Joe the Plumber

There's already a white guy doing Trump's material -- Trump is the Joe the Plumber of Fifth Avenue.

Obama's Mama

In a hard-fought presidential race, you can say what you want about a guy's monetary policy, but you don't call his mother a liar. If Trump has any hard evidence that Obama's Hawaiian "Certificate of Live Birth" is in any way fraudulent, he should make it public. Otherwise, his whole shtick amounts to nothing but the most scurrilous slander.

The Issues

In his book, The America We Deserve, Trump said he was for universal health care. Now he's against it. A month ago he said he'd intervene to prevent a Libyan massacre "if we could surgically strike and stop that from happening." When Obama did it two weeks later, Trump wailed that it "makes absolutely no sense whatsoever." Seriously?

But at the end of the day, Trump's biggest problem is that for years, black political figures were overlooked as presidential contenders because they were seen as merely protest candidates. Democrat Rev. Jesse Jackson and Republican Alan Keyes were written off because voters concluded that they were only in it for the free publicity.

Then an African American became president, and instead of offering a serious critique of Obama's deficit spending -- which didn't fix the unemployment problem but did plug the leak in a damaged economy -- Trump pulled the ultimate publicity stunt and called President Obama an illegal alien while staring right at his birth certificate.

Trump runs in the most lavish celebrity circles. Surely -- as they say -- some of his best friends are black. He's probably golfed with Magic Johnson. He's probably got Reverend Run's number on speed dial. So he should just call one of them up and ask the question: "Am I still cool with, you know, 'the blacks'?"

Not anymore, Donald. "You're fired."

David Swerdlick is a regular contributor to The Root. Follow him on Twitter.

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