America’s obsession with the Latino vote has become a ritual as slippery and messy as a grunion run.
But who could be blamed for caring too much about how we crushed it in the midterms?
Latinos helped Democrats take back the House and Senate by casting our ballots in record numbers.
We flipped red districts blue, including those in the Rio Grande Valley that the Texas GOP gerrymandered last year to take out Latino Democrats. Speaking of Texas, the state elected a Latino as governor for the first time with Gina Hinajosa’s victory, while Xavier Becerra will be California’s first Latino governor in 151 years.
Latino voters helped elect a record number of their own kind to Congress, from Republicans who have denounced President Trump to moderate Democrats to Latin Grammy winner Bobby Pulido to democratic socialists. Three of the six DSA members elected to the House for the first time are Latinas, including Angela Gonzales-Torres here in Los Angeles.
The narrative this time is that Latinos helped pull American democracy back from the jaws of MAGA, which I guess is better than the charges of self-defeating treason thrown at us two years ago. That’s when 48% of Latinos voted for Trump — a record for a Republican presidential candidate — and the GOP gained in even the bluest of Latino-heavy precincts, a shift that conservatives predicted would become larger, and permanent.
Well, New York Times data showed a 29-point shift to the Dems for Latino voters nationwide in the midterms, compared to two years ago — by far the largest of any ethnic group.
The stereotype for decades was that Latinos were a “sleeping giant”: we could be powerful one day, if only our supposed self-sabotaging mañana approach to life wasn’t holding us down. Now that we’re actually exercising our franchise, we don’t seem to be making anyone happy. Even as progressive friends of mine are celebrating the blue tsunami, they’re criticizing Latino men for not having voted more decisively for Democrats, as Latinas did.
It’s the eternal conundrum: we’re always too much or too little, and never just enough. Because we don’t fit anyone’s expectations but our own, we’re seen as an eternal threat and never reliable.
To that, I say: good.
We’re the largest minority group in this country, increasing in voters and political power in places far from traditional strongholds. Why, Jess Rivera beat a five-term GOP incumbent to become the first Latina in the North Carolina state Senate. With our growing influence, politicians should be courting us and never assuming we’re automatically with them.
There’s also something more fascinating at work. Forget Ohio as a bellwether of American politics — look to Latinos.
Ronald Reagan’s popularity with Latinos, especially after he signed the immigration amnesty, reflected a thirst for a leader who believed in the fundamental goodness of this nation. After the GOP’s swath of xenophobic laws in the 1990s, the Latino blue wave that helped put Bill Clinton in the White House showed that we would only suffer scapegoating for so long.
Our slight shift to the right for George W. Bush showed a working class unease with a Democratic Party that signed off on NAFTA, which decimated the heartland as much as it did Mexico’s rural economy. Our embrace of Barack Obama highlighted an America mature enough to elect a Black man twice. And our lukewarm support for Hillary Clinton in 2016 compared to Obama was the signature on the death certificate of her doomed campaign.
Trump, the most anti-Latino president since James K. Polk, increased his Latino support with each presidential run because the Democratic Party couldn’t break the spell he cast over too many Americans. Tuesday’s repudiation of Trump shows that we have mostly snapped out of it — sick of his pathetic economy, his horrible immigration raids, his pointless wars and jejune insults.
If Latinos can exorcise themselves of MAGA, anyone can.
Except white people, it seems. New York Times number crunchers found that 51% of white voters nationwide chose Republican candidates. They still stood with a party that allowed Trump to lavish attention on vanity projects that even the pharaohs would consider gauche, instead of what Americans need.
Wokoso academics have long claimed that Latinos turn conservative in a desire to become white. I’ve always found that argument facile. Most of the Latino Trumpers I know are proud rancho libertarians who love to blast their corridos and apply for dual citizenship and who think gringos are weak, whiny ingrates. The one thing those Latinos did pick up from white Trump supporters was a strain of grievance politics that hasn’t historically been a part of who we are.
That may have been a natural byproduct of assimilation, which isn’t just about the language you speak or owning a home or cultural traditions. It’s also about picking up the political vibes of the powerful, which for the past decade have leaned toward MAGA’s nihilism.
But if that’s what being an American means, many Latinos said on Tuesday, then screw assimilation.
Oh, we’ll still learn English and strive for the middle class and root for the Raiders or Cowboys or Broncos or some other underachieving NFL squad. But Latinos expect more from this country than just kvetching and corruption, blind loyalty and excuses. Polls have long shown we’re among the most optimistic of Americans. And if we can still believe in this crazy democracy, then others should follow.
That’s why Americans should obsess over how Latinos vote. Because we’re not beholden to any side just yet, we’re ultimately more objective. We’ll back Democrats or Republicans if they’re doing a better job than the other party — and if they’re not, we’ll toss them out like a bad batch of enchiladas. Isn’t that the American experiment at its best?
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