DID THE LATINO VOTE in Texas let down Democratic political darling Beto O'Rourke? Did the Latino Vote fail to drive the anticipated Blue Wave that was suppose to sweep across America in response to President Donald Trump's border wall, demonization of immigrants and political exploitation of the Central American migrant caravan headed to the U.S.
In the coming days we'll hear commentators and pundits expound on the Latino Vote and how once again it failed to materialize. Look at poor Beto as proof. The Sleeping Giant, they call it.
But it will take some powerful documentation to convince me. A few weeks ago I did an informal poll of my extended family in Texas. It is no ordinary family. One of my aunts had almost 20 kids Another a dozen, maybe more. Growing up in football crazed Texas, I used to joke that two or three of my aunts alone could field teams out of their immediate families.
Would you believe that today my extended family numbers in the hundreds, and that's just the legitimate ones, living all over the Lone Star State.
And my poll? More than two-thirds told me that they were voting for Ted Cruz. Only about 20 percent said they would vote for Beto. The others wouldn't say how they were voting.
That wasn't all. I also learned that an overwhelming majority love Donald Trump and approve of his policies.
My lord. My first instinct was to feel thankful mom and dad had gone on to the Kingdom of Heaven. Then I realized they became Republicans when their Texas hero and friend John. B. Connally left the Democratic Party in the 1970s. Heck, I don't know if they would have voted for JFK today, much less for Beto from El Paso.
I suspect that my family in Texas is not an exception -- that Latinos there are not the big flaming liberals that Democrats and many political reporters imagine them to be. They are not a political monolith, and a surprising number don't tell pollsters the truth -- why would they? -- and love Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, oppose liberal immigration reforms and abortion and don't want anyone messing with their gun rights.
Over the years of covering politics, civil rights and Latinos, I have also come to this conclusion, which is supported by my anecdotal experience with my family: No matter the level of their participation as registered voters or as voters at the polls, that Latinos — much as other Americans — only eventually come to reflect the political views of the society in which they live and into which they acculturate.
This puts a different spin on perhaps the most predictable discussion every election year about the inevitability of the Latino Vote: how the unprecedented growth of Latinos in the population will impact politics and public policy once their voting power is realized. For more than three decades, political scientists and pundits have called Latino voters the “sleeping giant,” describing them as a demographic reality that has yet to translate to clear political force — a force that could dramatically shift political power affecting local and regional governance in America and even the election of the presidency.
However, neither popular nor scholarly studies or reports have addressed the central question of the validity of this Sleeping Giant premise. Is it even true? Doesn’t it assume that all those newly enfranchised Latino voters not only will register as Democrats but also vote the Democratic line? But what if that hypothesis is wrong? Latinos are as diverse as America. Beyond language, there is little in common between the Puerto Ricans of New York and the Cubans of Florida, much less those groups with the Mexican Americans of Texas and California, the Hispanos of New Mexico and the immigrants from Central America throughout the country. Even the Mexican Americans from Texas and California have stark differences, especially in their voting.
What if the Sleeping Giant is little more than the clever wit of some political writer or the wishful public relations gimmick of Democratic political strategists? Does such an all-powerful Latino political monolith even exist? To date, more than thirty years since the first expectation of the Sleeping Giant, neither scholars nor pundits can point to demonstrable evidence of beyond election year registration increases that have yet to translate into a sustainable force and definitive power except in communities where Latinos already are an overwhelming majority.
This is not what my Democrat friends want to hear. This is not what they will want to believe. It is simpler to demonize the system and the culture, that it somehow imposes a difficulty on people who are otherwise hard, dedicated workers -- the "salt of the earth," isn't that how my liberal pals often describe, the gardener, the maid, the handyman? If only they would vote.
Well, I have a number gardeners and handymen in my large, extended family -- and they vote just as religiously as the teachers and cops and small businessmen in the clan. We have no Sleeping Giants among us.
Unfortunately, they just don't vote as we wish they did.
