In a story positing a Republican conspiracy to criticize Vice President Kamala Harris on Spanish-speaking radio, Politico makes an interesting claim: “Harris has a history of working with Latinos and on Latino issues in her home state of California.”
Harris’s work on “Latino issues” according to Politico:
- Blasting Trump over immigration.
- Opposing Trump’s border wall.
- Other immigration matters.
This could just be a quirk of the story, but it reflects a widely held belief that the only Hispanic or Latino issue is immigration.
I’ll take it a step further than Josh does. I recall Republicans talking this way constantly through the Bush years and more or less up until Donald Trump got the presidential nomination in 2016. The GOP establishment argued that “immigration reform” was the way to win the Hispanic vote. (I cynically have noted that “immigration reform” oddly aligned with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s lobbying agenda and that Republicans weren’t really trying very hard to win Hispanic votes.)
So what are Latino issues? Mostly, it’s the economy and reopening from COVID lockdowns.
The most important issue to Hispanic voters surveyed last month by a Democratic consultant was the economy.
What does that mean in practice? What do Hispanics want done on the economy?
Here’s a hint from another survey: When asked whether they agreed with Trump on various or disagreed, two-thirds of Hispanic voters said they agreed with Trump on his efforts to reopen the economy in 2020. Notably, 39% of Hispanic voters agreed with Trump on building the wall, 51% agreed on limiting refugees or asylum-seekers, while an even larger majority agreed with Trump on seeking more border security funding.
So “immigration” as a Hispanic issue is pretty tough considering how divided Hispanic voters are on most immigration issues.
Then there’s the problem that Democrats are obsessed with weird ideas of racial politeness and gender politics. They insist on using the insane word Latinx (you see, Latino has a masculine ending) and attacking Spanish as a colonist language. Democrats see Trump’s racial insensitivity and stereotyping as cut-and-dried unforgivable racism — the way Trump talks about immigrants violates all the norms our elite institutions try to inculcate and enforce.
But maybe the offenses that are unforgivable at Harvard aren’t unforgivable in Zapata County. And maybe the issues that motivate Latino activists in D.C. aren’t the issues that motive Hispanic voters and radio-show callers.
