Hispanic Fanatic

Once again, thanks to Ankhesen Mie for her always insightful comments. Building off that last post, and reneging on my claim that I would not go further into the results of last week’s midterm elections, I have to add one small snowball to the avalanche of analysis that is still cascading down the internet.

As I wrote previously, the GOP gambled that by firing up their base, they would be the big winners on November 2. One of the ways they did this was by appealing to the fears of older white voters. As Speaker Boehner can tell you, this strategy worked.

However, my pals at the Huffington Post have pointed out something that I also noticed. The GOP approach may have backfired more than celebrating Republicans would care to admit.

This is because, despite their success at reclaiming the House, “their hopes of controlling the Senate as well were stymied by a firewall of Latino voters who were outraged by Republican demonization of Latino immigrants.”

Yes, although Republicans coasted to victory nationwide, some of the most virulent conservatives in Senate races failed to capitalize. For example, in Nevada, Sharron Angle — a woman who never saw a race-baiting ad she didn’t like — lost to the embattled Harry Reid. His margin of victory can be attributed to the fact that he earned “a whopping 90 percent” of the Hispanic vote, which “was up from 12 percent of the electorate in the 2006 midterms to 15 percent in 2010.”

Similarly, in Colorado, Illinois, and my current home state of California, Latinos were the difference in high-profile Senate and governor races. It appears, therefore, that more than a few Hispanics were mobilized to vote against politicians they saw as actively hostile to them.

Again, I’m not saying that all Republicans are racists. But it’s clear that Hispanics heard the rhetoric that conservatives employed in this election and didn’t see it “as a difference about a policy or issue. It directly offended the Latino community’s sense of identity, pride and self-worth.”

Now, it’s true that many Latino Republicans won elections last week, a sign that at least some Hispanics are OK with the GOP label. However, it’s also true that in eight key states, “Latinos overall voted for Democrats over Republicans by approximately 75 percent to 25 percent — a 3 to 1 margin.”

In sum, the short-term benefits for Republicans may not have been worth it. This is because Hispanics (and you know this fact already) are the nation’s fastest-growing demographic, and “as the Latino population continues to grow, it will rapidly become impossible to put together an electoral majority … with that kind of Hispanic opposition.”

Of course, Republicans aren’t so dumb or oblivious that they haven’t noticed this development. Their hope, of course, is that by the time the next election comes around, Hispanics will have forgotten that much of the GOP message this time was based on lambasting Latinos. Party leaders are assuming that Hispanics will lapse into amnesia when casting their votes.

This is not crazy. After all, it’s apparently what happened to everyone else in the country last Tuesday.

I’ve avoided saying too much about the midterm elections, mostly because the results are depressing, infuriating, and mystifying. Also, I don’t think the internet needs one more shrill voice proclaiming how Republicans are going to rape the environment just for the hell of it, burn gay people at the stake, and allow corporate CEOs to legally hunt us for sport.

Still, I have to address one side issue of this grueling election season. Perhaps its just semantics, but I have officially run out of patience. I don’t want to hear one more social conservative bellow, “I want my country back!”

There are 300 million of us living here. This is not your country. Neither is it mine, his, or hers.

It is ours.

As cheesy as it sounds, we have to find a way to live together. And exclaiming (threatening?) that you are going to claim this nation for yourself — and the minority of Americans who happen to align with your political and/or religious beliefs —  is not just selfish; it’s foolish.

After all, if you took the country, where would you keep it?

Of course, those insisting that this is “their” country are furious that so many people look different from them, or speak something other than English, or praise some other deity. This was never an issue back in those fabled good old days when everyone was straight, white, and Christian.

But the times are not a-changing. They have a-changed.

And insisting that there is some way to make it all go away, electorally or otherwise, is just a waste of time. So you can stop now — thanks.

My cousin (actually, my wife’s cousin, but we’re all family) recently called me from London. He’s living there for the next couple of years, but he still keeps an eye on news from America. He was upset, close to apocalyptic in fact, about the upcoming elections.

“Those Republicans are crazy,” he said. “You need to write a piece telling Hispanics that they have to vote for Democrats.”

My immediate reaction was that my cousin had a greatly exaggerated impression of just how influential I really am. He was so agitated, however, that I didn’t get a chance to tell him that or my secondary issue. Namely, it’s rather arrogant for me to tell people that it’s their racial duty to vote for anybody, especially when Democrats haven’t exactly been whiz-bang in getting Latino issues to the forefront.

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When President Lyndon Johnson signed civil rights legislation in the 1960s, he famously remarked that Democrats had lost the South for a generation. Of course, he was an optimist. It’s two generations, and counting, since white Southerners have become synonymous with the Republican Party.

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