Because of Donald Trump’s racism toward Mexicans, his talk of building a wall on the border, paid for by Mexico, and his intention to deport the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., Latinos will not vote for Trump in November.
Surely, this is the mantra Hillary Clinton’s campaign is holding onto and also the “ace up the sleeve” of those who affirm that the electoral math does not give Trump a shot at winning the U.S. presidency.
Trump surely cannot win more than 40 percent of the Latino vote like the last Republican president, George W. Bush. But to assume that, for the reasons mentioned above, Trump has completely lost the Latino vote would be as precarious as thinking the election will be handed over to Hillary Clinton. During her husband’s presidency, some of the harshest anti-immigrant policies were implemented along the United States-Mexico border.
If not harsh, what else were the 1996 immigration reforms carried out by the “amigo” Clinton, when he enacted a policy of police control at the Mexican border with measures such as Operation Gatekeeper in San Diego and Operation Hold the line in El Paso?
How can you not point to Hillary for the unprecedented expansion of the Border Patrol in the years her husband was seeking re-election, and who, therefore, erected the metal walls and barbed wire fences that evoked the Berlin wall, but in North America?
Since then, billions of dollars have been allocated to wall off Mexico from the U.S. Nevertheless, Democrats are still counting on allegiance from Hispanics.
The lack of homogeneity remains the big issue with this vote across the U.S. The community does not live in a static condition; its interests are not all alike and therefore, unlike the Jewish vote for example, it does not all vote as a single bloc.
A Hispanic from Texas is not the same as one from Illinois or one from California.
Two recent polls of registered Latino voters, one from NBC News and The Wall Street Journal and the other from Fox News Latino, show this community’s preference toward Trump at 20 and 23 percent, respectively.
The theme for this community and the explanation for why Hispanics want to vote for Trump is that many of them see the American Dream come true in Trump. They feel a son of an immigrant who amasses an enormous fortune and is on the verge of winning the keys to the White House is just the story they would like to replicate for themselves or for their children. They admire Trump.
Trump has not lost the Hispanic vote. Even his recent racial blustering toward the judge in charge of the lawsuit against Trump University, Gonzalo Curiel, born in Indiana but of Mexican descent, has infuriated many Republicans … but who knows how much it has upset Hispanics.
Trying to think positively: If Trump’s candidacy fails to homogenize the Hispanic vote, I don’t know what will.
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