Latino Voters Play Second Fiddle to Working-Class Whites

So when did Latinos get left out and left behind in this election?

For Republicans, interest may have tapered off in February after a GOP debate in South Carolina where Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio got into a verbal shoving match over who was el mas macho, where Cruz actually challenged Rubio to argue en espanol. The cringe-worthy spectacle suggested that Latinos aren't ready for primetime.

Meanwhile, Democrats probably stopped courting Latinos a couple months later when it became clear that Trump was on track to secure the GOP nomination. The businessman had by then so deeply offended Latinos that they gladly flocked to the Democratic Party without requiring anything in return.

In the big picture, Latinos and working-class whites have been on a collision course for decades. When blue-collar workers gripe about losing a job, the culprit is often either a Latino immigrant or a trade deal with Latin American countries.

Just listen to the white reader who was furious over my Labor Day column telling working-class folks to quit whining. "Maybe if the 1 percent were not so greedy as to ship the jobs to Mexico, working whites would still have jobs," he wrote.

Others blame lost jobs on immigrants -- especially if they come from Mexico and Latin America. In his immigration speech in Phoenix, Trump advanced the sketchy claim that "most illegal immigrants are lower-skilled workers with less education who compete directly against vulnerable American workers."

This thesis is simplistic and self-defeating. Americans don't have bad trade deals. And we're not attracting bad immigrants. But we do have some native-born people with a bad attitude, some of whom made bad decisions and bad mistakes such as thinking they were entitled to keep the same job for 30 years. Now they're looking for someone to be the bad guy. And, in the long-term, that'll be bad for them and the country.

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Ruben Navarrette's email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com.