It’s an overly simplistic way to look at it, but I’ve often thought Florida and California represent two models a diversifying United States could follow. In California, Republicans shot themselves in the groin with the nativist Prop 187 a generation ago. Now the CA GOP, springboard of the wrecking ball Reagan, is a rump party in that state’s government, and California is reliably blue in statewide federal elections.
In Florida, Republicans lionized Cuban immigrants (“exiles”) for decades, creating a loyal bloc of GOP voters who built powerful Spanish language right-wing radio and now social media networks. Maybe that, in addition to location, partially explains why the most right-leaning Latino groups (immigrating from Venezuela, Columbia, etc.) tend to end up here and wield powerful influence on other Spanish speakers.
When Republicans in Congress quit any pretense of good faith efforts to address immigration policy in favor of full-time demagoguery a decade or so ago, reaching an apogee of cynical bad faith and cruelty in the Trump I administration, I hoped their appalling rhetoric and shockingly inhumane actions would send the national GOP down the path trod by their cohort in California.
It was not to be. We don’t have all the data yet, but it’s clear a significant number of Hispanic voters swung hard right in this year’s election. In Florida, an emerging multiracial coalition has been all in on the extremist right-wing politics practiced by people like Trump, DeSantis and Rick Scott for several cycles. And now the 2024 results. What I hoped was a Florida problem is looking like a national issue.
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So, where do we go from here? Fuck if I know. But I believe it’s critically important to recognize this new reality and understand its implications.
It appears Trump picked up voters across all demographics except the college educated. It looks like he made huge inroads with diverse non-college voters, not just in swing states but in blue states like New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts. We can attribute this to global, pandemic-related anti-incumbent fervor, which has taken down governments across ideologies worldwide, and I think that’s a component.
But the slide with Latinos and working class voters started before that. We have to find a way to arrest it, or we are screwed. If analysis shows the GOP making massive gains with minority groups, particularly Hispanics, despite the party’s overtly racist rhetoric, maybe we need to reassess the salience of identity in politics (or how we talk about it) because it looks like voters have.
I don’t have any answers, but maybe it’s something to think about so we can effectively organize resistance to the incoming fascist regime.
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And speaking of resistance, I’m not up for it just now. I’m sad and angry and exhausted. My impulse is to narrow my focus to my family and friend circle and to hell with goddamn fucking politics. If you feel that way too, I understand.
But as a citizen who has lived under a Hungary-style “soft autocracy” at the state level for a number of years, I also know that authoritarians count on us being too exhausted and demoralized to effectively oppose them. Florida’s Democratic Party is famously a basket case and has been a joke for the entirety of this century, and demoralized Democrats can’t seem to get their shit together to change that.
I don’t want the national Democratic Party to suffer that fate. So, I plan to lay low and lick my wounds for a while. But then I’m going to get back up and return to the fight. I have a love-hate relationship with my state AND my country, but ultimately, I believe both are worth fighting for.
Open thread.
