Why the Hispanic-American swing vote is leaning right this November | The Nation
By The Nation
27 November 2014
“The Hispanic vote could be pivotal in determining who wins the presidency in November, and, ultimately, in what era of American government,” says Juan Gonzalez, the Mexican-American editor of the National Review. He warns that if the Republican party were to regain control of the White House and Congress, the Democratic party would lose “more than the Senate” and “the House” and would “find it difficult to defend itself and the country for many more years, maybe never.”
Gonzalez and other commentators on the right echo the view that the Hispanic vote, if it comes to support the Democratic candidate, will be more supportive of the Democrats than of the Republicans. This is the view that has been advanced so often by conservative voices that it is now widely shared by those on the left who see the 2016 election as a contest between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, and no other parties.
One of the most common justifications of this assessment comes from Roger Kimball, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, who in an interview with CNN last year called the potential electoral influence of Hispanics “the most important” argument that the Democrats have for 2016. When asked by anchor Chris Cuomo about what the Democrats could lose if the Hispanic vote came in for the Republicans, Kimball replied: “It could be the White House, it could be the Congress, it could be the Senate, it could be the Supreme Court.”
Kimball is clearly in agreement, however, with Donald Trump. He has repeatedly attacked Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, as “self-hating” and has repeatedly sought to link him to Hillary Clinton. In addition, he has repeatedly attacked Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, as a “thief” and a “loser.”
To many of these attacks, there are valid arguments to be made. But it is to laughingly dismiss the potential electoral influence of the Hispanic population as evidence of the immorality, political illiteracy and ignorance of the Republican Party, the Democratic Party and those on the left who support the Democrats.
It is a political party and its leader who are to blame for the divisions