The Witness Chronicles, 10/29/24

Puerto Ricans could change the election

Photo by Jennifer Chen on Unsplash

Is the Puerto Rican Backlash the ‘October Surprise’?

Just when Trump was winning over Latinos

Once again we see Trump supporters, and the man himself, sabotaging their own attempts to expand their base, just days before the election. Puerto Ricans who live on the island territory can’t vote but Puerto Ricans who live in the mainland US can vote. And there are many more on the mainland than in their homeland.

For those who may not know, Puerto Rico is a US territory and those who are born there are citizens, though the island residents can’t participate in US elections. But there are reports that they are calling their US friends and relatives and urging them to vote for Kamala Harris after being called ‘a floating island of trash’.

And those relatives live in important electoral states including Florida (over 1 million) and Pennsylvania (estimated 280,000) and any shift against Trump could lose him those states and the election.

That’s why there is open panic about the racist statements made at Trump’s Madison Square rally among Republican leaders. Is this the equivalent of the vaunted October Surprise, the unexpected event just prior to the election that changes things?

That will be a question left to data analysts after the election but it certainly isn’t helping Trump, who has not disavowed the statements made by a speaker in support of Trump under the guise of jokes. His campaign released a weak statement saying the comments don’t represent the views of the campaign.

Which gets us to the big problem facing Trump: mollifying his racist base while reaching out to voters of color. He is spectacularly bad at it because of his famous lack of self-control.

I scan the news using a news aggregator app, that gathers stories from across the political spectrum, and every page has this story front and center. It’s news and not good news for the right. Trump has had strong support from Latinos, who tend towards conservative, despite his constant hateful insinuations about immigrants and people of color.

He has actively courted them as a means to expand his base beyond the MAGA hardcores who, though not enough to get him elected, are really the only constituency he can reliably count on. Trump has insulted virtually every possible group that could expand his base while at the same time trying to win them over. It’s inexplicable.

This has been the problem for Trump supporters from day one. They don’t really like any of the groups Trump needs to win, other than rural, white voters. So Trump has to simultaneously woo other voters and minorities while continuing to insult them to satisfy the MAGA goons.

He goes to campaign in Detroit and proceeds to tell Detroiters that if they don’t vote for him, the entire country will look like Detroit. He threatens Jewish voters at a Jewish event, telling them that if he loses they will take the blame. He goes to a conference of black journalists and insults Kamala Harris’s legitimacy as a black person. And on and on.

To political watchers like me, this is crazy. But what is really crazy are these endless polls that either show a dead heat or him leading, so crazy that I pay no attention to them. But I’m sure the pollsters are feverishly polling Latinos to see how those racist insults are affecting them. So get ready for a lot of last minute speculation.

My guess is that American voters are sick to death of this constant stream of hate, doom, and gloom emanating from Republicans. It has accelerated to the point of no return with no lie or hate speech off limits. But these anti-Latino statements may be the line that can’t be crossed. It looks like many prominent Republicans think so.

This may very well cost them more than a presidential race. Senator Rick Scott of Florida could very well lose his senate seat, a seat he won by only 40,000 votes last time around. He knows it but he can’t undo what was said to a room full of 19,500 Trump supporters on national television in a city with a huge Puerto Rican and Latino population. You better believe they are spreading the word.

There are large Latino populations in the swing states, notably Michigan and Pennsylvania, states Trump must win. The question is, as always in this election, will this latest October Surprise change anything?

It could.

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