Sickness Unto Death and the Latino Vote

Our current despair might seem familiar to optimism-averse thinkers of the 19th century, but our lives might not turn out as terrible as anyone may fear

Oct 22, 2024

Nineteenth-century Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky said that if you’re intelligent, you’ll suffer. If you look into the abyss, it’ll look back at you.

So lately, if you’re indeed smart, you’ve probably got some of that. The abyss may contain very bad things for you to see and experience after Nov. 5. Victory for Mr. Trump, and worse, for congressional sycophants who can be expected to do what he wants no matter what it is, with terrible prospects.

Not only would they do the unconscionable things they promise, but they would neglect what must be done now. No fix for the housing crisis. Lightweight, fast-firing guns will further proliferate. Artificial Intelligence will likely proceed unregulated. The Earth will continue to warm.

Clockwise from top left, for your consideration: U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-MO; U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-GA; U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-OH; U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, all seeking re-election for the opportunity to not do what you want

It shouldn't be too hard to escape most of this, since all a sensible majority has to do is vote in greater numbers than those who aren’t sensible. You know, the people who tolerate a candidate who calls his opponent “a shit vice-president” and entertains a crowd with a tale about a famous golfer’s penis. Who stops taking questions at his own public question session and proceeds to have a sock hop with himself.

But one of the horrors of the abyss is that diving into it reveals no useful sensible majority. Democrats can’t credibly lead that majority because they won’t agree on how to defeat a guy with dementia and multiple mental illnesses who opposes everything they believe in.

Thinking about that feels like doom.

And if you’ve been sick, as I have, it all seems of a piece, doesn’t it? Or if you’re love-lorn. Unappreciated. Addicted. Grieving. Our inner and outer worlds join in concurrent chaos.

Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote in 1849 that despair could be a sickness of the spirit and the self, culminating in the fear that life will become a spiritual death that might last forever.

It may actually seem like that now. But let’s not go there.

I keep avoiding it. I haven’t been able to walk for most of the last month. I can deal with that, being a hopeful person, and a bit zen. And my muscles are coming back, so I can spin the wheels of a big old heavy wheelchair. But sometimes, what I’m thinking about makes it heavier. Mustn't mix things up too much that way, then.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

While I recover, death is coming wholesale in Gaza, Lebanon, Israel, Ukraine and Russia. Asylum-seeking immigrants fleeing horrible lives poured into this country before there were places for them to go. Great swaths of the American Mid-South have been devastated by a hurricane. Another hurricane hit Cuba, where the electrical power for 10 million people was already out. Havoc rules in Haiti. The Taiwan Strait and the 38th parallel have some nervous neighbors.

We should work harder on some of these, no?

In Chicago, where I live, we have all the problems many Americans share, and some extra-special ones just for us. There isn’t nearly enough money to keep the schools open, and the mayor, school CEO and governor aren’t eagerly collaborating on a solution. My Sun-Times has a daily two-page story about this. Still less than half the Bears coverage, though.

Generally, crime is decreasing here, like most places, but it’s going up where it shouldn’t be. Cars are being hijacked in good neighborhoods, and potshots taken at old women just walking down the street for an ice cream. I know people who are afraid who were never afraid before.

There are some benefits to being stuck inside a rehab facility, I guess.

Some venerable local restaurants have closed. Amazingly, six French restaurants have opened in Chicago this year, which indicates many prospective restaurateurs are just as foolishly optimistic as always.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Chicago carjacker, Chicago White Sox First Baseman Andrew Vaughn

During this challenging year, the White Sox, which I have used as a tonic for most of my life, had the worst season of that life or anyone else’s. And now, there’s a new threat of losing the team to another state. This 35th Street malaise might have meshed nicely with my darker moments, but I learned long ago to compartmentalize disappointment in other people’s errors.

It was thrilling when the Cubs won the World Series in October of 2016. But all through the stretch run for both baseball and the presidency, I mulled the words of Saturday Night Live writer A. Whitney Brown in 1989: It’s in the Bible: when the small bears from the Windy Place take the flag, then you shall know the end is nigh.

Trump somehow won the White House a month later. He soon ruined the Supreme Court, which dismantled Roe vs. Wade and several other legal protections we hoped were here to stay.

Trump promoted civil discord as if it were his new reality show, The Violent Apprentice. A record rise in hate crimes followed in his first three years. Hate-motivated murders reached their highest level in decades in 2019, and in Trump’s last year, the nation saw the biggest increase in murders of all kinds, year-to-year, ever.

Deaths from COVID-19 in the United States were the highest per capita of all major countries.

I’m still alive, hated no more than previously, and la corona has yet to darken my door. Selfish, I know, but I’ve got enough going on.

Lee Goodman with his COVID-19 scoreboard, September 2020, Northbrook, Ill.

But what to do? What to do?

Legendary newspaper columnist Franklin P. Adams wrote 80 years ago not to feel too alone when running to vote for somebody one may not be wildly enthusiastic about. Perhaps somebody like today’s Kamala Harris.

Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody, rather than for somebody.

Any one or two of the many unfortunate things Trump did or didn’t do, including a cherry-pick of his especially bizarre recent behavior, would disqualify most presidential candidates out of hand. But there’s heightened causation now that most Democrats fail to acknowledge.

A growing majority of voters correctly understand that they’re being cheated of the life they might deserve, and many think it’s the Democrats’ fault.

It’s not unreasonable, because Democrats support using tax revenue from some people to help other people who aren’t them. The complainants’ perception is perhaps perverse but not entirely illogical. It’s also not accurate, however.

Most of this country’s real problems are corporate and not governmental, at least not directly. Inflation, for instance, is currently in play because a few big entities control most commodities and products. Four companies control most of the beef, so beef costs whatever they want it to. Two conglomerates control most of the pop. So it goes.

There really isn’t enough time for Harris, still a relatively unknown quantity, to get her points across while fighting a candidate who retains his support no matter what awful things he does or demonstrates that he is.

Despite the heady atmosphere of joy surrounding the Democratic National Convention, the 2024 election can’t be about joy for long. It continues to be about one philosophy against another, much more than the charm and competence of any particular candidate.

The candidates serve mainly as vehicles to drive those already committed to actually take a ballot. In that vein, Harris represents a late-model SUV as opposed to the Bidenmobile flivver. The Harris vehicle is a newer but not necessarily better conveyance, and that’s okay.

Ride with Kamala! You can get a Kamala Harris window sticker from Amazon for $11.99 to mount on your own SUV.

The current Republican philosophy, though steeped in cruelty and depravity, is rock-solid and unchanging in its appeal. Republicans who aren’t jaded, lazy or utterly demoralized by Trump and his pals’ recent antics will get themselves out to vote red without further debate. Or they won’t. They have no questions.

Democratic philosophy, much kinder but, as usual, more fluid, has constituent backing that’s more fluid, too. It’s especially in flux among minorities. Various pundits are fretting over the declining interest of Black men, but I suspect it’s less gender-specific. I talked to 20 Black Chicago women last month about their tepid support of Democrats, especially by the younger set. Read about that here, if you so choose.

Some of the same pundits are worried over the weakness of the many-layered Hispanic vote. The Dem devotion of Mexican-Americans and Puerto Ricans is foundering a little. Maybe more than a little.

According to a poll this month by the Latino Victory Foundation, Harris was ahead by about 25% in each Hispanic segment of seven swing states, trailing in number eight, heavily-Cuban Florida, 46%-39%. Not spectacular, but not terrible.

Puerto Ricans, typically strong blue voters, may remain largely loyal liberals, but are reportedly still not particularly good about turning out or getting registered.

Total Hispanic registration averaged around 58% leading up to the four presidential elections of 2004 to 2016, and rose to about 61% in 2020.

Cuban-Americans tend to crowd the polls. Those actually born in Cuba are traditionally Republican, but they’re now outnumbered by their kids, who pretty much aren’t.

Sunday night, Ana Navarro interviewed a Gen Z Florida-born Cuban-American on her fine CNN hour about the complex Latin-American vote of 2024. The young man related how in high school, after Trump referred to asylum seekers as murderers and rapists, white guys called him a blankety-blank wetback and other fine things.

He said he didn’t tell his parents, but there was no way he was voting GOP. And he was definitely voting.

But still: According to Equis Research, in 2014, Cuban-Americans nationwide were 46% Republican, 30% Democrat and 24% Independent. Now they’re 54% GOP, 15% Democratic and 31% Independent.

About 65% of Cuban-American voters live in Florida, usually a bitterly-contested state because of its 30 electoral votes. In 2004, 71% of Florida Cuban-Americans voted Republican (when George Bush beat John Kerry). It was 65% GOP in 2008 (when Barack Obama defeated John McCain in Florida and across the U.S.).

Florida non-Cuban Hispanics as a group backed Democrats each election from 2004 to 2020. Hispanics backed Democratic presidential candidates nationwide, too.

By 2012, the U.S.-born portion of Cuban-Americans had reached 20%, 60% of whom voted for Obama in Florida. Fifty-five percent of the old guys still voted Republican. Barack Obama edged Romney 49% - 47% among Florida Cubans, and he won 66% of the rest of the Hispanic crowd. He took the whole state and the Electoral College, too.

Trump got 52% of the Florida Cubans in 2020, Biden got 59% of all the Latinos there, and Trump took the state by 10 points.

He didn’t win the whole country, however, no matter what he says.

The Florida eligible voter rolls are 22% Hispanic. Arizona has 25%, Nevada 22%, Wisconsin 5%, Michigan 4%, Georgia, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, 6% each. Nationwide: 15%.

Hispanic voters now edge Blacks, about 14% of U.S. eligible voters. Fifty-three percent of those are women.

One of the Black Democratic women I talked to last month said that since several of the younger women in her family were leaning red, she and her older pals were planning a get-together to read them the riot act. Conversely, I think younger Cuban-Americans should invite their elders for a powwow.

It might be a tall order. Trump keeps saying Harris is a communist and niggling about her gender. Cuba-born Florida men shun female politicians almost as much as they avoid voting for commies.

Either way, I trust Dem field workers aren’t neglecting door-knocking in Hispanic parts of Florida and in smaller swing states with a lot of Spanish surnames on the doorbells.

I hope Harris’ doorknockers are making up good stuff she might do for the country. They need the material. Like Kierkegaard, Harris seems to favor challenging people to understand exactly what she has in mind.

At least she has a mind.

Come November, somebody has to lose. The one with the mind had better win.

That’s Job 1 for all you big talkers the next two weeks.

The losers, in Dostoyevskian fashion, should be treated with empathy and compassion, if we are to heal. Most rank-and-file Americans are not idiots or morons or demons as so many of us have maintained. Some of the people are merely wrong, and have difficulty admitting or understanding that. Those people are Republicans.

If the liberals prevail, they should probably handle themselves as Abraham Lincoln prescribed for the aftermath of the American Civil War.

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

Lincoln wasn’t able to follow up on the plan. Let us hope that Harris is able to do it now. The abyss doesn’t seem nearly as deep this time.