Will racial tensions tarnish Obama's legacy?

By Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on Jul 12, 2016

"Look what is happening to our country under the WEAK leadership of Obama and people like Crooked Hillary Clinton," went one of his tweets. "We are a divided nation!"

Of course, when it comes to dividing our nation, Trump is being modest. A Quinnipiac University poll found his popularity among black voters, for example, to be only 1 percent against Clinton's 91 percent. He did better with Hispanics, losing by only 50 percent to 33 percent. It's still early, he insists. He's right, although I don't expect miracles.

Why do leading Republicans try to blame the shootings on Obama? The short answer: Republicans automatically blame everything bad that is happening in the world on Obama, especially in an election year.

But this year there's more. They hope to exploit a possible weakness in the controversial Clinton's dealings with law-and-order issues. A lot of her voters expect her to support the Black Lives Matter movement's call for justice in police brutality cases. But the issue also holds risks if she is perceived by whites as pandering to black militants.

That's a good reason for her to stick like glue to President Obama, whose approvals have been running at 51 percent or more for most of this year so far, according to Gallup. That's the highest of his second term and higher than Clinton's or Trump's, who probably help explain Obama's popularity. Even with his shortcomings, real or perceived, he looks better than the crowded field that's been campaigning for his job.

Finally, Republicans want to polish their own reputations by tarnishing Obama's, particularly on a core Obama issue like race relations.

An April Gallup poll found 35 percent of Americans now say they are worried "a great deal" about race relations in the U.S. That's higher than at any time since the respected polling firm first asked the question in 2001, Gallup said. The percentage who were worried a "great deal" more than doubled in the past two years, Gallup said.

That's the period since the issue of police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement erupted amid protests in Ferguson, Mo.

It would be awkward, to say the least, if a president who came into office on a thundering wave of "hope" and "change" left amid boiling racial tensions. It is his good fortune and Mrs. Clinton's to be campaigning against Donald Trump. His clown act reminds even some of Obama's skeptics that they could do worse.

(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)