How Donald Trump is bruising Texas (and the Democrats are happy)
By Victor Landa, NewsTaco
In Texas we’re waiting for the state to turn from red to purple, like a bruise. Both the hopeful and the weary know that the Republican stranglehold on Texas will loosen because Latinos keep having babies while the GOP waits for the time prophesied by Ronald Reagan when Latinos come to the rapturous realization that they’re really conservatives, they just didn’t know it.
[pullquote]Trump didn’t invent prejudice, but he has signaled to the bigots that it’s OK to open the barn doors and stink up the farm.[/pullquote]Both the problem and the blessing is Donald Trump.
For the GOP [tweet_dis]it’s not that Trump alienates Latinos, it’s that he riles the rowdy bigots.[/tweet_dis] There’s a video that’s gotten sticky on social media where two Black ladies hit the record button on their mobile device while they confront a White couple who they claim had accosted them with racial slurs.
It happened at my favorite burger joint so I was personally invested – I consider Chester’s burgers comfort food, and I’ll leave it at that.
It didn’t used to be that way. Racial slurs weren’t rampant like they seem to be today, and the people who felt victimized by them didn’t take it upon themselves to stand up to the perceived offense as often as they seem to do today. We didn’t carry recording devices in our pockets with the ability to broadcast our lives at the click of a virtual button. Bigots didn’t feel they had the public space to vent their ignorance – they do now.
I put the blame squarely on the shoulders of Donald Trump.
He didn’t invent prejudice, but he has signaled to the bigots that it’s OK to open the barn doors and stink up the farm. And let’s be truthful about this, [tweet_dis]what Donald Trump has enabled with his public words and his broadcast attitude is plain, vulgar, run-of-the-mill bigotry.[/tweet_dis] The word racism seems to water it down, make it academic while the reality is coarse, obscene, lewd, smutty.
Shove that aside for a moment, let it simmer in its stool scent while we look at the other end of the equation. Latinos keep having babies, as a group we keep getting younger while whites have upended the balance and seem to be dying faster than they’re procreating. Sooner or later the point is going to tip.
That’s when Texas will bruise through and through . . .
. . . become purple and be in political play. That’s why after the last presidential election the GOP cut open their party carcass and developed a plan to make it live again. They needed to be more inclusive, they said.
Then Trump happened and the plan withered; the rowdies got out of the barn and it tumbled away.
Meanwhile Latinos have rallied around their loathing for Trump (technically 80 percent of Latinos loathe Trump. Twenty percent think he’s OK) and produced a swell of political action and interest. We’re registering to vote in droves, giving the media smart guys a reason to take a second look – Latino voters in some swing states have the ability to sway the election.
In Texas we’re thinking that the bruising will come sooner than later.
[tweet_dis]It’s possible that Texas will be in play from this election forward. Possible, but not likely. Not this time around, anyway.[/tweet_dis]For the GOP, with any luck, Trump will lose the election and they can take him to the back lot where candidates go to be forgotten. Then they can dust off the old autopsy report from four years past and see if it has any life left in it.
By then though, the red may have already turned to purple.
[Photo by DonkeyHotey/Flickr]
