Blame It On The Democrats: Stupidity Plus Naivete
The party of immigrants got it wrong with an immigrant group
By
William A. Gralnick
By now, those who were lifted to great emotional heights by the Harris/Walz campaign should be awakening from the resulting depression caused by their loss. And if that is not happening naturally, depressed or not, those people are now in a state of shock caused by the first month of the Trump/Musk administration.
While Republicans proclaim, and unaware Americans believe that Donald Trump won a major mandate, the truth (remember that?) is that the margin of victory was slim. (49.9% to 48.3%). The Electoral College numbers are what give the appearance of a large mandate. I’ve written before about my struggle over the College’s continuing validity as part of our democracy. I’ve decided it is high time for it to go. I should have decided that after the Al Gore loss, but I wasn’t convinced it would or could happen again. That conclusion is proof positive of why I did so poorly in higher mathematics. Since I have covered that ground before, and it is available to you on my blogs, reachable through http//:www.williamgralnickauthor.com, I’m not going there now. I’m going to ruminate over how the loss could and should have been prevented. In simple form, it was a combination of stupidity and naivete.
A lack of understanding about Hispanics is at the root of the election loss. The specifics are that Democrats, the party of immigrants, forgot how vicious is the fight to gain and then maintain one’s position on the first and second rungs of the economic ladder. There is an old political science adage that no one gives up power willingly. If one looks at the climb up that ladder by groups in New York City, for instance, one sees the willingness of those on rung one to stomp on the fingers of the people in the next group trying to grab onto that first rung. One need only look at the makeup of the New York City Police Department. The Irish fought with the WASPS. The Italians fought with the Irish. The Hispanics fought with the Italians. Not enough Jews wanted to be cops for them to figure in.
Here's a different example: Miami post-Castro. When the revolution succeeded, Cubans fled any way they could as fast as they could to Miami. The history of how that community dealt with their brother Cubans after the Mariel boatlift is not a pretty one.
Here’s one more: Eastern Europe post-Holocaust. Ninety percent of all Jews in Poland were exterminated. That came to roughly three-plus million souls. That resulted in large numbers of vacant living spaces. After a few years of Nazi occupation, thousands of dwellings were suddenly empty. Lower-class Poles saw an opportunity to raise themselves and how they lived. They illegally occupied those dwellings. When the occasional survivor of the camps showed up at their former addresses, they were “shown the door,” so to speak. There were pogroms. Those who had survived the horrors of the camps were attacked, beaten, and sometimes murdered in the streets as they tried to reclaim what was theirs. The Jews had fallen off the ladder, the Poles were not about to let them get back on.
Let’s revisit Miami, and we’ll soon see how this ties into the last election. Right after Christmas in December of 1982, a section of Miami called Overtown went up in flames. Overtown, in its day, was to South Florida what Harlem of the ’20s was to New York City and its environs. It was a place of great music and musicians, great art and artists, great community activism and activists. Yes, it was a ghetto; it was also a grouping of neighborhoods that made a stable community, the kind of community that young Black men and women from other cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Birmingham flocked to. Yes, it was segregated, but it worked for those who lived there. The schools were old and underfunded, but the teachers were good and determined; the children learned and prospered. Then, some genius in the ’50s who was working on the interstate highway system decided that I-95 had to run through the middle of Overtown, not skirt it. It broke the back of the community, literally and figuratively. Activists fought the good fight, but all they got was angry. There had already been one riot in Miami. The textbook for how to do it and the pupils were there to create another.
At this time, I was the director of a community relations organization. We had program connections, collegial relationships, and, in some cases, real friendships with the Cuban community. Yes, we had the same with the Black community, but the times were different. Cubans were quite willing to work with and learn from others about the art and science of climbing the ladder. Not so much Blacks; they wanted to go it alone. I was walking down a street in Overtown in the opposite direction of a mother and her toddler. The child waved at me and said, “Hi!” I responded in kind with a big smile. The mother snatched her child and said very sternly, “Don’t you speak to that white man.” I offer that to show the temper of the times, not put a label on the whole of the community.
Geographically, there is not much distance between the edges of Overtown and the edges of what is famously known as “Little Havana.” I offer one more example of the temper of the times. In a meeting with some Cuban leadership to discuss the riots and their impact on the city, one person said, “Look, make no mistake about it, we’ve all got guns, and if those (N-word) cross (street name), we’re going shoot them.”
Latino society is class-divided racially. If you are Cuban and Black rather than Cuban and light-skinned, you did better. You were accepted better in your own community and outside of it. ‘same thing in Puerto Rico. Same thing in many Latino countries. Latino politicians know all this, but they were either too embarrassed or naïve to develop a policy that spoke to Latinos as Latinos rather than being part of the huddled masses yearning to be free.
It is my contention that the Democrats, with a Black woman at the head of the ticket, failed to see that a message by a Black person to other Black people about economic progress and the like would not resonate the same way with first-generation Latinos, nor older ones either. Here is some research to back that up from the Hispanic Electorate Data Hub.
45% of Latino voters reported they had not been contacted this election.
Overall, only 33% said they were contacted by Democrats, 23% by Republicans
Contact rates were higher in battleground states, particularly GA and PA.
Reported Republican outreach was higher than in previous elections.
Fifty-two percent of the Hispanic electorate saw prices and inflation as their number one issue, while 23% said it was abortion. The Democrat campaign got it backward.
Here is another set of figures that show the Democrats didn’t know how to campaign in the Hispanic community. The #2 issue was Jobs and economy (36%), while #3 was Housing costs and affordability at (27%),
And #4 was Health care costs (25%). The Democrats misread the community.
Yes, Latinos voted Democrat, but in declining numbers. When Trump ran against Biden in 2016, he got 28% of the Hispanic vote. This time around, it was up to 37%, with 43% of Hispanic men voting for him and 48% of the crucial 18-39 quadrant voting for Trump.
An overwhelming acceptance of the party by Latinos might not have changed the Electoral College but it most certainly would have changed the numbers in the House and possibly the Senate as well.
Hindsight is 20-20, but a lot of people are paid a lot of money by political campaigns to have foresight, not hindsight.
There will be more election-oriented columns coming from Bill, but he reminds you that for a lighter look at life, check out his tickle-your-funny-bone funny memoir trilogy. The books, “The War of the Itchy Balls and Other Tales From Brooklyn,” George Washington Didn’t Sleep Here,” and “That’s Why They Call It Work” can be found on Amazon. And as Bill says, “Read! It's good for both of us.”