Hillary Clinton shifts to more personal themes in Kansas City speech

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Thursday — using surprisingly personal and religious language — urged Americans to re-dedicate themselves to faith and community service.

“I’ve made my share of mistakes. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t,” Clinton told roughly 4,000 delegates to the National Baptist Convention USA meeting at Bartle Hall in Kansas City. “It’s grace that lifts us up.”

She was grateful, she said, for “the gift of personal salvation.”

Clinton campaign officials told reporters the speech was the first in a series of events designed to present the candidate’s “vision” for the country. In future speeches, they said, she will call for a commitment to national service and a more inclusive economy.

The speech was laced with biblical quotations. Many in the audience recited the verses from memory as the candidate spoke.

“It’s always been about trying to live up to the responsibility described by the Prophet Micah,” Clinton said. “That we do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with our God.”

The National Baptist Convention is the largest African-American religious organization the United States, and delegates applauded warmly throughout the speech.

“It just set my soul on fire,” said the Rev. Milton Scott of the New Home Baptist Church in Monck’s Corner, N.C.

Clinton spoke in an often quiet voice that was sometimes hard to hear in the cavernous hall. Convention officials closed off half the room when fewer people than expected showed up for the speech.

She did not ignore politics entirely. She made several pointed references to Republican opponent Donald Trump, although she did not mention him by name.

Her opponent, Clinton said, has trafficked in “conspiracy theories” and has a long history of racial bias. “If he doesn’t even respect all Americans, how can he serve all Americans?” she asked, to loud applause.

The comment reflects a renewed focus on the African-American vote for both Clinton and Trump. Just weeks ago, the Republican launched an explicit effort to convince African-Americans to switch their votes away from Clinton.

In a series of high-profile events, Trump told African-American voters Democratic leaders had failed them, and they should consider an alternative.

“What have you got to lose?” he asked, suggesting black voters are victims of higher crime and unemployment rates, poor schools and crumbling infrastructure.

Trump was criticized for making the statements before largely white audiences, so he later appeared at an African-American church in Detroit.

“Our nation is too divided,” he told the congregants. “We talk past each other, not to each other.”

Trump’s pivot to African-American voters has been sharply criticized by Democrats, who have bluntly accused the candidate of racism.

“Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia,” Clinton said in late August.

Sincere or not, though, Trump’s approach reflects a political reality: the Republican badly trails with minority voters. If he cannot improve his standing with those voters, he cannot carry swing states like Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Roughly 13 percent of the nation’s population is African-American. African-Americans tend to register and vote more aggressively in presidential election years, experts say, increasing the importance of reaching those voters in a national election.

In 2012, the turnout rate for African-American voters actually exceeded that of white voters. And exit polls showed those voters cast ballots overwhelmingly for Barack Obama: he got 95 percent of black votes, Gallup found.

This year, Trump needs to at least do as well as Mitt Romney’s 5 percent African-American support, or better, to prevail. Yet a recent poll from a Democratic firm found Trump with a zero favorable rating among blacks who were surveyed.

Such findings frustrate African-American Republicans, who say their party — the party of Abraham Lincoln — is doing its best to reach voters of color.

“African-Americans are so ingrained into the Democratic Party that they really don’t take the blinders off,” said Carson Ross, the Republican mayor of Blue Springs and a former Missouri state representative. Democrats “have done nothing for them.”

The Rev. John Modest Miles of Kansas City is a Democrat, but he has worked with and endorsed Republicans, including Sen. Roy Blunt. He said neither party should rely on monolithic support from any community.

“There have been Republicans who have done great things for us,” he said. “It is painful to see that we try to make a race issue out of this election.”

Yet other African-Americans say Trump’s outreach will fail — too little, too late.

“You need to do that a long time ago,” said the Rev. Bobby Love of the Second Baptist Church in Olathe. “You can’t just do that six weeks before the election.”

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, once a presidential candidate himself, said Trump’s efforts will fail because Republicans are “basically anti-city” on issues like gun rights and public employment.

Trump, he noted, bought ads in New York newspapers calling for re-instating the death penalty after the arrest of several black murder suspects. The suspects were later determined to be innocent.

Other Democrats have argued Trump’s efforts to reach African-American voters are really aimed at reassuring suburban Republicans who may be worried that Trump is too prejudiced.

“They’re using these outreach efforts in order to communicate something,” said the retired Rev. Bob Lee Hill of Kansas City, “so that white folks who are educated, or female, won’t hate them as much.”

Trump supporters firmly reject that view. And Trump says his work will bear fruit if he’s elected.

“At the end of four years, I guarantee you that I will get over 95 percent of the African-American vote,” he said in mid-August.

For all of Trump’s struggles with reaching minority voters, Clinton faces challenges as well, many Democrats believe. A recent New York Times report highlighted results from focus groups conducted with young African-American voters, where interviewers found skepticism about Clinton.

“He might be the devil but she has been in bed with the devil. Why vote for any of them?” an African-American college graduate said in one focus group. The consultants who conducted the groups found Clinton “under performing” among younger minority voters in battleground states.

Those concerns may explain Clinton’s decision to speak with Baptist ministers in Kansas City on Thursday. Democrats said they can’t afford to take African-American votes, and enthusiasm, for granted.

“This election is too important for anyone to sit on the sidelines,” Clinton told the delegates at Bartle Hall.

This story was originally published September 8, 2016 at 8:42 PM with the headline "Hillary Clinton shifts to more personal themes in Kansas City speech."