures and outsourcing hit all members of the working class hard. Before Covid, black unemployment reached the lowest levels in history and Trump’s outreach to blacks, most visibly with his pardoning/clemency of blacks with high-profile cases (posthumous pardon for boxer Jack Johnson, clemency for Alice Johnson and Lil Wayne), and the befriending, then appointment of Dr. Ben Carson to a cabinet position.

During Trump’s years there has been an increasing number of black Republican candidates and successful office achievers which has further signalled the near complete change of the image and fact of the white exclusionist GOP to a working-class party encompassing all races. Hispanics, not as burdened by a historical past as blacks, have transitioned faster with, for example, the remarkable switch of south Florida from a Democrat bastion to a GOP one, and the latest NBC poll showing Trump has gained a majority of Hispanic support over Biden.

A study of 23 polls with a reported subset of black voter intention to support Trump has found the remarkable figure of an aggregate of such intent at, now updated, 21%. Given that Trump’s 10% in 2016 was enough to enable his victory, and discounting the unique Covid election, even if that figure came down to 16% in 2024, that would have a profound effect on the outcome.

The GOP had a female VP candidate for the first time in 2008; a black VP candidate of the profile and qualifications of Dr. Carson or Senator Tim Scott in 2024 would bring into effect the final act in a long transition to inclusivity and set the stage for the GOP to become the majority party.

Image: Public domain.