Only in Miami
MIAMI – “Doral welcomes Trump,” screamed the headline on the front page of last’s Saturday’s Miami Herald.
A community made up mostly of people of Latin American descent welcoming with open arms a candidate who owes his rise to vicious attacks against Mexicans, by far the largest Latino group in the country? Only in Miami.
Actually, perhaps only in Doral, which is as unrepresentative of Latino Miami as a whole as Miami is of the Latino population in this country.
Trump couldn’t have picked a more congenial Latino audience for his bombastic rhetoric. “We will build a wall!” Trump told the crowd, which reportedly responded with “rabid applause.” Indeed, the Herald reported that “interviews with several Hispanics in the audience revealed many of them agree with Trump’s tough stance.”
Of course they did. What Latino would subject herself or himself to the torture of listening to Trump’s tripe unless they agreed with him in the first place?
Surely, Trump would not have gotten such a favorable reception at, for instance, Florida International University, a number of whose students showed up in Doral to protest Trump. They got escorted–or thrown–out by security guards depending on Trump’s whims. At first, Trump told security guards physically removing protesters from the venue not to hurt the demonstrators. Then, with his characteristic volatility, he switched gears:: “get the hell out of here.” Then a Trump supporter used his cell phone to record the protesters being evicted and called them “savages.”
The savages were not the students but were to be found among the die-hard Trump crowd. One Cuban American expressed a deep contempt for recent immigrants: “The immigration that has come here over the past 20 years has been junk.” Ironically, a good number of the people who now reside in Doral have come to this country during the last two decades. No matter. Trump was in his element, expressing and inciting ugly resentments and irrational divisions.
Trump’s appeal ranges much wider than Doral, a small suburban middle and upper-middle class city of recent mintage. Trump’s appeal there derives in part from the fact that the Latinos who live in Doral are on average more secure from the standpoint of immigration and significantly better-off than the county’s or nation’s Latino population in general.
But this sector, which for instance includes many Venezuelans, only makes up a minuscule fraction of the Latino electorate in the United States. Latino support in Doral and, his lower but not insignificant support among other Latinos in South Florida, is an anomaly, a made-in-Miami phenomenon that politically amounts to nothing.
Trump’s core support lies elsewhere, mainly among Anglo Americans angry at any number of things they feel are wrong with the country, with immigration the common denominator and principal lighting rod. That support is by no means insignificant. What once seemed to be a joke is becoming more serious. Although many analysts, myself included, still believe Trump will not win the GOP nomination, many are considering the possibility that he might.
That, in many ways, would be a disaster. A nation already beset by paralyzing divisions and deep racial antagonisms will only become more polarized. And the campaign will be uglier than sin.
Yet, looked from another, more Machiavellian angle, Trump’s nomination would be godsend. That is, for those of us who believe Republican rule is a calamity. To start with, during recent election campaigns, serious analysts have held that to win the White House a GOP candidate must win about 40 percent of the Latino vote.
That was George W. Bush’s winning formula, engineered by “Bush’s brain,” Karl Rove. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, got nowhere near that number and lost decisively to Barack Obama who received massive Latino support,
All the GOP candidates still standing, all have to one extent or another gone in for immigrant bashing, and none–including Marco Rubio–can hope to attain Bush’s magic number. But if Donald Trump is nominated, he would make Romney’s Latino numbers look good in comparison. Barring a bizarre set of circumstances, a GOP defeat would be assured.
Then too Trump has offended so many other key constituencies–especially women who represent [a bit more than] half the electorate–on top of the Latinos that it’s hard to see a Trump path to victory.
I can hear the skeptics. “Be careful what you wish for.” “You mean you want that nutcase to be a presidential candidate?”
I admit I would prefer a colonoscopy without benefit of anesthesia to have to hear Trump blab and bluster for months. But I am ready to withstand the pain, or hold my nose, or plug my ears if it means we wouldn’t have to live without another Republican like George W. Bush or worse in the White House.
