Donald Trump said Wednesday that Americans “living their suburban lifestyle dream” will no longer be “bothered” by low-income housing in their communities, an explicit effort to stoke racial fears among wealthy and white voters. who leave the Republican Party under his leadership. .
The comment is part of a pattern by the US president as he tries to rebuild his position in the suburbs, which has built up amid his administration’s inability to contain the coronavirus pandemic and economic recession, as well as the response. The president’s aggressive response to national protests against systemic racism, which polls suggest most Americans support.
“I am pleased to inform all people living their suburban lifestyle dream that they will no longer be bothered or financially disadvantaged by the construction of low-income housing in their neighborhood …,” Trump tweeted as he traveled to Texas on Wednesday. “Your home prices will go up according to the market, and crime will go down. I have rescinded the Obama-Biden AFFH rule. Enjoy!”
The tweet refers to Affirmatively Promoting Fair Housing, an Obama-era program designed to combat racial segregation in the American suburbs. The rule, implemented in 2015, requires cities and towns that receive federal funds to identify patterns of racial prejudice and take corrective action to address discrimination.
Last week, the administration announced that it would terminate the program, and agreed with conservative critics that the fair housing policy amounted to a federal overreach in local communities.
In the announcement, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson, called the program “complicated, expensive and ineffective” and said it would be replaced by a new rule, called “Preserve Community and Neighborhood Choice.”
Trump had anticipated his administration’s plan to gut politics earlier this month, a day after he posted a video of an angry, white couple brandishing firearms in the direction of protesters who marched past his mansion inside from a gated community in St Louis. Later, the couple was accused of illegal use of a weapon.
Once a cornerstone of the Republican base, suburban voters and particularly suburban women will likely play a crucial role in determining control of the Senate and the White House.
Democrats gained control of the House in the 2018 midterm elections by storming once-Republican districts from California and Texas to Virginia and Georgia. Current polls show Joe Biden, the alleged Democratic candidate, fueled in part by his support of college-educated women and suburban voters.
An ABC News / Washington Post poll found Biden ahead of Trump by nine percentage points among suburbanites. Among suburban women, Biden led Trump by a margin of 60% to 36%. By contrast, Biden narrowly outpaces Trump among suburban men, 49% to 45%.
In recent weeks, Trump has cast some subtle appearance in his appeals to this electorate.
“Suburban American housewives should read this article,” Trump tweeted Thursday, sharing a New York Post opinion piece published by former New York Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey, who claimed that Biden’s policies would ruin the suburbs of the country.
Trump offers a cartoon from the suburbs that appears to have been ripped from Leave It to Beaver, the 1950s comedy about a middle-class white American family. But this image is separate from the current reality of the suburban United States, which has changed politically and demographically in recent decades.
Immigrants and people of color have moved to the suburbs, diversifying communities that were once predominantly white. Meanwhile, college-educated voters, and particularly white women, have migrated from the Republican party, as part of a gradual political realignment that Trump has helped accelerate.
