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Thursday, November 1,2018
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Dems, don’t
assume Latinos
will vote for you
BY GUSTAVO ARELLANO
Los Angeles Times
Latinos could destroy America during this elec
tion. Both Republicans and Democrats seem to
think so.
The GOP more or less implies that the caravan
of Central Americans winding its way up through
Mexico is going to arrive just in time to cast ballots
Nov. 6, throw the election to the Dems, and open
up the southern border forever. The Democrats,
meanwhile, are in a panic about the Latinos
already here. They’re freaked out that if America’s
largest minority doesn’t show up to vote Tuesday,
there goes their chance to take back the House of
Representatives.
The New York Times, Bloomberg, Politico, the
Washington Post and other outlets have jumped
on this theory. President Obama has been plead
ing with Latinos at public rallies to get out the vote
like never before. So has America Ferrera. The
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
has spent more than $25 million on Latino voter
turnout.
I have a message for Democrats that should put
them even more on edge: Do not assume Latinos
will show up, despite your hard work. And don’t
trust that they’ll support you even if they do.
Recent polls show the promise and peril of
counting on Latinos for a Democratic victory.
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo
survey found two-thirds of Latinos wanted the
Democrats to take control of Congress — but at the
same time, 39 percent say they approve of Trump’s
policies.
The Pew Research Center says 29 million Lati
nos are eligible to vote — an all-time high that will
only grow as more “anchor babies” turn 18 — yet
only 6.8 million went to the polls in the 2014 mid
terms. That number might go up, but likely only to
7.8 million this year, according to an analysis by
the National Assn, of Latino Elected and Appointed
Officials’ Educational Fund.
And then there’s this: Two weeks before election
day, nearly half of the Latinos NALEO surveyed
said they’d had no contact from Democratic cam
paigns or candidates.
To consolidate the political cliches, Latinos are
the perpetual sleeping giant that needs to flex its
muscle to ensure that the blue wave happens. And
yet they don’t vote like they’re “supposed” to.
Latinos’ lack of partisan commitment drives
Democrats loco. They think we should automati
cally side with them in the war against the nasty,
nasty Republicans.
That’s unfair. Latinos are as American as any
group, if not more so. Why shouldn’t we be as apa
thetic as gringos?
Many things keep us from the Democratic
fold, starting with long memories. In California,
the Republican Party signed away its future with
Latinos gracias to its support of 1994’s Proposition
187 — which would have turned teachers, doctors
and cops into immigration agents. Nationally, on
the other hand, the Democrats haven’t done Lati
nos any favors. The North American Free Trade
Agreement, courtesy of President Clinton, helped
to destroy Mexico’s economy and forced millions
to migrate to el Norte. Obama couldn’t get any
immigration reform passed and cracked down
on undocumented immigrants in such record-
breaking numbers that activists labeled him the
deporter-in-chief. Jimmy Carter? Who?
Republican commanders in chief? Pre-Trump,
they did surprisingly well by Latinos. Richard
Nixon appointed more of us to staff positions than
any presidente until Clinton. Ronald Reagan got
millions of undocumented immigrants from my
dad’s generation — including many of my aunts,
uncles and cousins — citizenship through the 1986
amnesty. George W. Bush had a half-Mexican
nephew and famously said that family values don’t
stop at the Rio Grande. He got 40 percent of the
Latino vote — a record for a Republican presiden
tial candidate. McCain got 31 percent, and Romney
27 percent and Trump 28 percent.
So even with the GOP aboard the Trump train,
more than a few Latinos will vote Republican.
It’s the same pattern seen in working-class ethnic
communities during the 20th century. Irish, Poles
and Germans — long part of Democratic urban
machines — gave the Republican Party a chance
starting with Reagan. Many never looked back.
Why not Latinos?
It bears repeating: Democrats need to articulate
a position beyond “Stop Trump.” And to appeal to
Latino voters specifically, they can’t just double
down on immigration. The NALEO results found
that “protecting immigrant rights” was the most
important issue for those polled, at 28 percent —
but that barely edged out “improving wages and
incomes” (27 percent) and “creating more jobs”
(24 percent). Single-issue politics work to an extent
— but as Latinos become an established electorate,
Democrats have to do better.
The promise and peril of the Latino vote is play
ing out right now in California’s 39th Congressional
District, which touches Riverside and San Ber
nardino counties but is mostly in northeast Orange
County. The district is a third Latino, but Latinos
make up just a quarter of its total voters. And it’s
one of the much-ballyhooed congressional races
that could potentially flip the House.
A New York Times poll shows Democratic
candidate Gil Cisneros with a 1 percent lead over
Republican Young Kim, with 7 percent of voters
undecided — this, even though Cisneros has done
outreach in English and Spanish to regular and
first-time voters alike.
Cisneros understands the apathy, even toward
Latino candidates like him. Many would-be voters
“feel that candidates make promises to them on
the campaign trail and don’t follow through when
elected,” he said. But Cisneros says 2018 is the year
that Latinos could finally “recognize their own
power in our country and continue to show up at
the ballot box.”
Hear that, Latinos? Time to ditch the siestas.
Refugee story needs to be told
If you don’t think of Lena
Dunham as the quintessential
voice for Syrian refugees,
you’re not alone.
After the announcement
that Steven Spielberg and
J.J. Abrams have tapped the
over-sharing millennial irri
tant to write the adaptation of
Melissa Fleming’s “A Hope
More Powerful Than the Sea,”
a haunting, moving and urgent
telling of the unseen refugees
fleeing the Syrian genocide, the confusion
over the odd choice quickly turned to
outrage.
USA Today published a compilation
of the reactions on Twitter, which varied
from “This will not go well” to “Please
stop this while you’re ahead of a disaster”
to “Oh, God. No, please, NO.”
But as someone who has relentlessly
covered the Syrian genocide of more than
half a million innocent people, 50,000
of them children, begging anyone who
would listen to see, care and act, I think
there’s room for optimism in this choice.
Here’s the (true) story told in the book:
19-year-old Doaa al Zamel could be a
typical teenage girl, not unlike the girls
Dunham has written into her work —
except she isn’t at all, of course. A victim
of Bashar al-Assad’s nine-year war on
innocent civilians, she flees Syria only to
be stranded with two toddlers on a small
inflatable life ring.
The tale is heart-wrenching and poi
gnant. It needs to be told.
Yes, Dunham is annoying, self-
absorbed and often shockingly
ill-informed. She is also a talented story
teller. And if someone of Dunham’s
influence who is part of a generation that
makes up more than a quarter of the U.S.
population can amplify this
story and engage millennial
to care about a genocide, I am
all for it.
Some of the criticism of
Dunham centers on the fact
that she is not Syrian. I think
that’s short-sighted.
I’m endlessly grateful for
the many compassionate and
thoughtful writers of non-
Syrian descent who have told
the plight of Syrians, from the
author of the book on which the movie
will be based to American reporter Marie
Colvin and photojournalist Paul Conroy,
whose documentary “Under the Wire”
tells the gruesome story of her murder in
Homs.
If only Syrians cared about Syrians, if
only Syrians told their stories, I fear we’d
hear far fewer of them.
The issue of representation has
haunted Dunham in the past.
Back in 2016, Dunham lamented the
lack of voices of color on her hit HBO
show, “Girls.” She contrasted her voice to
“Insecure” actor and producer Issa Rae,
saying, Rae’s “voice needs to be on televi
sion. It doesn’t need to be my voice telling
the story of a black woman’s New York
experience.”
That same year she also issued an apol
ogy for claiming football player Odell
Beckham Jr. treated her misogynisti-
cally at the famed fashion orgy, the Met
Gala, for being on his cellphone instead
of engaging her brilliant conversational
skills.
This is Dunham’s world: one of privi
lege and misapplied Oberlin gender stud
ies lessons where she often apologizes for
clumsily navigating the fraught high wire
of progressive identity politics to which
Tribune News Service
A family of 12, living in a small truck, flees
the Syrian government’s bombardment
of their village in 2013.
she so earnestly ascribes.
But if someone else had been tapped
for this important story, I doubt we’d
be talking about it at all. And that is the
urgency of the Syrian war: that we are not
talking about it enough. That it fades in
and out of our consciousness without so
much as a shrug. That we ignore it as just
one of many outrages.
Yes, Lena Dunham is annoying. Per
haps we need to be annoyed about Syria,
finally.
S.E. Cupp is the host of “S.E. Cupp
Unfiltered” on HLN and a columnist for
Tribune Media.
S.E. CUPP
secuppdailynews@
yahoo.com.
SCOTT STANTIS I Tribune News Service
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We suffer when truth is lost to politics
President Donald Trump
was right to tweet out:
“There is great anger in our
Country caused in part by
inaccurate, and even fraudu
lent reporting of the news.
The Fake News Media, the
true enemy of the people,
must stop the open & obvious
hostility & report the news
honestly and fairly. That
will do much to put out the
flame...”
He’s right.
I open to the opinion section of The
Washington Post and find the following
headlines:
■ “Trump has stoked the fears of the
Bowerses (the Pittsburg synagogue mur
derer) among us.”
■ “Fox News and the rest of the right-
wing media can’t escape responsibility.”
■ “Trump’s America is not a safe
place for Jews.”
All on one opinion page in one day.
As I wrote recently, we learned in the
confirmation hearing of Judge Brett
Kavanaugh that Democrats are no longer
pretending to care about facts. An out
standing American was almost destroyed
by uncorroborated allegations.
I was in Jerusalem earlier this year
and participated in ceremonies in which
the embassy of the United States was
moved to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem.
A sense of awe, tied to the history of
the moment and the bold leadership
of Trump, permeated the proceedings.
Certainly no one in attendance would
question that the Jewish people have no
greater friend than this president, who
did what no other American
president had the courage
and conviction to do.
In June 2015, a year and
a half before the Trump
presidency, a young white
supremacist entered a black
church in Charleston, South
Carolina, and murdered nine
black Christians.
“It is unfathomable that
somebody in today’s society
could walk into a church
while people are having a prayer meet
ing and take their lives,” said Charles
ton’s police chief.
Then-South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley
provided extraordinary leadership fol
lowing the incident, sharing her genuine
grief with South Carolinians and all
Americans. She took the bold step as a
Republican governor to remove the con
federate flag from the grounds of South
Carolina’s capitol.
Haley understood that the best way to
fight evil is by identifying evil for what it
is and fighting it not with politics but with
virtue.
For the last two years, Haley has dem
onstrated similar leadership by principle
as Trump’s United Nations ambassador.
A story on CNN Wire, reported nine
days before Election Day, leads with
the headline: ‘“Voting while black’: How
activists are racing to create a midterm
‘black wave.’”
According to the report, “A growing
network of African-American political
groups are laboring to build a lasting
political clout for African-Americans,
especially in the South, where more than
half of the nation’s black residents live.”
The article focuses on three black
Democrats running for governorships in
Georgia, Florida and Maryland.
You would think that being black and
political meant only electing far-left,
progressive Democrats. Totally ignored
are exciting and potentially paradigm
changing elections involving black
Republicans.
John James, a black Republican run
ning for the Senate in Michigan against
three-term liberal Democrat Debbie Sta-
benow, doesn’t exist for these CNN writ
ers. James is a conservative Christian,
a West Point graduate who flew Apache
helicopters in Iraq, and he now runs his
family business in Detroit.
James is real news and hence a non
item for the “fake news” dealers whose
interest is peddling progressivism, not
truth.
Differences of opinion are healthy
and vital in a free country. National
unity and mutual respect are not threat
ened by differences of opinion but by
the destruction of our first principles
that guarantee every America equal
protection of life, liberty and property.
Politics of identity, special interests
or moral relativism rely on feeding the
vulnerable fake news rather than truth.
Our national health and prosperity are
endangered when the truth is lost to
politics.
This is what voters should be thinking
about between now and Nov. 6.
Star Parker is an author and president
of the Center for Urban Renewal and
Education and a columnist for Creators.
STAR PARKER
www.urbancure.org
She Stines
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