Latinos are waking up to the duplicity of the Democrats
SAN DIEGO -- With a little more than a week left until the midterm elections, Democrats appear to be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The matchups were theirs to lose, and they seem poised to underperform in a bunch of them.
A reader recently asked me: "I don't understand why Latinos are not motivated to vote against a bigoted POTUS and willing enablers."
I can help with that. The answer has to do with how Latinos feel about Donald Trump, and how they feel about Democrats as an alternative.
As for Mr. Trump and the Latinos, that's a complicated relationship. Trump began his campaign for president by kicking Mexicans in the teeth, calling them rapists and drug traffickers. He also showed his ignorance about immigration when he said that Mexico doesn't send their best people to the United States when that is exactly who they send -- dreamers, doers and risk-takers.
Mexicans -- along with Puerto Ricans, Colombians and Dominicans -- turned Trump into a pinata. Literally. Pick one up the next time you're south of the border.
Then a strange thing happened. Once Trump emerged as the Republican nominee and squared off against Hillary Clinton -- who often tries to out-Republican the Republicans as an immigration hardliner -- polls began to show Trump's support among Latinos climbing.
As a Never Trumper, I didn't get it. So, I interviewed some Latinos for Trump and I got an earful. Many of them saw themselves not as Latinos but as Americans, and so they weren't hung up on Trump's anti-Latino screeds. They didn't like or trust Clinton, appreciated Trump's frankness, wanted a strong leader, and thought he was right about a lot of issues, including trade and immigration.
Yes, immigration. What most non-Latinos don't grasp is that Latinos are ambivalent about illegal immigration. They have a front-row seat not just to the pain of deportations, but also to how many immigrants commit crimes or abuse social services.
In 2016, an astounding 29 percent of Latinos voted for Trump.
And now, two years into his presidency, polls show that his support among Latinos is somewhere between 33 and 41 percent. That's insanely good for a president who is so bad on issues that Latinos supposedly care about.
...continued
