What's harder to accept is that for a Republican, Trump did exceptionally well among minorities, Latinos in particular.
Despite years of being pegged as a racist and a xenophobe (not always without warrant), Trump actually increased his margins among minority voters.
The question that will plague the political class throughout the election postmortem is why.
Was it the message — religious freedom, social conservatism, school choice, law and order, and a strong economy — or was it (heaven forbid) the messenger?
"The messenger does matter," he told me.
That's because "to his credit, Trump and his team have shown up" for Hispanics, Ortega said.
Despite a dearth of media coverage on the subject (has anyone heard of the President's
And where other politicians have failed to appreciate the demographic's nuances, the Trump administration has done well at
tailoring its pitches to, say, Hispanics in Texas vs. those in
But Ortega says the message itself has been a huge factor, too.
Jobs and the economy are top of mind to Hispanics. Until the pandemic shutdowns began crippling local economies, Latinos were largely thriving, attributable at least in part to Trump's efforts at deregulation and tax relief.
"The idea of expanding opportunity resonated with Latinos," said Ortega, and the promise of economic prosperity is especially important to recent immigrants.
But so are education and religious freedom — the latter is no abstraction for some immigrants of faith. And Trump delivered on those, too.
"It's easy to buy into the narrative that immigration is the only issue that matters," he added. "That isn't true."
Speaking of false narratives, Trump's support among Hispanics suggests that identity politics as a rallying issue does not resonate with minority communities the same way it does with white progressives and urban elites.
Take, for example, the insistence by progressives on using "Latinx" to describe people of Hispanic origin, despite the reality that almost no Hispanics (3%) use the term.
But the disparity between Hispanic self-perception and elite-imposed identity doesn't end there.
"The idea of getting ahead through individual agency is probably the biggest difference between how (Latino) immigrants see
themselves and how the woke see them," said
In a recent column for The Wall Street Journal, he wrote that "the progressive cobbling of pan-ethnicities that dates to the 1970s (is) a way to instill members of minority groups with grievances."
That effort has accelerated in recent years and reached a fever pitch this summer with the insistence that Hispanics, as people of color, are first and foremost victims of America's entrenched systemic racism.
This year's election suggests that there are plenty of Hispanics who think otherwise — and vote otherwise, too.
Whether message or messenger, the motivations behind Trump's minority supporters will be fascinating to unpack.
They suggest that
(COMMENT, BELOW)
Cynthia M. Allen
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
(TNS)
Cynthia M. Allen is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Previously:
• 09/27/20
• 09/15/20 News on COVID-19 is not all terrible, especially compared to warnings of 6 months ago
• 07/28/20 A Biden childcare proposal that even conservative could embrace
• 06/30/20 Black lives matter. As we address racism, we must talk about the unborn ones, too
• 06/23/20 Good news: You can be a mask skeptic and still wear one to prevent COVID-19 spread
• 06/16/20 After George Floyd, we must all challenge our assumptions about racism in America
• 06/09/20 George Floyd, good and bad police officers, and the things on which we can all agree
• 06/02/20 A post-coronavirus baby boom seems unlikely. Here's why that's a problem
• 05/26/20 How public health officials created cognitive dissonance, culture war
• 05/18/20 As states start to reopen, be a good neighbor, not a tattletale
• 04/15/20 Abortion is not health care, and amid global coronavirus crisis, it's not 'essential'