Afghan refugee wins New Hampshire statehouse primary

[Swordsmyth]

You want to subject each American city to occupation by the US military. Thank you for being honest about your desire to treat every city in America like Kabul and wage war against the American people.

BY the way, a standing army like you want? Also unconstitutional. Congress can raise an army. Nothing authorizes indefinitely maintaining one.

You are extra special stupid, not only was he not serious but Congress is authorized to maintain an army for as long as it wants as long as the army is reauthorized every 2 years.

[Swordsmyth]

This is about as likely as ending welfare. Warfare/welfare is what keeps daddy gubment in business.

If none of our goals are likely to be achieved then we still need to control immigration to keep things from getting worse.

[Swordsmyth]

O.K. Though in no way does it apply to these times we live, would you...

1) Believe that any state government may summarily authorize its militia to shoot any foreign national crossing it's border that is not a citizen of the United States if that state was so compelled?

2) Allow any individual landowner, because individual rights exceed state and Federal rights (no?), to shoot any trespassers upon their property.

You would also need to allow individual states to control their own immigration, not only the immigration of foreigners but also the immigration of citizens from other states.

[Anti Globalist]

Community organizer? That sounds familiar.

[bunklocoempire]

There's nothing likely out there, brother. In a madhouse I'm tired of advocating rationality. Because it just cannot be found. If there is a scrum in the yard then I guess I'm gonna come down on the conservative side. I just don't believe unfettered access to our borders is the way to go. For many reasons. Not the least are those that are being trafficked across for indentured sexual servitude. But, nobody cares about them. Right? Is that young girl or boy coming across the border an actual daughter or son? Or are they destined to a life of prostitution and drug addiction? Until used up, wore out and thrown away?
How about a dozen or so Jihadi's bent on retribution for our foreign policy? All well and good until it's your old lady or daughter that get's caught in the mix?
No, I'm gonna take my position on this one. May not be right, may not be wrong, but I've thought it through well enough. YMMV.

A very honest and personal explanation. I don't like it or agree (vague "conservative side"), but I sure do appreciate the better understanding of where you are coming from.
Thank you for laying it out there.

+ rep

[phill4paul]

You are extra special stupid, not only was he not serious but Congress is authorized to maintain an army for as long as it wants as long as the army is reauthorized every 2 years.

No, PierzStyx, has the gist of it. Only the Navy was authorized as a full time funded entity. I'm not sure we have any wars that the Congress has approved at this time. But, we could still pull them home. Decommission and option the best to the National Guard and still defend the borders.

[Swordsmyth]

No, PierzStyx, has the gist of it. Only the Navy was authorized as a full time funded entity. I'm not sure we have any wars that the Congress has approved at this time. But, we could still pull them home. Decommission and option the best to the National Guard and still defend the borders.

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

The only limitation is on the appropriation term, nothing keeps them from renewing it every two years.
It is also necessary to keep some regulars as a backbone elite and to train the militia, some founding fathers agreed with me about that and that is why we got the two year compromise, in theory Congress could fail to renew the appropriation if the army became too powerful and began to threaten liberty but until then they could be kept for the purposes I stated.

[phill4paul]

A very honest and personal explanation. I don't like it or agree (vague "conservative side"), but I sure do appreciate the better understanding of where you are coming from.
Thank you for laying it out there.

+ rep

A very honest and personal explanation. I don't like it or agree (vague "conservative side"), but I sure do appreciate the better understanding of where you are coming from.
Thank you for laying it out there.

+ rep

It's a $#@! show for real. But, also please pay attention to the latter part of my post. To me it's not specifically about the welfare. I suppose it has some to do with it. It's not specifically about blanket naturalization of trespassers and the voting propensity. Though that is a major point. But, there is some nasty $#@! that goes on because of this endeavor. There is, absolutely, crime against individuals, children and pre-teens, coming into this country through an open border policy.
Now, I'm with you, and some others, when I say "transporting drug," so what? They only harm the individuals that choose to do them.
But, human trafficking is a very real thing. Should libertarians just say "oh, well, the greater good of freedom of movement outweighs that?" Personally, my view as a libertarian is that if I ran into individuals that did this I should just evacuate their brain pan. But, that would be against the law.
As a libertarian I believe property owners on the border should be allowed to shoot trespassers.
But, neither of those two options are allowed. So here we are.

[jmdrake]

And what you're missing is that most the voter base that believes in open borders wants welfare.
So here we are.
At least my way of thinking brings the troops home and actually results in less government.

I'm not missing that. I am saying that what you are going to get is an increase in military spending and troops on the border and a bigger police state.

[Swordsmyth]

I'm not missing that. I am saying that what you are going to get is an increase in military spending and troops on the border and a bigger police state.

Not necessarily but even if you are right it is still better than turning into a communist hellhole and a province of the global government.

[phill4paul]

The only limitation is on the appropriation term, nothing keeps them from renewing it every two years.
It is also necessary to keep some regulars as a backbone elite and to train the militia, some founding fathers agreed with me about that and that is why we got the two year compromise, in theory Congress could fail to renew the appropriation if the army became too powerful and began to threaten liberty but until then they could be kept for the purposes I stated.

Fair enough. But, you and I both know that wasn't original intent. Each state had it's own militia and unless attacked would suffice. That aside, I wonder why a state, perhaps Texas or New Hampshire, hasn't created a state militia. Actually named. And demanded that the Fed gov arm and train them. I'm not talking National Guard, which it was wrapped into, but actually just declare a state militia, separate from the guard, and sue for support. That'd be a hoot.

[phill4paul]

I'm not missing that. I am saying that what you are going to get is an increase in military spending and troops on the border and a bigger police state.

No. Bringing troops home, as I've already explained, would result in a decrease of spending.

[phill4paul]

I'm not missing that. I am saying that what you are going to get is an increase in military spending and troops on the border and a bigger police state.

Are you fine with open borders? Child sex trafficking? No vetting?

[Swordsmyth]

Fair enough. But, you and I both know that wasn't original intent. Each state had it's own militia and unless attacked would suffice. That aside, I wonder why a state, perhaps Texas or New Hampshire, hasn't created a state militia. Actually named. And demanded that the Fed gov arm and train them. I'm not talking National Guard, which it was wrapped into, but actually just declare a state militia, separate from the guard, and sue for support. That'd be a hoot.

I agree that the states should be keeping a few regulars and most of the part-time militia, if they did the feds wouldn't need to keep many regulars at all, the fact that none have tried since Lincoln federalized state forces during the civil war just shows that federalism was successfully murdered as an idea and has yet to be resurrected.
We went from "the United States are" to "the United States is" and no significant portion of the population has ever looked back.

As I said some of the founders wanted a standing army and the two year limit was a compromise, those in favor of a standing army won after the adoption of the Constitution and the federal army appropriation was never allowed to lapse even once.

[jmdrake]

Are you fine with open borders? Child sex trafficking? No vetting?

So I need to support a police state for the children. Got it. The child sex trafficking is actually helped by closed borders. Coyotes gotta get paid. Just like the phony war on drugs the police state only makes the problem worse. But you sound like every neocon government shill ever. "What? You don't like the body scanners at the airport and the surveillance state? Are you for terrorism?" Same song slightly different lyrics.

[jmdrake]

No. Bringing troops home, as I've already explained, would result in a decrease of spending.

Except the troops won't be brought home. More will be hired. That's what you are missing.

[jmdrake]

Not necessarily but even if you are right it is still better than turning into a communist hellhole and a province of the global government.

False choice fallacy.

[Swordsmyth]

False choice fallacy.

No it isn't, the invaders vote for communism and globalism.

[jmdrake]

@Swordsmyth @phil4paul According to Ron Paul you two have given in to neocon fearmonger. According to Dr. Paul.

The battle against illegal immigration is a ploy to gain more control over our lives. We are supposed to be terrified of the hoards of Mexicans streaming into our country and thus grant the government new authority over the rest of us. But in fact, a Pew study found that between 2009 and 2014 there was a net loss of 140,000 Mexican immigrants from the United States. Yes, this is a government “solution” in search of a real problem.

Now, for the record, I'm ambivalent about immigration. A politicians stance on the issue wouldn't sway my vote one way or the other. But the "If we don't build a giant wall and have a bunch of troops patrolling the constitution free zone we will become a communist hellhole that rife with child sex trafficking" fearmongering is just the sort of nonsense that leads to BIGGER government. Yes Ron Paul advocated bringing troops home and putting them on the border. But that's no different from Ron Paul saying "If we closed all of our military bases we could give everyone free healthcare." That doesn't make him an advocate of free healthcare either. He used illustrations to get people to see the benefit of...well...bringing the troops home. The democrats give lip service to bringing the troops home but don't deliver. The republicans don't even give lip service to that. We should advocate ending the U.S. adventurism overseas because it's the right thing to do, not because we thing somehow we will outflank the big government rightists any more than we should think we will somehow outflank the big government leftists. There are just more of them than there are of us. And frankly I don't like either camp.

[jmdrake]

No it isn't, the invaders vote for communism and globalism.

Yeah. That's why Hillary won Florida. Oh that's right. She lost it.

[Swordsmyth]

@Swordsmyth @Phil4paul According to Ron Paul you two have given in to neocon fearmonger. According to Dr. Paul.

The battle against illegal immigration is a ploy to gain more control over our lives. We are supposed to be terrified of the hoards of Mexicans streaming into our country and thus grant the government new authority over the rest of us. But in fact, a Pew study found that between 2009 and 2014 there was a net loss of 140,000 Mexican immigrants from the United States. Yes, this is a government “solution” in search of a real problem.

Pew is lying and Ron is wrong on this issue, he isn't as bad as some people about it though.

Now, for the record, I'm ambivalent about immigration. A politicians stance on the issue wouldn't sway my vote one way or the other. But the "If we don't build a giant wall and have a bunch of troops patrolling the constitution free zone we will become a communist hellhole that rife with child sex trafficking" fearmongering is just the sort of nonsense that leads to BIGGER government. Yes Ron Paul advocated bringing troops home and putting them on the border. But that's no different from Ron Paul saying "If we closed all of our military bases we could give everyone free healthcare." That doesn't make him an advocate of free healthcare either. He used illustrations to get people to see the benefit of...well...bringing the troops home. The democrats give lip service to bringing the troops home but don't deliver. The republicans don't even give lip service to that. We should advocate ending the U.S. adventurism overseas because it's the right thing to do, not because we thing somehow we will outflank the big government rightists any more than we should think we will somehow outflank the big government leftists. There are just more of them than there are of us. And frankly I don't like either camp.

Illegals come here in hordes and they vote for Demoncrats in sufficient numbers to affect the direction of our country, the Demoncrats know this and support open borders because of it.

[Swordsmyth]

Yeah. That's why Hillary won Florida. Oh that's right. She lost it.

She lost it in spite of the illegals and excessive legal immigrants voting at above average rates for her.

[jmdrake]

Pew is lying and Ron is wrong on this issue, he isn't as bad as some people about it though.

Yeah. Any facts that don't fit your stupid argument is just a lie. Okay.

Illegals come here in hordes and they vote for Demoncrats in sufficient numbers to affect the direction of our country, the Demoncrats know this and support open borders because of it.

Latino and Muslim voters were largely responsible for California rejecting gay marriage. Very "democratic" vote that was.

[Swordsmyth]

Yeah. Any facts that don't fit your stupid argument is just a lie. Okay.

I have posted facts before that contradict Pew, they are lying.

Latino and Muslim voters were largely responsible for California rejecting gay marriage. Very "democratic" vote that was.

And then they voted for Demoncrats who took it to SCOTUS to have it overturned and have continued to vote for them ever since, they care more about communism than Q ueers.

[jmdrake]

She lost it in spite of the illegals and excessive legal immigrants voting at above average rates for her.

Latinos are not the solid democratic voters that they, and apparently you, think.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/07/polit...nes/index.html
(CNN)Democrats have hit an unexpected speed bump in their drive to regain control of Congress: unsettling signs that the party may not generate as much turnout or support among Latino voters this fall as it expected.
Despite a procession of provocations from President Donald Trump -- from ending deportation protections for so-called "Dreamers," young immigrants brought to the country illegally by their parents, to his now-terminated policy that resulted in children being separated from their undocumented parents at the border -- a growing number of Democratic strategists are privately concerned that their candidates are not consolidating Latino support as much as they anticipated in several key races.
While cautioning that there is still time to reverse the trend, they point to signs of wavering Hispanic support and engagement in House districts in Texas, Nevada, Florida and California, and in Senate races in Texas, Nevada, Florida and Arizona.
"I still think it's a little too soon to push the panic button, but having said that, we are not seeing the types of numbers with Hispanic voters that we should be seeing with the most hostile person to ever hold public office against Hispanics as the President," said Fernand Amandi, principal at Bendixen & Amandi International, a Democratic polling firm that specializes in studying Latino voters. "And that in and of itself is a concern. I'm flabbergasted."

Private Democratic polling has found surprisingly lackluster results among Hispanics in such House races as the San Antonio-area House seat, where Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones is facing Republican Rep. Will Hurd; the exurban Los Angeles seat that Republican Rep. Steve Knight is defending against Democrat Katie Hill; and the battle in Orange County, California, for the open seat being vacated by Republican Rep. Darrell Issa.
Not all Democratic strategists see cause for alarm. Latino Decisions, another Democratic polling firm that specializes in Latino voters, and Stanley B. Greenberg, a veteran Democratic pollster, have each recently released separate surveys for Democratic organizations that find the party maintaining a healthy lead over Republicans when Hispanics are asked which party they intend to support in House elections.
Yet virtually everyone on both sides of this Democratic debate agrees on one point: Despite all his confrontational rhetoric and policies, Trump alone appears unlikely to reverse the usual falloff in Hispanic turnout during midterm elections, and he may not even widen the typical Democratic advantage among them in their vote preferences.
Neither public polls nor private research suggests an organic surge to the polls among Hispanic voters outraged by Trump is developing the way it appears to be coalescing among college-educated white women and African-American women. And that means Democrats face their typical challenge of energizing a community whose voter participation has remained stubbornly low.
"I think that the turnout is not guaranteed and all of the candidates and the interest groups have a lot of work to do," said Matt Barreto, co-founder and managing partner of Latino Decisions. "They don't want the anger to sit there and fester and turn into so much frustration that people don't feel that there is anything they can do."
From Florida to California
The alarms among Democrats over Hispanic intentions have been triggered partly by a series of recent public polls showing their candidates underperforming with those voters in several key races.
The findings start in Florida, where a recent Mason-Dixon survey showed Hispanics providing Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson only a narrow 44 percent to 39 percent lead over Republican Rick Scott. Republicans typically run better among Hispanics in Florida than elsewhere, because the state's large Cuban population has historically tilted right.
But Democrats have been improving because of their strength among Florida's growing Puerto Rican community, which has swelled again in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Exit polls found that Hillary Clinton beat Trump among the state's Hispanic voters by 27 percentage points in 2016. Yet Scott's aggressive outreach to the community has raised fears among Democrats that Nelson won't nearly match that margin with Latinos.
Several Texas polls have also shown surprisingly modest advantages for Democrat Beto O'Rourke over Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. The most recent Quinnipiac Poll gave O'Rourke just a 12-percentage-point lead over Cruz among Latinos. The nonpartisan Texas Lyceum Poll gave O'Rourke a comparable 15-point lead among all registered Latinos and a wider, but still subpar, 19-point lead among the Latinos the survey deemed likely to vote.
Joshua Blank, manager of polling and research at the University of Texas at Austin's Texas Politics Project, says that while most Texas Latinos support Democrats, there's no evidence yet that Trump's agenda is prompting much defection among the significant minority of them who consistently back Republicans.
"The reality is there are about one-third of Texas Hispanics who hold relatively restrictionist attitudes on immigration, support Republican positions, support Republican candidates ... and they were doing that while (Republican) politicians in this state were spending $800 million on border security and trying to pass sanctuary city laws with 'show me your papers' provisions," Blank said. "It's not that Trump comes along and Texas Hispanics are saying: 'What's going on here?' It's what has been going on here, and they have already arrived at those opinions."
In a third key Senate race, a public poll in Arizona, from OH Predictive Insights and the local ABC channel, found Democratic Senate candidate Kyrsten Sinema underperforming among Latinos against her most likely Republican opponent, Rep. Martha McSally. The survey actually found McSally leading with those voters, though few in either party consider that a possibility on Election Day, and OH Predictive Insights, which conducted the poll, cautions that the margin of error among Latino voters is high because the sample is small. Even so, some Democrats privately worry that Sinema has focused too much on convincing center-right white voters that she is concerned about border security and not enough on persuading Latinos she will defend their interests.
Also raising some eyebrows: The most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal national poll put Trump's approval among Latinos at 39 percent, well above his 28 percent share of the vote among them in 2016, according to exit polls.
Some Latino activists have long viewed public polls of their community -- including exit polls -- as unreliable and contended they tend to underrepresent respondents who speak mostly Spanish, a group that leans more toward Democrats. And other surveys show less reason for Democratic concern.
The most recent national Quinnipiac University poll, for instance, put Trump's Latino approval at 27 percent -- almost exactly equal to his vote among them -- and in Monday's weekly Gallup average, just 23 percent of Latinos approved. A recent Latino Decisions poll in 61 competitive House districts, conducted for a consortium of civil rights advocacy groups, found Democrats holding a roughly 40-percentage-point advantage among Latino voters.
Trump is 'in the strongman tradition'
Amandi says that despite these mixed signals in polling, he sees evidence that Trump and the GOP have maintained a beachhead of support among Latinos.
"My instant analysis is it's because of the economy," he says. "These are people who are not necessarily paying attention to every inning of political baseball. They are working. They are maybe getting a little bit more money."
Moreover, Amandi says, even Trump's belligerent style has found an audience among some Latinos, especially older men: "He's in the strongman tradition of the Latin American caudillo."
Yet Barreto's poll for the coalition of civil rights groups still found that about three-fourths of Latinos opposed both the border wall and Trump's now-abandoned "zero tolerance" policy and nearly 90 percent supported legal status for the "Dreamers." Barreto says the only reason Republican performance among Latinos might look relatively stronger in current surveys -- or on Election Day itself -- is if turnout among them remains low. The reason is that Latinos who lean Republican also tend to be older -- and thus more reliable voters in low-turnout elections.
"I have not seen any data that I would consider an accurate reflection of Latinos that Republicans are increasing (their share), or they will be over 25 percent of those voters," Barreto says. "The only reason it would be different is not that they are winning over more people; it would be if some Latinos who are Democratically leaning stay home."
Recent history offers evidence for that argument. In the House races during the low-turnout midterm elections of 2010 and 2014, Republicans won a higher share of Latino voters -- 38 percent and 36 percent, respectively -- than they did in House contests during the higher-turnout presidential years of 2016, 2012 and 2008 (from 30 to 32 percent), according to exit polls.
What about turnout?
That contrast highlights what remains the biggest concern about Latinos among Democratic strategists: Will they vote in sufficient numbers? In the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections, Latino turnout plummeted from its levels in the presidential elections just two years earlier: While about half of eligible Latinos voted in each of those presidential elections, a low number to begin with, the figure fell to under one-third in 2010 and a little over one-fourth in 2014.
Turnout among Latinos remained essentially stagnant at just under 50 percent in 2016 despite all of Trump's harsh rhetoric at the community. Barreto says his survey found a high level of anger at Trump among Latinos, especially younger generations, and he argues that anger has been a good predictor of heightened turnout. On the other hand, public surveys measuring how closely voters are following the election and whether they are certain to vote have mostly found Latinos still lagging other groups.
Poring over such ambiguous evidence, Henry Fernandez, a principal at the African American Research Collaborative, which studies issues relating to black voters, says the direction of Latino turnout this fall is not yet clear.
He says the increased Republican reliance on racially confrontational messages in the Trump era -- such as comments about the Central American gang MS-13 during the Virginia governor's race last fall -- has clearly prompted a backlash among African-American voters, who "respond most strongly" to any political argument that targets racial divisions, even if they are not the direct subject of the attacks.
Even though the MS-13 attacks failed to lift Republican Ed Gillespie during the Virginia race, the barrage of ads in Tuesday's Ohio special House election accusing Democrat Danny O'Connor of supporting "amnesty for illegals" and "open borders" makes clear that Republicans are committed to stressing racially infused immigration themes through the fall.

Whether that provokes a surge in Latino participation, Fernandez said, may turn on how the nonpartisan groups and Democratic organizations working on turnout respond.
"If the focus of the parties and those organizations is on the predictable electorate, that would be a mistake," he said during a recent conference call with reporters to release the Latino Decisions survey. "There are many more people who are at play who could be potential voters. It's not just a question of what will those folks do on their own, but where will investments be made to encourage people to get out to vote?"

[jmdrake]

I have posted facts before that contradict Pew, they are lying.



And then they voted for Demoncrats who took it to SCOTUS to have it overturned and have continued to vote for them ever since, they care more about communism than Q ueers.

It was not democrats from California that took the case to the SCOTUS.

Between January 2012 and February 2014, plaintiffs in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee filed federal district court cases that culminated in Obergefell v. Hodges.

[Swordsmyth]

Latinos are not the solid democratic voters that they, and apparently you, think.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/07/polit...nes/index.html
(CNN)Democrats have hit an unexpected speed bump in their drive to regain control of Congress: unsettling signs that the party may not generate as much turnout or support among Latino voters this fall as it expected.
Despite a procession of provocations from President Donald Trump -- from ending deportation protections for so-called "Dreamers," young immigrants brought to the country illegally by their parents, to his now-terminated policy that resulted in children being separated from their undocumented parents at the border -- a growing number of Democratic strategists are privately concerned that their candidates are not consolidating Latino support as much as they anticipated in several key races.
While cautioning that there is still time to reverse the trend, they point to signs of wavering Hispanic support and engagement in House districts in Texas, Nevada, Florida and California, and in Senate races in Texas, Nevada, Florida and Arizona.
"I still think it's a little too soon to push the panic button, but having said that, we are not seeing the types of numbers with Hispanic voters that we should be seeing with the most hostile person to ever hold public office against Hispanics as the President," said Fernand Amandi, principal at Bendixen & Amandi International, a Democratic polling firm that specializes in studying Latino voters. "And that in and of itself is a concern. I'm flabbergasted."

Private Democratic polling has found surprisingly lackluster results among Hispanics in such House races as the San Antonio-area House seat, where Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones is facing Republican Rep. Will Hurd; the exurban Los Angeles seat that Republican Rep. Steve Knight is defending against Democrat Katie Hill; and the battle in Orange County, California, for the open seat being vacated by Republican Rep. Darrell Issa.
Not all Democratic strategists see cause for alarm. Latino Decisions, another Democratic polling firm that specializes in Latino voters, and Stanley B. Greenberg, a veteran Democratic pollster, have each recently released separate surveys for Democratic organizations that find the party maintaining a healthy lead over Republicans when Hispanics are asked which party they intend to support in House elections.
Yet virtually everyone on both sides of this Democratic debate agrees on one point: Despite all his confrontational rhetoric and policies, Trump alone appears unlikely to reverse the usual falloff in Hispanic turnout during midterm elections, and he may not even widen the typical Democratic advantage among them in their vote preferences.
Neither public polls nor private research suggests an organic surge to the polls among Hispanic voters outraged by Trump is developing the way it appears to be coalescing among college-educated white women and African-American women. And that means Democrats face their typical challenge of energizing a community whose voter participation has remained stubbornly low.
"I think that the turnout is not guaranteed and all of the candidates and the interest groups have a lot of work to do," said Matt Barreto, co-founder and managing partner of Latino Decisions. "They don't want the anger to sit there and fester and turn into so much frustration that people don't feel that there is anything they can do."
From Florida to California
The alarms among Democrats over Hispanic intentions have been triggered partly by a series of recent public polls showing their candidates underperforming with those voters in several key races.
The findings start in Florida, where a recent Mason-Dixon survey showed Hispanics providing Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson only a narrow 44 percent to 39 percent lead over Republican Rick Scott. Republicans typically run better among Hispanics in Florida than elsewhere, because the state's large Cuban population has historically tilted right.
But Democrats have been improving because of their strength among Florida's growing Puerto Rican community, which has swelled again in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Exit polls found that Hillary Clinton beat Trump among the state's Hispanic voters by 27 percentage points in 2016. Yet Scott's aggressive outreach to the community has raised fears among Democrats that Nelson won't nearly match that margin with Latinos.
Several Texas polls have also shown surprisingly modest advantages for Democrat Beto O'Rourke over Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. The most recent Quinnipiac Poll gave O'Rourke just a 12-percentage-point lead over Cruz among Latinos. The nonpartisan Texas Lyceum Poll gave O'Rourke a comparable 15-point lead among all registered Latinos and a wider, but still subpar, 19-point lead among the Latinos the survey deemed likely to vote.
Joshua Blank, manager of polling and research at the University of Texas at Austin's Texas Politics Project, says that while most Texas Latinos support Democrats, there's no evidence yet that Trump's agenda is prompting much defection among the significant minority of them who consistently back Republicans.
"The reality is there are about one-third of Texas Hispanics who hold relatively restrictionist attitudes on immigration, support Republican positions, support Republican candidates ... and they were doing that while (Republican) politicians in this state were spending $800 million on border security and trying to pass sanctuary city laws with 'show me your papers' provisions," Blank said. "It's not that Trump comes along and Texas Hispanics are saying: 'What's going on here?' It's what has been going on here, and they have already arrived at those opinions."
In a third key Senate race, a public poll in Arizona, from OH Predictive Insights and the local ABC channel, found Democratic Senate candidate Kyrsten Sinema underperforming among Latinos against her most likely Republican opponent, Rep. Martha McSally. The survey actually found McSally leading with those voters, though few in either party consider that a possibility on Election Day, and OH Predictive Insights, which conducted the poll, cautions that the margin of error among Latino voters is high because the sample is small. Even so, some Democrats privately worry that Sinema has focused too much on convincing center-right white voters that she is concerned about border security and not enough on persuading Latinos she will defend their interests.
Also raising some eyebrows: The most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal national poll put Trump's approval among Latinos at 39 percent, well above his 28 percent share of the vote among them in 2016, according to exit polls.
Some Latino activists have long viewed public polls of their community -- including exit polls -- as unreliable and contended they tend to underrepresent respondents who speak mostly Spanish, a group that leans more toward Democrats. And other surveys show less reason for Democratic concern.
The most recent national Quinnipiac University poll, for instance, put Trump's Latino approval at 27 percent -- almost exactly equal to his vote among them -- and in Monday's weekly Gallup average, just 23 percent of Latinos approved. A recent Latino Decisions poll in 61 competitive House districts, conducted for a consortium of civil rights advocacy groups, found Democrats holding a roughly 40-percentage-point advantage among Latino voters.
Trump is 'in the strongman tradition'
Amandi says that despite these mixed signals in polling, he sees evidence that Trump and the GOP have maintained a beachhead of support among Latinos.
"My instant analysis is it's because of the economy," he says. "These are people who are not necessarily paying attention to every inning of political baseball. They are working. They are maybe getting a little bit more money."
Moreover, Amandi says, even Trump's belligerent style has found an audience among some Latinos, especially older men: "He's in the strongman tradition of the Latin American caudillo."
Yet Barreto's poll for the coalition of civil rights groups still found that about three-fourths of Latinos opposed both the border wall and Trump's now-abandoned "zero tolerance" policy and nearly 90 percent supported legal status for the "Dreamers." Barreto says the only reason Republican performance among Latinos might look relatively stronger in current surveys -- or on Election Day itself -- is if turnout among them remains low. The reason is that Latinos who lean Republican also tend to be older -- and thus more reliable voters in low-turnout elections.
"I have not seen any data that I would consider an accurate reflection of Latinos that Republicans are increasing (their share), or they will be over 25 percent of those voters," Barreto says. "The only reason it would be different is not that they are winning over more people; it would be if some Latinos who are Democratically leaning stay home."
Recent history offers evidence for that argument. In the House races during the low-turnout midterm elections of 2010 and 2014, Republicans won a higher share of Latino voters -- 38 percent and 36 percent, respectively -- than they did in House contests during the higher-turnout presidential years of 2016, 2012 and 2008 (from 30 to 32 percent), according to exit polls.
What about turnout?
That contrast highlights what remains the biggest concern about Latinos among Democratic strategists: Will they vote in sufficient numbers? In the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections, Latino turnout plummeted from its levels in the presidential elections just two years earlier: While about half of eligible Latinos voted in each of those presidential elections, a low number to begin with, the figure fell to under one-third in 2010 and a little over one-fourth in 2014.
Turnout among Latinos remained essentially stagnant at just under 50 percent in 2016 despite all of Trump's harsh rhetoric at the community. Barreto says his survey found a high level of anger at Trump among Latinos, especially younger generations, and he argues that anger has been a good predictor of heightened turnout. On the other hand, public surveys measuring how closely voters are following the election and whether they are certain to vote have mostly found Latinos still lagging other groups.
Poring over such ambiguous evidence, Henry Fernandez, a principal at the African American Research Collaborative, which studies issues relating to black voters, says the direction of Latino turnout this fall is not yet clear.
He says the increased Republican reliance on racially confrontational messages in the Trump era -- such as comments about the Central American gang MS-13 during the Virginia governor's race last fall -- has clearly prompted a backlash among African-American voters, who "respond most strongly" to any political argument that targets racial divisions, even if they are not the direct subject of the attacks.
Even though the MS-13 attacks failed to lift Republican Ed Gillespie during the Virginia race, the barrage of ads in Tuesday's Ohio special House election accusing Democrat Danny O'Connor of supporting "amnesty for illegals" and "open borders" makes clear that Republicans are committed to stressing racially infused immigration themes through the fall.

Whether that provokes a surge in Latino participation, Fernandez said, may turn on how the nonpartisan groups and Democratic organizations working on turnout respond.
"If the focus of the parties and those organizations is on the predictable electorate, that would be a mistake," he said during a recent conference call with reporters to release the Latino Decisions survey. "There are many more people who are at play who could be potential voters. It's not just a question of what will those folks do on their own, but where will investments be made to encourage people to get out to vote?"

They still vote Demoncrat at higher than average rates and the illegals are worse than the legals.

[jmdrake]

They still vote Demoncrat at higher than average rates and the illegals are worse than the legals.

Yeah....that comes with the fact that they are illegal. Causing your own problem.

[Swordsmyth]

It was not democrats from California that took the case to the SCOTUS.

Between January 2012 and February 2014, plaintiffs in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee filed federal district court cases that culminated in Obergefell v. Hodges.

They just refused to defend it and openly sided with the plaintiffs.

[jmdrake]

They just refused to defend it and openly sided with the plaintiffs.

LOL. You just can't admit you were wrong. So I'll say if for you. You were wrong. You claimed the dems from Cali brought the case. They didn't. And Cali is solidly democrat with or without the Latino vote.