America is already great. Despite the dramatic call of the Republican candidate, that is a tacit declaration of his view of the nation as a failure, America is the home of 40 million people that were born on the other side of Mr. Trump’s dreamed border wall. Despite his main slogan, America’s immigrants know very well that the United States is a great country.
After all, America was created as a nation of immigrants. They embraced the most progressive and advanced values for the XVIII century’s world. Where immigrants came by the millions, poor and uneducated, but with plenty of thirst and hunger of happiness and prosperity. Immigrants were, are and will be, the fresh blood of innovation and hard work that builds the most powerful nation of our time.
The National Republican and Democratic Conventions came and they are gone. Cleveland and Philadelphia concluded more or less as every party convention. For political junkies the conventions are like a trip to wonderland: the elite of both parties discussing the next four years’ political platforms with delegates, including many big donors. A national convention is the best time for networking, getting public recognition and, of course, all those speeches, the media coverage, so many freebies and, again, so many big donors.
Now all that is over. After the conventions, the real campaigns begin. The United States’ peculiar electoral arrangement, with all its peculiarities and imperfections (remember the 2000 election) works under the assumption that every 4 years comes a new chance to renew the passions and trust of the American people in democracy, as the main source of legitimacy of the whole system.
That is, until Mr. Trump joined the game. At this point it seems futile to describe this man a clown, an entertainer with a humongous ego and crazy hair. Despite most of the establishment’s opinion, Donald Trump was able to erase all the other big figures of the Republican Party. His primitive and dangerous rhetoric with plenty of insults against Mexicans, Women, Muslims, Veterans, and pretty much every other group but his sympathizers within the KKK, the extreme right, allowed him to get huge media coverage (mostly for free) and therefore, big numbers in the polls.
A great communicator (as Adolph Hitler was), Mr. Trump has been able to capture a widespread bad mood that is especially strong among one sector of the political demographic of the U.S.A.: white men, over 50 and affiliated to some evangelical church. Mostly because of their rejection of Hillary Clinton, almost 77% of this group said in a recent survey that they would vote for him.
For a real maverick as Mr. Trump, it should be clear that under many of these people there is a deep tacit recognition of personal failure. After all, they are the equivalent to those who voted in favor of Brexit in the U.K. To be clear, many of them are just racists, simply losers unable to cope with the challenges of a global economy and the digital revolution.
If white evangelicals represent around one fifth of the electorate, among most of the others segments of the American demography, Mr. Trump is widely rejected.
Here is when the new Americans, the nation of immigrants, may have a fundamental role bringing the nation’s political future into the common sense path. Although civil and political engagement is a challenge for many newcomers, Trump’s promise that once in the White House he will deport 11 million people, make Mexico pay for a 2,000 mil wall along the southwest border, as well as ban the arrival of anyone of the 1.1 billion people that profess the Muslim religion, there has been a dramatic rise in political participation among communities with recent immigration links; mostly Latinos. Because of all this, the old saying, every vote counts, has never been more accurate that in this election.
