SATURDAY: Why might some voters switch to Trump?

SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 2024

People who aren't just like Us: Cindy Garza, a mother of four, lives in Starr County, Texas.

In 2020, the county's population stood at just a bit over 65,000. According to the Census Bureau, the county's population was 97.7% Hispanic.

That said, Candidate Biden only defeated President Trump by a five-point margin in Starr County that year. This year, President Biden may not win Starr County at all, though there's no way to know at this point.

Why did so many people in Starr County vote to re-elect Trump? A news report in today's New York Times starts to suggest an answer.

According to that news report, Trump may do even better in Starr County this year. Headline included, the report starts with this brief profile of one Starr County voter:

Latinos on the Border, Once Reliable Democrats, Waver Over Migrant Surges

At the height of the surge in immigration last year, Cindy Garza found it hard to recognize the small Texas town of Garciasville, where she lives not far from the Rio Grande. Large crowds of people were often poking their fingers through the fence near the border crossing and screaming for help. Mothers and children kept trying to swim across the treacherous river. Once she came home and found a man who was fleeing the Border Patrol hiding under her bed.

Ms. Garza, a mother of four, has always seen herself as a Democrat, and voted for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. But she has come to believe that President Biden’s softer policies on immigration have attracted the migrants from all over the world who have been seen spilling into the streets of her community. She is convinced that only a return of Donald J. Trump to the White House can restore order.

“When Biden won the last election, he said he was going to help people, and I saw a lot of people coming,” said Ms. Garza, who regularly crosses the local international bridges to visit and shop in Mexico. “I would see packs and packs of people. People saw it as a green ticket.”

Latinos all over the Rio Grande Valley, like many elsewhere in Texas, were once likely to be reliable Democrats, as Ms. Garza was. Now, widespread consternation over unauthorized crossings among residents along the border, where the majority of the population in most communities is Latino, could threaten support for Mr. Biden in what otherwise might be one of his key constituencies.

We'll be voting for Biden this year. Cindy Garza will apparently be voting for Trump. 

The news report doesn't say who Garza voted for in 2020. But it sounds like she may have the temerity to disagree with us this year!

Good for Cindy Garza! According to the basic rules of the game, different people will come to different conclusions in such matters. There's no such thing as the one single way which every good person must vote.

While we're at it, we'll tell you something else about Starr County. In the 2016 election, the county favored Candidate Clinton over Candidate Trump by a very large margin:

Clinton received 79.0% of the county's vote; Trump got only 18.9%. Four years later, that giant margin was already almost gone when Biden ran against Trump.

(For 2016 results in Texas, click here. For 2020, click this.) 

Did Garza switch her party alignment that year? The news report doesn't say. But as he continues, reporter Edgar Sandoval interviews other voters in the (four-county) Lower Rio Grande Valley who say they'll be switching their vote from Blue to Red this year.

Based on the news report, Tony Lopez, 52. seems to live in Hidalgo County, Starr County's larger next-door neighbor. According to the 2002 census, this county's population was 91.9% Hispanic in 2020:

This week, President Biden ordered a near-total ban on new applications for asylum on the southern border, at least for now. The new rule, which is likely to be challenged in court, prevents migrants from seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border when the number of unauthorized crossings exceed a certain threshold. It is a clear attempt to deal with mounting criticism of the situation on the border in the months before the presidential election.

[...]

Tony Lopez, 52, a school employee who lives close to a fence meant to obstruct people crossing into the United States from Mexico, said he was skeptical. Mr. Lopez, a Democratic voter in past elections, said he viewed Mr. Biden’s executive order as “obvious” and “political.”

“He’s not doing anything,” Mr. Lopez said. “I don’t believe him.”

He said he placed more reliance on the border crackdown undertaken by the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott. Since 2021, Mr. Abbott, a Republican, has been testing the legal limits of what states can do to enforce immigration law.

Here too, Trump did much better in 2020 than in 2016. 

In 2016, Candidate Trump lost Hidalgo County by a walloping 40-point margin. Four years later, that margin had been reduced by more than half. Candidate Biden won 58.0% of the county's vote; Trump got 41.0%.

Rightly or wrongly, today's news report suggests the possibility that vote totals in these heavily Hispanic areas will continue to turn toward Trump in this fall's election. Since Trump will almost surely win the overall vote in Texas, some such shift wouldn't affect the Electoral College outcome.

That said, the news report lets us ponder a basic fact about life on the planet:

Everyone doesn't assess a matter like this exactly the way you or we might do! 

There are good, decent people along the border who will be switching their vote this year. For reasons outlined in the news report, they'll be switching their votes to Red and away from Blue.

Up here among the super elite, the Maddows, the O'Donnells and the Wallaces never talk about the lives, experiences and understandings of useless people like Garza and Lopez. 

They talk, and talk and talk and talk, about themselves and their own high-minded concerns. Their high-minded concerns may be perfectly valid—but they talk and they talk, all day and all night, about no one and nothing else.

If you're a voter in Blue America, you've been rather poorly served by these vastly overpaid corporate TV stars. We're going to let Shakespeare have the last word, through a bromide he authored for Hamlet:

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” 

Our blue tribe's corporate thought leaders have talked and talked, and talked and talked, about one slice of Heaven and Earth. They talk, and they seem to know how to care, about no one and nothing else. 

President Biden may still win this year. If he does, it will be no thanks to the overpaid corporate hounds who have built their lives around the studied avoidance of the lives, experiences and understandings of the various useless little people who can't be numbered among "our favorite reporters and friends."