On Thursday evening, I went on the Roland Martin Unfiltered show to talk about why Latinos overwhelmingly shifted to the right and voted for Donald Trump. Martin, whom I’ve long respected as an analyst on politics back since I was a teenager, had the same response a lot of other people did.
“What the hell happened? Explain it to us,” he asked me.
I noted how Trump’s appeal is largely driven by polarization via education, given that people with college degrees and advanced degrees largely broke for Kamala Harris whereas those without a bachelor’s degree voted for Trump. Latinos are one of the groups least likely to have a college degree.
Understandably, Martin then highlighted multiple stories of Latinos who know they are at risk of being sent out of the United States under Trump’s proposed mass deportation plans but who still voted for the man.
“What the f**k?” he asked, bluntly.
I completely understand the confusion. Logically, it makes no sense to me either. But plenty of Latinos tend to think that they are different from “those types” of immigrants. Cuban-Americans are quite different than Mexican-Americans, and Mexican-Americans who have lived in the United States all their lives feel very different from those who migrated. Puerto Ricans are American citizens.
Families who came to the United States before it began to tighten its borders or who came here legally look upon families who came here illegally with supsicion. Plenty of border patrol agents themselves are Hispanic.
Those various different statuses allow Latinos to feel like they will not be affected by Trump’s sweeping proposals for immigrants. Stephen Miller, Trump’s consigliere on immigration who could easily be his Homeland Security Secretary, has said the Trump administration would have a denaturalization process ready to go. Immigrants wanting to kick out the next group of immigrants is as old as America itself.
Shortly afterward, Martin said to me: “If that dude’s [a Trump voter’s] mama gets deported, that’s on him and I’m gonna play Scarface’s ‘No Tears,’” essentially saying that once Latinos who voted for Trump suffer in the wake of such policies, there will be no sympathy.
This has been the response from plenty of liberal pundits. Jim Acosta of CNN, who is Cuban-American, asked on CNN, “A lot of folks are asking on the Democratic side: Why would they [Latinos] do this to themselves?”
David Corn, the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones, tweeted: “Perhaps massive deportations will affect how they see Trump.”
Again, I understand this impulse. A lot of it does not make sense. But this approach is the exact reason why Democrats got into this mess with Latinos in the first place. Instead of treating Latino voters as whole humans with real needs and desires beyond just immigration, the Democratic Party has patronized them consistently and now faces the disastrous consequences.
Hopes of putting Texas in their crosshairs are now on hold as numerous counties on the US-Mexico border swung drastically to the right. And Trump put Arizona back in the Republican column thanks to Latino support.
For the past two years, I warned that Nevada could go red like my hair was on fire. Lo and behold, Trump became the first Republican since George W Bush in 2004 to win Nevada.
And no, Democrats cannot make up their losses with Latino voters by running up the scoreboard with college-educated whites or city-dwellers in future elections. There simply are not enough votes.
On top of that, to borrow from Bernie Sanders — who in 2020 did a hell of a job winning over Latino voters — Democrats and progressives are supposed to be accustomed to fighting for the rights of everyone, even people they don’t know. Saying that they will shed no tears when Trump begins the mass deportation of Latinos sure makes it sound like Democrats would rather be smugly right than treat them as human beings.
If the hammer comes down on Latinos, Democrats should be at the ready to respond to Trump’s cruelty by saying that the MAGA agenda is a false god. They should paint a positive vision for society, underlining the importance of solidarity and shared prosperity, where workers’ rights, a strong social safety net and strong education policies are a pathway to upward mobility. After all, that is how my own family went from working for Spreckels Sugar Company to following around the vice president in a motorcade in just a couple of generations.
Unfortunately, Democrats might take the wrong lessons from this loss.
As soon as my TV appearance ended, I walked to the Union Station metro stop in Washington to catch a train home. As I walked onto the train, I saw a young brown-skinned man with the beginnings of a mustache thumbing through his phone.
As I looked closer, I saw his beanie said: “Make America Great Again.”
