I hate to play Cassandra, the prophetess of doom, because I do like to look at life from a half-full glass perspective. I think that’s infinitely the healthier way to go. I also take comfort from such aphorisms such as “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.” That is inspirational and comforting, to know that divine intelligence is on our side. We, the moral and the decent, may lose some battles but we will win the war. All that said, yesterday was a primary in many states, and we took a hell of a hit. Therefore, my mood right now is vacillating between somber and morose with dips down to despondent.

Charlie Sykes says it all in his morning newsletter:

Tuesday’s results were bad, and the worst is yet to come. Here is where we are:

  • Rep. Tom Rice was one of just 10 Republicans who voted to impeached Donald Trump. Unlike others, Rice never wavered. Last night, the five-term incumbent was sounded beaten by his Trump-backed opponent. (Nancy Mace, whose grovel-tour took her to Trump Tower, survived.)
  • An election-denier — who told NBC News he would not have certified the 2020 results— won the GOP primary for secretary of state in Nevada. (Trump-backed candidates also won primaries for senate and governor in a state that is now trending red.) As Politico’s Playbook notes this morning: “2020 election deniers are winning everywhere …It’s becoming more common than not for Republicans who support false election fraud theories to win GOP primaries. In many places, it is now the establishment GOP position.”
  • Republicans flipped a once-solidly Democratic congressional seat in an overwhelmingly Hispanic district in Texas. The demographic shift is real.
  • The cherry on top of this steaming pile of awful: A new USA Today Network/Suffolk University poll has right-wing conspiracist Doug Mastriano, within the margin of error in the race for governor.
  • And I’m not going to even get into what’s happening with inflation, interest rates, or the stock market.

Happy f**king Wednesday.

There’s more to this, but this is the best thumbnail sketch you’re going to find today. it is a grave warning that Tom Rice went down in flames. He did the right thing, he voted the right way, and for that he’s a social pariah. This happened in Ohio, when Anthony Gonzalez found himself facing the same kind of backlash, for the same reason, because he was one of the ten. He chose to not seek reelection due to the threats against him and his family. He found the entire ordeal distasteful. Before all that happened I recall thinking that Gonzalez was the face of a new, sane Republican party, because he made sense when he spoke. I thought of the juncture between rational Republican and centrist Democrat, which is where most the real business of government gets done. Well, forget that idea. Next.

The fact that Rice lost and the Trump-endorsed candidate won is a real red flag against any kind of a new, sane Republican party. It is, rather than a flag, a red pointer arrow, and the sign it points to says, “Welcome to MAGA World, This Way Fascism.”

Another extremely sobering fact which was highlighted by last night’s primary is the fact that more and more Hispanics are voting Republican. This is more than a red pointer arrow, this is a goddamn rocket flare.

And this has been going on for some time. I remember Latinos For Trump putting on a demonstration in blazing blue California. I called an Hispanic friend and asked her what was going on. She said she had no idea but that people at the office had voted for Trump. I said, “Don’t they know that’s like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders?” No, apparently they do not.

This is a major, major issue that the Democrats need to get under control and I mean jimmy pronto. There is some crazed fallacy that the Hispanics identify as POCs. They do NOT! I can emphatically tell you, again, from living my entire life in both California and Colorado, which have a substantial Hispanic population, they do not identify with being POCs. I don’t want to say, “they consider themselves white people,” because that has a ghastly, inflammatory sound to it, but given a choice, if the Hispanics were polled, “Are you white or POC?” I believe they would choose white. This is the best I can articulate this. This is an abstract concept, but it can remain abstract no more because of what we are seeing in the primaries and the polls.

I do not know what the attraction to Donald Trump could be, unless it is the attraction of the outlier who made good. That is my best analysis and I’m shooting from the hip on this one. It could be that they like the image of Trump shaking things up and creating opportunity for himself in politics. Maybe that’s it. But they’re not looking at the fact that Trump shaking things up is shaking us towards autocracy and away from democracy. And it’s not going to be a better world for them. Trump hates Hispanics. They may consider themselves white but he does not. He sees them as “the other” and if that is not screamingly evident then I don’t know what else to say.

For more elaboration, read this terrific essay by Ruy Texeiera. I read this in December, when he published it. It sobered me then, but now it terrifies me.

Turning to the nature and size of recent Hispanic shifts against the Democrats—it’s not as bad as you think, it’s worse. Here are ten points drawn from available data about the views and voting behavior of this population. Read ‘em and weep.

1. In the most recent Wall Street Journal poll, Hispanic voters were split evenly between Democrats and Republicans in the 2022 generic Congressional ballot. And in a 2024 hypothetical rematch between Trump and Biden, these voters favored Biden by only a single point. This is among a voter group that favored Biden over Trump in 2020 by 26 points according to Catalist (two party vote).

2. In the same poll, Biden’s net approval rating among Hispanics was -12 (42 percent approval/54 percent disapproval), the latest in a string of poor approval ratings among Hispanics. Hispanics in the poll favor Republicans in Congress over Democrats on containing inflation and securing the border. They are strongly negative on the economy, with just 25 percent believing it is headed in the right direction, compared to 63 percent who believe it is headed in the wrong direction.

3. A recent 538 analysis of aggregated poll data shows that, while Biden has lost support among all racial groups in the last 9 months, the decline has been sharpest among Hispanics.

4. In Texas, perhaps the Democrats’ most prized target for their theory of the case, Biden’s ratings among Hispanics have been dreadful. A September Dallas Morning News poll had Biden’s approval rating among Texas Hispanics at an anemic 35 percent vs. 54 percent disapproval–19 points underwater. His approval rating on handling immigration at the border was even worse–29 points underwater. The latter rating is similar to Biden’s rating on the same issue among Texas Hispanics in the more recent Texas Tribune poll. […]

9. You can even see the pro-Trump Hispanic shift in New York City. An excellent analysis by Matthew Thomas shows:

Precincts where at least 50% of residents are Hispanic swung toward Trump by 18 points, with a quarter of voters now backing him for reelection. The shift was even more pronounced in precincts where at least 75% of residents are Hispanic, which had a swing of 25 points toward Trump. Out of all the ethnic enclaves in Queens, Hispanic areas showed the largest movement away from Democrats in 2020, a result consistent with national patterns.

10. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Democrats have seriously erred by lumping Hispanics in with “people of color” and assuming they embraced the activism around racial issues that dominated so much of the political scene in 2020, particularly in the summer. This was a flawed assumption. The reality of the Hispanic population is that they are, broadly speaking, an overwhelmingly working class, economically progressive, socially moderate constituency that cares above all, about jobs, the economy and health care.

The concept of Donald Trump as friend of the working man was insane. The only thing more insane is Donald Trump friend of the Hispanics. But that is apparently how they are seeing it.

The Democrats need to regroup and retool our thinking. We are in a world of hurt right now. And I frankly fear for November, on the facts of what went down in last night’s primary. I was optimistic about the results of other primaries. The crazy elements did better than I hoped, obviously, but not unexpectedly so. Last night was different. Now I think that the best case scenario that we can hope for is losing the House with a slim enough margin to where McCarthy and the Republican caucus won’t lose their damn minds and start impeaching and investigating everybody on day one, but maybe feel a little constrained.

That’s not much of a best case scenario. That’s hardly the stuff of which bucket lists are made. But I think we better put it on our bucket list because realistically, this might be as good as it’s going to get, all things considered.

 

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29 COMMENTS

  1. I was watching an interview about this point and the respondent made the point that Latinos, particularly from Cuba and Central America are responding to the “socialism” issue. Many have lived through “socialism” and vote against it.

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    • And it’s not just ‘socialism’ (an obvious red herring by repuQs), but social issues that are turning Latinos away from the Democratic Party. The majority are very conservative Catholics and are concerned about the influence of LGBTQ and abortion, two issues very important to Dems. I don’t know how we reconcile this with them, but obviously we need to hammer home that there are way more important issues, immediate issues, where Dem’s will represent them better than the repuQ’s who will discriminate against and undermine them.

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    • If they’re stupid enough to buy that GOP line then they may really find themselves living under socialism again. The Democrats are not about socialism. That is a GOP talking point.

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  2. I don’t think the Texas 34 result is significant. Only 28000 people voted compared to almost 200000 that voted in 2020. The republican candidate outspent the dem by about 10 to 1. The district is redrawn so it won’t be the same in 2022.

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  3. These are primaries. Only the most dedicated voters show up for primaries. These results don’t worry me that much. Most of these state-wide MAGAts will lose in Nov. The House is another story. It was always going to be an uphill climb, but if we hold on to the Senate, and that’s looking pretty good, McCarthy (if he even manages to get elected speaker) and the Freedumb caucus will spend all their time knifing each other.

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  4. The trumpet running for SofS in Nevada was outed by an acquaintance for sending an email saying the black incumbent should be hanged from a crane. We’ll see how that plays in the general…

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  5. I have two thoughts to offer:

    First, while the ole “Arc of the Moral Universe” sentiment is a beautiful thought, it IS long and it bends towards justice WAY too slowly. Think of it this way. Our planet is (as I recall) about 4.5 billion years old. There has been life in one form or another for less than half that. Species and ecosystems have come and gone and someday ours will be gone too. In geologic time it will be at best a blip. A typical human lifespan is well less than a hundred years. To our planet, that is NOTHING. Even a thousand years is NOTHING. So this bending towards justice but slowly doesn’t work so well. Evolution itself proves that many a species ruins things for itself and humans aren’t as evolved (or higher thinking) as we think we are!

    I thought about an old movie named Wind. It’s about the America’s Cup, back in the old days when it was something worth paying attention to and rich amateurs with money to burn usually won. The storyline was around our finally losing the cup to a team from Australia, and the main character (unfairly) being blamed for the loss of the longest held trophy in sports. He decides to try and organize a shoestring effort to get it back and winds up out in the middle of the desert out west where the gal he had been with (but left him when he chose his job over her) was working with an aircraft designer. She too was an engineer and a damned good one. Her new guy was financially on the edge and decided to try his hand at boat design and an informal partnership arose.

    It’s testy at first but things get worked out and there’s a moment when the main character (played by Matthew Modine) and the designer (Stellen Skarsgard) take the model down to the river for a final test. As they are hooking it up to the frame that will hold it in place and wiring all the sensors there’s a conversation where the designer says he’s factored in all the data on the sea conditions down under where the races will be held and the issue of compromises comes up and decisions had to be made. Modine’s character asks what seems like a simple and logical question – “What’s wrong with perfection?” The reply from Skarsgard is devastating – “Nothing. If you’re God. And willing to wait a few million years but we have to start building this boat next week.”

    And here we are. Time is something we have precious little of. In some respects such as climate change we have already passed a tipping point and may be too far on the other side to last much longer, at least in anything like the world we’ve all known. Politically, we might be in the same boat. We’ve passed a tipping point and may be too far down the slope to get back to the top and try and regroup. It’s not just in this country either. Other free countries are having their own problems due to the greed and lust for power of a handful of people. So, I fear you might be correct and that the next generation is fucked, and succeeding ones will be increasingly so.

    The other point I’d mention is about people from countries south of our border or of such heritage. Many speak little if no English. I’ve worked with some of these people and groups in my life and one thing has always stood out – how influential their fucking PRIESTS are in their lives. While I admit my experience is anecdotal most of the time the priests that serve these poor parishes (and even some that are working or middle class) tend to be old-school priests. Conservative. CONSERVATIVE, and especially on issues like abortion and homosexuality. For all the justified worry about the mega-church preachers the alarming fact is that in cities around the country but especially in the southwest there are swaths of communities served by these hard-core conservative priests and those parishioners listen to them.

    So yes, there’s a problem out there and it’s not going to be solved by appealing to things like immigration reform.

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  6. “We, the moral and the decent, may lose some battles but we will win the war”

    You were calling for the state to put people in concentration camps for not having a DNA-altering mystery substance injected into their bodies just because the guy on tv said it was good. You are in favor of cutting off little boys’ genitalia,turning the remains inside out and making them into a horrific open wound parody of female genitalia. You are for stabbing babies in the head in the womb,dismembering their corpses,sucking them out with a vacuum cleaner, and then selling their body parts to be used on an industrial scale to make beauty creams for women. You are on the side of those who sent the military to force children at gunpoint to go to school with people that they didn’t want to be around, and now the side of the people who accuse their descendants of being evil because they aren’t happy about it.

    You are not moral. You are not decent.

    If you win,your prize will be a pile of ash and rubble with human corpses strewn all over it,because the means ARE the end.

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    • Given your ability to write in complete sentences with proper grammar and spelling you’re not an idiot. That makes you a goddamned fucking LIAR. Your claims are bullshit. I believe with all my heart you know your claims are bullshit but you don’t care. I don’t know what’s in it for you to spread the kind of LIES you are spreading (I’m certain if you spout this toxic bullshit here you post it all over the place!) but contempt doesn’t come close to what I feel towards you and people like you.

    • What dimension did all this happen in? I’m glad you’re here, actually, it’s always nice to know just what level of insanity is out there. Concentration camps?

  7. Apparently, wokeness is your disconnected reality and source of truth. Truth has become a collection of opinions from your deranged mind. If there is no source for absolute truth, perspectives like yours are the result. Opinions are like armpits sometimes, and when you raise them, they just stink. Well, my opinion, that would stink to “high heaven” in your nostrils, is that there is a Creator who knows and has established absolutes. I’ll just agree with Him, and who He says is Truth…Jesus Christ! You can wallow in “your truth” to your heart’s content. I do believe there will be a day when your eyes will be opened, and your perspective will simply evaporate.

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  8. A testy whine-fest meant to motivate the Democrats before MAGA suddenly leads the land. Look— YOU and your ilk elected Biden and Harris. Nothing Biden has done has worked. Harris doesn’t even bother to work. This goon squad was YOUR solution to “Orange man bad.” That means that rampant inflation, impossible prices for gas and food, a flood of BS spending backed by printing of increasingly worthless dollars, polling that puts Biden/Harris in the deep end of the pool, plus a Democrat controlled Congress that thinks that nothing in the country is more important than “Trump Impeachment Round #3.”
    Our county’s current troubles are ALL due to the failures of Democratic rule. Biden/Harris is perfectly emblematic of the spineless ninny speak and refusal to act according to the will of the people. Biden/Harris was the best Democrats could do. We hope something mitigates the current downward spiral before our entire country looks like Baltimore or Detroit.

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  9. Wow, you leftists just cannot see reality, can you? You’re living in this imaginary world where good ‘ole Uncle Sam should take care of everybody, blacks are a non-working race that need your help to survive (see your own point #10 where you say that blacks don’ t work), and evertything that is wrong is the evil Mr. Trump’s fault. And just to clarify, inflation is 100% yhe fault of Joe Biden and Democratic policies as a whole.

    Why does everything have to be about race? Maybe hispanics like Donald Trump, not because he’s a “friend of hispanics” but because he’s a friend of Americans. Meanwhile, all of your Democratic politicians are making it very clear that they hate Americans and what America stands for.

    In less than ten years, you leftists have created such a toxic and hostile political environment based on hate and racism that we’re no longer just Americans; we’re now either Conservative Americans or Liberal Americans. There is no unity; there is no cooperation. You cannot even hear a disagreement or have a debate without resorting to namecalling and insults. There is no intelligence in the modern leftists; you don’t think for yourselves. It’s all emotional arguments, gaslighting, and throwing temper tantrums when you don’t get your own way. The sky is falling because a couple of Republicans won a few mid-terms? Look around at this country and what a mess you Democrats have made it and tell me again why less Democrats is a bad thing. You’ve sown hate, racism, and depravity into every aspect of our society that you can. You preach equality but believe that blacks are inferior victims who need your help. You covet what others have, don’t want to work for it, and then claim capitalism is the problem and socialism is the answer. You shoot up schools and movie theaters and then turn around and say this wouldn’t happen if we had gun control. No, it wouldn’t have happened if crazy, unstable Democrolats weren’t shooting up the place. You call what is good, evil, and what is evil, good. You loathe responsibility, maturity, and self-sufficiency. You call everything that you dont want to work for or don’t want to do, a basic human right. Housing is a right, food is a right, healthcare is a right, broadband internet is a right, murdering an innocent baby, because you dont want to be responsible for your actions, is a right.

    Maxine Waters encourages violence against the conservatives, leftists try to intimidate and “protest” and attempt to murder those who don’t give them their own way. But you’re right, this is all Donald Trump’s fault.

    Until people like you take the red pill for once, and wake up from this fairy tale that you live in and start living in the real world, things will only continue to get worse. But Orange Man Bad, right?

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    • Dear God. This thread is amazing. We must be coming up in the world if we’re getting under your skin like this. This is a Democratic site. We make no claims to be anything else. But you’re welcome to chime in and educate us as to how lost America is.

    • Well said. I totally agree. Wish we could get rid of these demon evil loving idiots. They are not any good for this country and are taking us all down. But what these idiots don’t realize is they will be going down also. The power to be does not care about the American people and that means the leftist will go down also even though you supported the idiot. You will see who the real idiots are then.

  10. Once again trying to divide us by race. We the people are smarter than that and you’re going to realize that come November. Then it’s on to getting rid of Joe and the puppet masters that control him.

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  11. I don’t think Hispanics are voting red because they identify as white. That’s a really stupid idea.
    People are sick of the do nothing dems. Excuses are the only thing that’s been built back better. Manchin should’ve been blackballed but no we gotta play nice. F that. The gop doesn’t play nice they do however get laws passed.

    People are sick of the only reason to vote blue being that red is worse. We need something to vote FOR not against.

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  12. I didn’t say Hispanics are voting red because they identify as white. I said that they do not identify as POCs which is a key portion of the Democratic base.

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