HOW TO LOSE THE IMMIGRANT VOTE — AND FUTURE ELECTIONS
In her last post of the year, the indispensable historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote an extended survey of the shift our nation has undergone since Reagan became President in 1981 (https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/posts/2552867448190639). It is a lucid and eloquent account of this tragic 40-year wrong turn in our history, but to my mind incomplete — it was rather like recounting the tragedy of the fall of France in 1940 solely from the vantage point of German triumphs, with no mention of the grievous missteps of the Allies. The Democrats are invisible in her narrative, as if they had no agency or cards they could have played.
Another parallel piece must be written about the feckless Democratic response, how we have still not come up with an effective rejoinder to “Socialism!” and “Government is the problem!”
The Democrats do a terrible job of presenting themselves. Identity politics is killing us. I remember one of the early Dem debates more than a year ago, one of those ten-candidate cattle calls. They spent maybe fifteen minutes arguing about who would do more for the transgender community.
Look, I get it; I am all for trans rights. But how can that be in the top 50 of any President’s to-do list? We’re talking about half of 1% of the population. I imagined a laid off autoworker in Youngstown watching this. And then we wonder why Ohio has turned red. And it doesn’t even work for the communities we are trying to embrace with it — Trump actually made inroads among Latinx voters in 2020.
There was a fascinating piece about these inroads in the actual paper copy of today’s NY Times (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/20/us/politics/election-hispanics-asians-voting.html). Even more depressing than the data were a couple of quotes at the end of the article. A Sanders organizer argues that “New immigrant voters are infrequent voters, and they’re hungry for information. We need to have Democrats telling our immigration story.”
No! We don’t need to tell “our immigration story”. We need to explain why Republican policies are a mendacious avaricious catastrophe for the country and why an activist government under Democratic principles will allow all Americans, save the plutocracy — including immigrants! — a much better life and far more opportunity for their children. Unfortunately, the loathsome Mark Rubio nailed it. The article reports that he tweeted “#Florida & the Rio Grande Valley showed the future of the GOP. A party built on a multi-ethnic multi-racial coalition of working AMERICANS.” Once again, we are the French cowering behind the Maginot Line and the GOP is outmaneuvering us with a blitzkrieg.
Before the election, I wrote out and mailed hundreds of Get Out The Vote postcards to Pennsylvania. The included a script for us to use. I can’t remember the exact words, but it more or less began, “Regardless of our race, our gender, or our sexual orientation, there is far more that unites us than divides us.” Just shoot me. A flawlessly correct ode to identity politics — but how can anybody possibly imagine that this is going to make Pedro Morales in Scranton (let alone Stan Kulikowsky) want to vote for Biden? I went off the reservation, and composed my own opening: “For all of our differences, we all love our country, our families, and our community.”
