The NBC-Telemundo poll showing Vice President Kamala Harris with a historically low level of support among Hispanics has begun to trigger some of the usual reactions at MSNBC, including the tired “adjacent to whiteness” trope.
WashPost Associate Editor and MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart opened his The Sunday Show segment on the poll by barely being able to put together the words necessary to describe Harris’s 14-point lead among Hispanics in relation to past Democrat nominees:
JONATHAN CAPEHART: Trump's rehashing of his race-baiting rhetoric comes as a new NBC News-Telemundo and CNBC poll shows that Harris has a 14-point lead over Trump among Latino voters. 54% to Trump's 40%. Yes, that's a big lead. But it's a shrinking one. Down from- down from what might seem like a big lead it's a shrinking one because…it…Donald…I’m sorry…President Biden had a 36-point lead in 2020, and Hillary Clinton had a 50-point lead in 2016.
Per NBC’s writeup of the poll:
Vice President Kamala Harris is leading former President Donald Trump among Latino voters. But that advantage has declined to Democrats’ lowest level in the past four presidential cycles, according to a new national NBC News/Telemundo/CNBC poll.
Overall, the poll shows that Democratic presidential candidate Harris has lost some ground with Latinos at a time when these consequential voters are more likely than the general electorate to cite the economy and the rising cost of living as top priorities. On both of these issues, Latino voters give Trump the advantage, but a majority of them prefer Harris on temperament, competency and having the necessary mental and physical health to be president.
Support for Harris is at 54% among registered Latino voters, according to the poll, while Trump gets 40% and another 6% say they’re unsure or wouldn’t vote. The margin of error in the poll is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
While Harris’ 14-point advantage is an improvement from President Joe Biden’s standing when he was at the top of the ticket, it is still lower than the past leads Democratic presidential candidates enjoyed in 2012 (by 39 points), 2016 (50 points) and 2020 (36 points), according to NBC’s merged polling data from those past cycles.
The poll goes on to confirm what we’ve all known to be true: that Hispanics are not a monolith, and that there are many nuanced reasons for the split being the way it is. Namely, immigration no longer being the apex issue that many think it is.
But those who merchandise the idea of Latino identity as defined by politics, there is no such nuance. Watch as Futuro Media founder and frequent MSNBC guest María Hinojosa accuses Trump-supporting Hispanics of essentially being race-traitors:
JONATHAN CAPEHART: I'm going to get, we're going to over time. But I am going to squeeze this one more question in and this is for you Maria. And this is from this CNBC-Telemundo poll, that shows the shrinking majority of Latino voters in favor of the Democratic candidate. And as we see, is that…
MARIA HINOJOSA: In favor of the Republican candidate.
CAPEHART: Well- this is the one, it's supposed to be with Vice President Harris at 54%. A 14 point lead. Is that it? The bottom number? Yeah. So there it is. The bottom number. So she has a 14-point lead but it has been shrinking after each consecutive presidential election from 2016. Why is that? Why is the Democratic share of the Latino vote shrinking?
HINOJOSA: And what I said to you when we asked the question was, Latinos want to be white. They want to be with the cool kids. They want to be- I'm asking Latinos all the time and they say,”well…ese Donald Trump es tan buen negociante. He’s such a good businessman. It’s like: no, he's not. He had bankruptcies. But they don't want to be identified with all of those other immigrants that Donald Trump speaks so badly of- including me as a Mexican immigrant. So they’re like: “we’d rather re- let’s be with him.” But those numbers? They could cost Kamala Harris the election. Everything that I’ve been saying that Latinos could push her over the top, these are the numbers that could also take her down.
It is a disgusting trope as old as time, the “adjacency to whiteness” trope that the left fires off against minorities they cannot control or easily persuade to fall in line. I’ve spoken in the past about the wrath of spurned gatekeepers.
There are a slew of race merchants that have a hard time getting over the idea that increasing numbers of Hispanics are not going to conform to prefabricated notions of identity, and are going to assert independence. There is a little over a month left until the election. From here on out, it’s only going to get worse.
