By Mario Loyola
Thursday, November 12, 2020
In the recent election, President Donald Trump lost Wisconsin by about 20,000 votes and Michigan by about 150,000. These are two states where his 2016 performance among working-class whites had shattered the supposed “blue wall” and helped him win an improbable victory. It will take some time to understand why his performance among that same demographic proved so anemic this time around, but whatever the reasons, they almost certainly cost him the presidency.
In fact, the result wouldn’t have been as close if not for Trump’s success courting blacks and Hispanics. He significantly improved his performance among blacks from 2016, winning some 18 percent of black male voters — a modern record for a Republican.
His success with Hispanics was even more astounding. Overall, he increased his support among Hispanics to 35 percent, significantly above his 2016 result, which was already surprisingly high. Among Hispanics whose families came to the U.S. fleeing socialist dictatorships (chiefly Cubans, Venezuelans, and Nicaraguans), support for Trump skyrocketed by almost 50 percent over his 2016 tally, enough to put Florida well out of reach for Democrats.
That made the 2020 election a bit dispiriting for many Democrats, despite their victory. On Election Night, best-selling writer Kurt Eichenwald worried that Cuban Americans who came to this country to escape a dictatorship might be plunging America into another dictatorship, “and only because they’ve been brainwashed to believe [D]emocrats are socialists.”
But one needs no brainwashing to associate today’s Democrats with socialism — they do that themselves. The most galvanizing candidate of the last two Democratic primaries was Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist who thinks Americans were unfair to Fidel Castro. Prominent young Democrats such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also identify as socialist. And that is not the only rhetorical flourish she shares with Venezuela’s socialist thugs; her critiques of capitalism are identical to those of Hugo Chávez.
Hispanics who fled such places know well enough that in a real dictatorship, the dictator dominates all the institutions of the state and brooks no opposition in the government. They know that in a real dictatorship, people are afraid to say what they think even to friends and family, and critics of the regime are taken away in the middle of the night. They know that in such places, surviving in the face of abuse and terror is a daily struggle, and they know those calamities all too often begin with socialism.
Such Hispanics can see well enough that it is Democrats who have been brainwashed into thinking there is something authoritarian about Trump, when in fact he barely controls his own political appointees and people feel quite safe heaping insults on him endlessly. Democrats’ belief that Trump is a fascist white supremacist has grown stronger in the absence of evidence through sheer repetition, but repetition is no substitute for discernment. As a result, Democrats are no closer to understanding Trump’s appeal among minority groups than they were four years ago.
In some respects, they are farther than ever. For Charles Blow, Trump’s support among blacks and Hispanics “points to the power of white patriarchy” because sometimes “people who have historically been oppressed will stand with the oppressors.” If anything, Mr. Blow’s observation explains black support for Democrats, the party of slavery, segregation, and welfare dependency. Democrats share with Trump a peculiar hubris: Unable to comprehend that Trump has succeeded despite his flaws, they think he has succeeded because of his flaws. This is perhaps why they are unable to see Trump’s virtues as his supporters see them — or to see that he has any virtues at all.
As president, Trump has many flaws: He is vulgar, insulting, undisciplined, and sloppy. His statements, particularly about foreigners and immigrants, have sometimes been truly appalling. But he is not racist in any traditional sense of the word, much less a white supremacist, and (like most Democrats) he appears to have no idea what a fascist is. From his supporters’ point of view, his sometimes offensively anti-immigrant statements pale in comparison with how offensive Democrats are on a regular basis to Christians, for example, and also pale next to all the reasons they like him.
In contrast to Democrats’ accusations, the Trump administration made it a priority to deliver for black Americans from the start, with a focus on historically black colleges and universities and other vehicles of opportunity. That priority was on display at the GOP convention in August, which gave pride of place to black supporters of the president. Hispanics similarly hear him saying that “the Hispanic-American community is a treasure” and “Mexican Americans uplift our communities . . . and enrich every feature of national life. They are hardworking, incredible people.”
It’s a mistake to give too much emphasis to issue polling. Lots of people appear to vote on the basis of simple personality: Whom do they like more? Nobody could charge Mitt Romney with being anti-immigrant, but the patrician Romney, for all his humility, was preternaturally ineffective at connecting with voters in the arena of mass-market politics. That, of course, is Trump’s arena. A lot of people, including a lot of blacks and Hispanics, just like him, sometimes despite how unpleasant he can be and sometimes because of it. You don’t want the person fighting on your behalf to be too nice, after all. Plus, he’s much funnier than Hillary Clinton or Joseph Biden (a low bar, admittedly), and he has the force of his convictions.
Among my own friends and family in Miami, traditionally strong Republicans, I have been struck by the strength of support for Trump. I asked several of them why, and their answers were pretty consistent: He’s real; he doesn’t care what anybody thinks about him; he is against abortion; he has done more to stop child-trafficking than anybody; he stands up for law and order; he’s protecting us against socialists; and, of course (this is probably Trump’s favorite): The media are super unfair to him.
One Democrat who appears to appreciate what happened on Election Night is Abigail Spanberger, who won the Virginia congressional seat once held by Eric Cantor. According to reporters listening to a post-election Democratic caucus call, Spanberger was critical of the approach Democrats took in the election. She was quoted as saying, roughly, “We lost races we shouldn’t have lost. ‘Defund police’ almost cost me my race because of an attack ad. Don’t say ‘socialism’ ever again.”
That would be a good lesson for Democrats to take to heart, and one could add others: Making everything about race does not make society less racist; fighting imaginary fascism is often an excuse to behave like a real fascist; and with friends like Democrats, it’s understandable that many blacks and Hispanics aren’t terribly worried about their supposed enemies.
Meanwhile, hopefully Republicans will recognize the winning elements of Trump’s conservative populism and realize that they are indispensable to the party’s future success. His synthesis of free-market, pro-business policies and key planks of the Democrats’ traditional social safety net shows how to appeal to a base that will be increasingly working-class and increasingly diverse. Whereas middle-class and upper-class voters tend to seek economic opportunity, those farther down the income ladder tend to be at least as concerned with economic security — especially now, with working-class people hit particularly hard by COVID-19 shutdowns. Republicans will have to learn something that Trump is particularly good at — how to make patriotism and the promise of America accessible to all.
The GOP’s long-held dream of a big-tent majority may finally be materializing, thanks to the last person on earth that many people thought could make it happen.
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