There is a sect in the Latino community that will vote for Trump
The Liberal punditry is very smart. They generally know their history. They read studies and polls. And like engineers they come to conclusions based on that information. The problem is that unlike nature where the laws governing motion, molecular behavior, quantum behavior, etc. are fixed, peoples’ minds are re-programmable.
The Liberal punditry too often treats the behavior of select groups as static or near static. That is the mistake being made with assuming that Donald Trump does not have a chance in hell because of his anti-immigrant stance.
What many fail to see is a well orchestrated dance by Donald Trump. He starts out as a buffoon in order to get free media as he riles up the easily accessible ethnic prejudices in his far right flank. Calling undocumented workers by vile names enamored Trump to the far right of the Republican base.
He attenuated his verbiage soon thereafter to make the undocumented worker an economic issue. He does so by claiming they are lowering the wages of hard working Americans. That endears him to more moderate Republicans and even some hardworking blue collar Democrats. You see, they have something physical to blame. They are not privy to the machinations of the current business model that considers them an expendable commodity that can easily be outsourced. They do not understand that their economic strife is by design and has little to do with the work being done by the undocumented. They don’t understand that it is the hundreds of millions of workers overseas that the Plutocracy has put them in competition with in order to keep wages low and profits high.
The other part of the ‘Trump can win the Latino vote’ strategy has already begun. The strategy is simply a ‘but you are not like them’ strategy.
I remember telling a black friend of mine that I got pissed in a group of white friends. We were all talking and one of the guys said ‘We do not even notice or consider you black when we are talking.” The statement is pretty benign. In fact it is pretty post racial. But then he said ‘because you do not act the way most of them act and talk.’ Now that pissed me off internally but I handled it with grace. I simply asked how many black people the man knew and has he been in any predominantly black environments. His answer was few and he had never been in a predominantly black church, function, meeting, or anything of that nature. I simply told him that his impression of black people was simply anecdotal based behaviors he may have seen in a malls, and based on the caricature the American entertainment complex makes of the other by not exploring any group in its entirety.
Why did I tell that story? I related the story to a black friend of mine. His reaction was that I should have felt good about the comment. He said I was accepted into the club. Of course I immediately schooled him on self-hate. I have similar Latino stories that are probative especially here in Texas. That is the dynamic that Donald Trump will use to get votes many Liberals may believe is off limits.
People do not live day to day with scientific and statistical knowledge. They do not over analyze much. They just want to belong. Many do not look at the implications of belonging. When Trump talks about making the country great again and he will bring the worthy with him, under the right conditions it can reach many. It is irrational. But the fact is we have a party, the Republican Party, whose current policies hurt the very people who vote for them, yet they hold more offices of consequence than Democrats. The proof is in America’s political reality.
NOTE: It would do the punditry well to realize that Latino is a vast subsection of America that includes several races with racial problems that reflects America. Likewise the Latino community has various sub-cultures. Some that are not kind to others. Central Americans are very different than South Americans, than Mexicans, than the Caribbean. The Atlantic coast Latinos in many areas are very different than the Pacific coast Latinos.