Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally last Sunday may very well have alienated Latinos across the country and cost him the election.
The wound was inflicted not by Trump, but by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who appeared as a warm-up act before Trump took the stage.
Drawing from a barrage of stereotypes targeting Black, Jewish, Muslim, and Latino communities, Hinchcliffe described Puerto Rico as “a floating isle of garbage,” adding that Latinos “love making babies.”
Welcome to the October surprise!
Although the Republican campaign attempted immediate damage control, the fallout of rage was immediate and widespread.
Pivotal state Pennsylvania has a 427,000 Puerto Rican population. Then there’s North Carolina (115,000), Georgia (101,000), and Arizona (65,000), all of them battleground states essential for a Trump victory.
Nationally, 36 million Latinos are eligible to vote next week, up from 32 million in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center.
Trump’s been on shaky ground from the beginning, many Puerto Ricans still nursing a grudge over the former President’s reluctance to grant islanders $20bn in aid in the aftermath of hurricane Maria in September 2017 in which 3000 died. Puerto Rico went without power for 181 days.
His acting Homeland Security secretary, Elaine Duke, reported to the NYT Trump proposed selling or divesting the entire island of Puerto Rico. following the disaster.
In the meantime, Democrats have made it a priority to grant Puerto Rico statehood, an obvious political maneuver giving them two more senators and, with the probable inclusion of Washington, DC, two more.
As for the Puerto Rico commonwealth, its voters on election day will again be deciding on statehood. The 2024 plebiscite differs, however, the previous six allowing voters the popular option of remaining a commonwealth, exempt from federal taxes. This year’s plebiscite omits that option. It’s simply statehood, independence, or independence with free association, virtually assuring statehood approval.
Critics claim that House Democrats, in collaboration with Puerto Rico’s Popular Democratic Party (PPD), rigged the plebiscite by passing the Puerto Rico Passage Act (2022), which established the current plebiscite with its limited options (Plebiscite).
Meanwhile, Puerto Rican voters on the mainland are not unappreciative of Democrat overtures on their behalf, nationally and in Puerto Rico. “We are not garbage and we are not lazy and we’re all American citizens ready to vote in this election,” said Luis Miranda, founding president of the Hispanic Federation and chairperson of the Latino Victory Fund (Puerto Rican Jokes).
Statehood, nevertheless, remains an uphill climb. To achieve congressional approval of statehood, Democrats will need to control both chambers. Although a simple majority vote is all that’s needed in each, in the way looms the Senate’s filibuster with its sixty vote threshold.
Kamala Harris has pledged to temporally suspend it in any vote to restore Roe v. Wade, a move opponents argue could make the filibuster obsolete.
There have been two attempts on Trump’s life, possibly a third. Fortunately, these efforts failed. However, the fiasco at Madison Square Garden may have dealt a fatal blow to Trump’s chances of returning to office in a close election.
–rj
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