by Emil Guillermo
You know it’s serious when the Democrats bring out their big gun on the campaign trail, Hawaii’s native son, the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama.
The problem is a certain subset—people of color, notably men who are Blacks and Latinos, as well as about 30% of Asian Americans, mostly Filipino and Vietnamese—say they are voting for Donald Trump and not Kamala Harris.
The reason?
“Part of it makes me think that you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president,” Obama told a small group in Pennsylvania last week, suggesting that men of color have a misogynistic streak.
But Obama wasn’t stopping there. “So now you’re thinking about sitting out or even supporting somebody who has a history of denigrating you…because that is a sign of strength?”
Obama was right, of course. Bypassing Harris for the other guy just doesn’t make any rational sense. The guy who wants to round up and deport all undocumented people? The guy who says immigrants poison the blood of America? The guy who wants to cut the Affordable Care Act?
Some Black critics say Obama was bullying and lecturing men of color, an approach that could backfire among those who don’t want to be told what to do.
The best way to overcome 2024’s intractable Black/Latino/Asian males may not be to persuade them to do the right thing.
Rather, if they are an obstacle to victory, simply go around them with more voters who understand what’s at stake.
That means the fundamentals are still important– registering voters and getting them to turnout.
Hawaii allows in-person voting and same-day registration at voting centers beginning 10 days prior to and through election day.
Online registration deadline: Tuesday, November 5, 2024
Register by mail deadline: Must be postmarked by Monday, October 28, 2024
In-person registration deadline: Tuesday, November 5, 2024
Kamala’s Gun
Kamala Harris started the week with a bang.
“I have a Glock and I’ve had it for some time,” she told Bill Whitaker on the special edition of 60 Minutes. “I mean look at my background in law enforcement.”
Duh, right? But it’s a point she needed to address. Kamala is a badass with a gun.
Trump? He’s the big ass with a bag of burgers.
Voters need to know the things that separate the two candidates. Kamala is the law and order person. Trump is a lawbreaking felon with 34 convictions who thinks he’s above the law.
And that’s how Harris kicked off her media blitz that included “The View,” “Howard Stern,” “Call Me Daddy,” and the Colbert Late Show, then ending up this week in Vegas for good reason.
Guns might help her get the guys.
Black men and Latinx men I talk to get overly macho when you ask them about voting. They blurt out the name “Trump” as if in self-defense.
So again, Harris was happy to wave her gun to attract the guys.
“Have you ever fired it?” asked CBS’ Whittaker.
“Yes,” Harris laughed. “Of course, I have, at a shooting range.”
Lyft Focus Groups
When I visited Nevada recently, I saw a “Harris Supports Filipino Pride” billboard along the highway. But I still sensed that freedom-loving women there would have to carry that battleground state.
That’s after talking to Nevadans during my “Lyft ride focus groups,” (the only times I had a real captive audience).
One Black male driver was so anti-Harris that when I pointed out a previous passenger left a pro-Harris poster, he reached back, grabbed the sign, and ripped it to shreds.
He explained he wasn’t supporting anyone. He had no time for politics. He was just happy driving his Lyft and being left alone.
In fact, few really wanted to talk politics. The Filipino guys I talked to weren’t willing to engage. Among folks I randomly encountered, there was a real disenchantment with the government and our leaders. Most all the drivers I had were youngish, under 40, and concerned about the economy.
The Latinx drivers were slightly more willing to talk.
“Voting for Trump?” I asked.
“Look at the price of gas, the price of anything,” they said. “It’s been tough.”
I told them inflation is down to 2.5%. And that if Trump got in, he’s going to impose tariffs on Chinese goods, that companies would pass on to consumers. Nobel economists say Trump’s economic plan guarantees greater inflation.
Their best response? “Harris has had four years.”
Really? In the No.2 subordinate role, where you serve at the pleasure of the president. If a vice president is so influential, why don’t the MAGA guys take the guy they wanted to hang more seriously? Mike Pence says he’s not voting for Trump for good reason.
On my last day, I got a driver, a Mexican immigrant named Enrique. To him, there was no question who he’d be voting for.
“Anyone but Trump,” he said. “I’m voting for her.”
A shot of testosteronic sanity in the desert.
The race is so close, that it’s hard to figure out what the national polls truly reflect.
Harris is ahead by 2 percentage points, 49-47%, according to the latest Times/Sienna College poll. But that could reflect an abundance of California voters where Harris leads big. Or it could reflect an abundance of Florida voters, where Trump leads bigly.
The Electoral College is what counts, and that’s where attracting men of color in swing states could make a bigger real difference than swaying undecideds or independents.
Racist Trump’s bad genes
Harris said a lot in that “60 Minutes” program in which Donald Trump refused to participate. He didn’t want to be fact-checked. But the show fact-checks everybody. He also claimed “60 Minutes” lied about him in a 2020 report. It didn’t.
Maybe Trump backed out because he was spouting off Hitlerian philosophy on a friendly conservative talk radio program. Trump has gone beyond the simple “they’re eating dogs, they’re eating cats.”
Now Trump says this:
“How about allowing people to come to an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers. Many of them murdered far more than one person. And they are now happily living in the United States. You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes, and we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”
Trump was shooting off his mouth like the conservatives in California in the 1940s who espoused Eugenics – the belief that had our state’s mental hospitals rounding up, committing and sterilizing all those deemed “imbeciles” in order to control the genetics of our state in the name of a better society.
Hitler liked going after bad genes too. It’s an idea that may peel off some men of color to take a second look at Harris.
But the “60 Minutes” exchange that stunned me was when Whitaker, an African American reporter, asked, “There’s so many people supporting Donald Trump, the man you’ve called a racist. How do you bridge that seemingly unbridgeable gap?”
What a weird question. People of color have had to bridge the racist gap all our lives. Harris knew how to answer.
“I believe that the people of America want the leader who’s not trying to divide us and demean,” Harris said. “I believe that the American people recognize that the true measure of the strength of a leader is not based on who you beat down. It’s based on who you lift up.”
We know Trump lifts up elite whites and billionaires. Now add dictators, according to Bob Woodward (the Watergate author with Carl Bernstein). In his new book, Woodward reports Trump, when COVID-19 tests weren’t readily available to Americans, sent Putin COVID-19 tests for his personal use.
That’s who Trump lifts up. The enemy.
To further cement his lack of fitness for office, Trump continued talking to Putin long after losing the presidency, according to Woodward. Harris addressed all that on the “Howard Stern” show.
“Donald Trump has the desire to be a dictator,” she said. “He admires strong men, and he gets played by them because he thinks that they’re his friends, and they are manipulating him full time, manipulating him by flattery and favor.”
Americans were dying trying to get COVID tests and the president was sending tests in secret to a murderous dictator, Harris said on the Stern show.
With less than a month to go, hard to imagine people don’t have enough in order to commit to one candidate now. Even hardcore MAGA males must realize the danger of Trump. Whenever Trump opens his mouth, he shoots himself in the foot.
Every news cycle there’s something Trump says or does that reinforces the notion that he’s a depraved, older man who isn’t qualified to lead the world’s No.1 democracy.
If you can vote early, do so, then tell your friends why it’s important to vote in an election where every vote counts.
EMIL GUILLERMO is a journalist and commentator who has worked in and covered politics from Hawaii to Washington, DC, where he was host of NPR’s “All Things Considered. Listen to his micro-talk show on www.patreon.com/emilamok.
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