I’m part of the problem.
OK, not me personally, but Latino men such as myself.
You see, “evidence is mounting that the national political environment right now actually leans toward Democrats.”
To be clear, the GOP is still favored to win the House in the midterms, but that fabled red wave might end up as more of a magenta splash.
I’m sure Republicans are wondering why their insurmountable lead has dissipated. Hey, maybe praising a sociopath who steals nuclear secrets, insulting everyone with college debt, and forcing raped children to carry pregnancies to term make for bad campaign ads.
In any case, one reason why Republicans are still hanging in there is that “voters of color are backing the GOP at historic levels.” This is surprising, considering that Republicans are constantly playing kissy-face with white supremacists.
Of course, ethnic minorities are still overwhelmingly Democratic. But the fact remains that when it comes to voting, the “racial gap is minuscule by historical standards.”
How can this be?
Well, political scientists say that the overall demographic of ethnic minorities consists of more Latinos than ever, and “Hispanic voters don’t support Democrats as much.” In fact, the Republican Party has had great success with its Latino outreach efforts. And some studies imply that the Latino working class is almost as socially conservative as its white working-class brethren.
That’s all true. But let’s dig a little deeper.
Research shows that “men who are anxious about their masculinity are more likely to support aggressive politics” and to vote Republican. And who is more obsessed with appearing manly than the guys who created the very concept of machismo?
We have all met the Latino guy who loved Trump only because he appeared tough. Expand this to a societal scale, and you have an enormous contingent of Latino men who support the GOP for no other reason than that’s where the macho is.
These self-proclaimed bad hombres don’t care that Latinos were severely undercounted in the 2020 census, or that the Trump administration “actively sought to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census in the hope that their erasure would also make legal immigrants avoid being counted.” This “arbitrary and capricious” plan was designed to scare off Latinos from the census, and it appears to have worked.
Perhaps these Latino men also don’t know that while every sane American was trying to ban assault weapons, the GOP was fighting to hold on to them. This is despite the fact that Latino “communities are disproportionately affected by gun violence in the United States,” and that Latino children and teens “are three times more likely to be killed by gun homicide than their white peers.”
By the way, Republicans were willing to accept a partial ban on assault weapons as long as they got an exemption “for anyone who lives within 10 miles of an international border,” because armed Americans are needed “to prevent an ‘invasion’ on the southern border.”
Basically, they wanted to make it OK to shoot Latino immigrants—and tough-guy Hispanics were good with that.
Now, Latino men are hardly the first group to vote against their own interests. Poverty-stricken people across America routinely support tax cuts for billionaires due to some strange hero worship of the rich. And a majority of white women still vote Republican despite the overt misogyny of the conservative movement. This is because white women “have long been able to gain power in a sexist society by allying themselves with white supremacy.”
But it is disturbing that so many Latinos love a political party that is overtly striving to create a white nationalist country.
However, that love may be short-lived. Recently, the GOP has suffered a “greater erosion of Latino voter support, in part because of the overturning of the landmark ruling that made abortion legal.”
I know—banning abortion was supposed to make all those old-school Catholic Latinos shout, “Praise God!” and pull the lever for the GOP. However, conservatives may have been indulging in one of their favorite hobbies: living in the past.
Recent polls show that 75 percent of Latino Catholics support “the legalization of abortion in ‘most or all cases.’” Back in 2010, “only 51% showed said the same.”
In other words, being anti-abortion is no longer a winner with Latinos, “especially as the country’s largest ethnic voting cohort continues to politically evolve.”
As you can imagine, Latinas are more likely to be in favor of Roe v. Wade. It’s the Hispanic men causing the problems.
All I can do is apologize.
Featured image by Anthony Crider/CC BY 2.0
