Trump and Latinos

“What’s up with Latinos and Trump?” people have been asking me for several years now. The truth is, I don’t know. But I do know that any answer is complex and, quite possibly, dark.

First, let’s start with the current narrative: Donald Trump and his MAGA movement are succeeding in peeling off Latino voters at a pace that risks Kamala Harris’s presidential candidacy. According to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll of likely Latino voters across the country, Kamala Harris is “underperforming the last three Democratic candidates for the White House.”

Yikes … maybe. Even “underperforming,” a significant majority of Hispanics (57 percent) support Harris over Trump. We have just started to go to the polls, so the narrative could change.

But my eternal optimism is dimming. What appalls, frightens, embarrasses and baffles me is that the more outlandish Trump gets, especially around the issue of immigration (which I loosely take as a surrogate for “Hispanic”), the more we Latinos seem to fall for him.

Why? Where’s our sense of self-respect? Of solidarity for those who look like us and therefore for whom we could be mistaken and profiled once Trump’s promised mass deportations start? Where’s the sense of vergüenza (shame) taught to us by our mothers and abuelitos?

My first reductive answer is: It’s a d--- thing. Among Hispanic women, Harris has a 26-point lead over Trump. Among Hispanic men, Harris and Trump are essentially tied, at 47 percent each.

We Latinos come from a notoriously macho culture, a mantle I’ve long fought against but which increasingly seems to be true. Trump, with his pseudo swagger, his pantomime snarl, his prepubescent taunts and toddler name-calling — in other words, his caricature of masculine behavior — resonates with many Latino men. His cosplaying apparently sells in an era when many guys have been left feeling uncertain about their place in a changing world.

Another characteristic is socio-economic. Latino men are overrepresented in blue-collar jobs and earn about 75 percent of what non-Latino men earn. Only 9 percent of Latino males hold college degrees, compared to 21 percent of non-Latino males.

Trump is the self-proclaimed billionaire who has harrumphed his way into the working class, the scripted rich guy who swims in status symbols.

Trump’s a familiar type of entertainer to Latinos. He’s Technicolor bold, way bigger than life, just like the lucha libre wrestlers many of us grew up with — a cartoon-inspired, glitter-masked world of fake wrestling.

He’s a “great businessman” because we saw him play one on TV. He signed the stimmy checks (another con — Democrats passed the stimulus bill, Trump opposed it but took the credit). If you’re Cuban, he’s anti-socialist.

Seeing this guy proclaim that he’s coming out of our corner of the ring, suffering indignities and risking martyrdom for us (a great Catholic and Evangelical trope), well, it all feels right and familiar, so why not let him slither in?

Which leads to the darker side of things.

Trump is aspirational. He’s made us believe he’s the hombre we want to be. Rich, able to grab women by the p---- and get away with it. And if he can get away with it, why can’t we?

But there’s something even more profound and at the same time kind of American-basic going on.

Many Hispanics — men and women — want to assimilate. Whether generations-long American or recent arrival, many of us just want to be seen as fully American. Maybe that’s why 67 percent of those in the Times-Siena poll answered that when Trump talks about problems with immigration, “I do not feel like he is talking about me.”

Why associate with the label of “rapist,” “criminal,” “vermin,” “cat-eater” or “gang banger”? The easiest way into the American dream is by defining your way out, by distancing yourself from it all.

This, after all, is the American way. We’re in, so it’s okay to close the door now.

I saw it happening mid-island while making a documentary about the hate-based attempted murder of two day laborers from Mexico.

Italian-, Polish-, German-Americans, a generation or two off the boat who were far enough along the road to being American to flee the city and find refuge in leafy suburban bungalows. Understandably overwhelmed by their street corners being overrun by migrants, they reacted. Some turned their hearts to stone and let hate swell to the point of violence.

It’s the American immigrant story.

Much to my chagrin, we Latinos are as susceptible, as the last wave, especially when division is being stoked by someone trying to gain the newly defined immunities of the American presidency, or the privileges of lower tax rates. (I’m looking at you, Elon Musk, and your apartheid adjacent, South African-born billionaire posse.) Or if you’re Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping, cleverly exploiting divisions in our country in order to gain a candidate sympathetic to your authoritarian regime.

And the tragedy is that those seeking discord and division are winning, as evidenced by the number of Hispanic- and African Americans reportedly being swayed by Trump and his MAGA movement, and being turned as ethnic groups against each other. This is the way of the dark lords — divide to conquer.

In the earlier days of the multicultural civil rights movement, we knew there was power in numbers. We strived to build coalitions. We realized they were fragile, that our differences could outweigh our common cause, but the struggle toward understanding and mutual identification was worth it.

Now, that earnest work that gained so much is being torn asunder, its fissures mined and exploited with mis- and dis-information. And, sadly, we Latinos are falling like a ton of bricks for it, even if it means seeing our family or our neighbor’s family separated in the name of un payaso anaranjado, an orange clown.

This election ain’t over until November 5, so I may allow myself some hope after all.

Polls have shown that about 25 percent of Latinos remain undecided. While a majority of Hispanics are concerned about security at the border, 85 percent support regularizing the status of millions of undocumented U.S. residents. My hope is that this is the form of Latinidad that will cast its vote this year: tough and practical, but compassionate and family-oriented.

For me, that means voting for Harris/Walz nationally and John Avlon, whom I’ve met and for whose campaign I’ve volunteered because of his genuine support for the Latino community, for Congress.

We have until October 26 to register to vote. If you haven’t already, do it.