Blind into the Night

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My God. They’ve got a madman on their hands.

Fans of the movie The Hunt for Red October will recognize the harrowing line uttered by a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when he realized that a renegade Soviet submarine commander had stolen a new, silent Russian submarine on its maiden mission.   Its revolutionary silent propulsion system was designed to slip through American naval defenses with the capability to launch a sudden nuclear attack on the United States.

As it turns out, the captain of the sub wanted to defect and deliver the ship into American hands to equal the playing field.  To get complete command of the vessel and its nuclear capability, the captain had murdered the Communist party apparatchik with whom he shared the code to the ship’s missiles.

No one is suggesting that Donald J. Trump should be murdered.  But like Sean Connery in October, Trump will have, in fact, the sole power to launch a nuclear strike after Jan. 20.  Be careful what you wish for, Vladimir Putin.  You got what you wanted.

And so did the American people:  Donald J. Trump is going to be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States in less than three months’ time.

How we got here is not as important as what happens next.  Truly, Hillary Clinton was a very flawed candidate and the Democratic Party has the opportunity now to remake itself outside the Clintons’ shadows.  But we will soon miss her competence, experience and intelligence – the three mainstays of the Presidency that Trump lacks.

It is laughable now that we were worried that Sarah Palin would have been a heartbeat away from the Oval Office had John McCain won.  And we 16 years ago also were petrified about George W. Bush taking office.  And we were right.  His lack of competence, intelligence and experience proved horrifically bad.

But we might have not seen anything yet.

We have arrived at a singularly dangerous moment in human history.  It could well be that Trump never wakes up one morning and plunges the country into a nuclear war or a constitutional crisis.  But his election does mean that other dangers will fester.  For one, the great, silent danger of global climate change will almost surely now accelerate.  It is the secret propulsion system that will take humanity eventually to the brink.

For the immediate future, an unwise Supreme Court will abet those in the voting minority who want to take the country back 100 years.  We in the voting majority who won the popular vote must suffer the hope that a Republican Congress will counterbalance Trump.  It is a faint hope.  House Speaker Paul Ryan has the opportunity to be the patriot he says he is.

But I doubt the voting minority that elected Trump will let him.

If he does his duty to protect the country from Trump, Ryan will have to sacrifice his political career.  Faint hope.  So this does not bode well, and it is not hyperbolic to consider the possibility of real civic strife.  This is no movie.

The results of the election sadden me because the sons and daughters and the grandsons and granddaughters of the voters who pushed Trump into office well could rue Nov. 8, 2016, the day the country elected  someone who might be the madman the founders feared.

At the end of October, Sean Connery eases his submarine into the safety of a harbor on the Maine coast, averting disaster.

We can only long this ship America finds a similar haven.

Jesús (Jesse) Treviño is the former editorial page editor of The Austin American-Statesman.

Here and Present

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In attending a memorial service for a friend, it is at first easy to think only about her and her family.  Soon enough, though, we lose ourselves in memories.  The nostalgia that comes from recalling our relationship to and time with her moves our minds to ruminate on other aspects of our lives.  And those of us no longer young also ponder the immediate future of our own well-being.

Yet something mutes the toll that weighty death take on us – the warm feeling of reconnecting with friends who are friends precisely because they turn out when you need them.  And, it turns out, they need you, too.  There is, in fact, strength in numbers, and the packed cathedral in San Antonio provided comfort for those of us for whom the sudden loss of Choco Meza to a rampant cancer was shocking, its physical finality too real.

Gazing around the church and crowd, I saw many of us who have lived and experienced the modern emergence of the Hispanic/Latino population into an important demographic reality.  And so the Rosary and the Mass we celebrated for her constituted a confluence of both history and future for those of us not yet finished.  That our contemporary died at 64 and that we might be slower in gait does not preclude us from knowing that Choco would not want us to be finished with the enduring business at hand – the social, political, economic and cultural progress and development of the Hispanic/Latino community.

The agenda is full.  It is constant.  And it is perennial – like the cathedral of San Fernando itself.

Having been forced to stand for the Rosary and having to deal with an aching back, I stole outside and walked around the iconic church.  In its illuminated state, I marveled again at its magnificent restoration, led by Father David García, a high school classmate, and a host of others in our beloved San Antonio.  And I take enormous but totally unmerited pride when I walk the one-block street named Treviño on the building’s northern side.  In my mind, the presence of the family name weds me to the cathedral’s old and historic stones that stretch back to before the nation’s founding.  I did not get that feeling walking around Independence Hall in Philadelphia during the Democratic National Convention in July.

And like the cathedral, Choco exists among the personal icons I choose for my life.  No one who met her, as I did oh so many years ago, could forget her wide eyes that would have been wild had they not shone with a goodness that offered immediate acceptance.  Her eyes literally exploded with commitment to the Hispanic/Latino community.  And so she is an iconic reference point for me not only of our history but for the future.

Julián and Joaquín Castro, in emotional remembrances at the end of the mariachi-garlanded service, personified part of that future and, surely, the history of the labors of Choco’s life.  But it was Henry Cisneros who sounded the clarion for us to do nothing less than to extend and continue her work if not her life itself.

Henry called on immediate family first and then cousins and then colleagues and then co-workers and then women whom Choco had helped empower and then the rest of us — and then all us together — to make our presence known as a testament to her.  In groups we stood when called and we echoed what Mexicans proclaim when they at a rally, at a meeting, at an event want to make their presence known and felt.  They stand and shout:

¡Presente!

We are here!  We belong!  We are with you!

The echo ricocheted off the thick walls of the old church with a force so powerful and willful that to my ear became resolve.

The work continues.

Jesús (Jesse) Treviño is the former editorial page editor of The Austin American-Statesman.

Willie Velásquez: A Model for Our Times

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So the documentary PBS aired last week on Willie Velásquez perhaps accomplished more than its producers wanted:  It focused on a man who blended what so many Hispanic/Latino leaders today, frankly, lack:  A true sense of vision embodied in direct engagement and personal commitment to the growth of the social and political standing of Hispanic/Latinos.   Many talk a good game.  Few throw the ball downfield like Willie in his days.

For today’s young Hispanic/Latinos, Willie’s too-early death is a cautionary tale of the unforeseen sleights that history can throw our way.  What, in other words, would Texas, and therefore the country, look like had Willie lived?  The film – Willie Velásquez: Your Vote is Your Voice, a production of Galán Inc. and Latino Public Broadcasting – recounts his leadership of the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project.  It did not freely speculate what he might have done had he not died in 1988 at the age of 44.  44!

The fact is we lost a strong and unrelenting voice that otherwise would have resonated louder year after year with a passion we desperately needed – and miss today.

With perhaps a better-financed organization as each year passed, he might have done more than we have to marshal the power of the Hispanic/Latino population that had begun to grow in leaps and bounds.  More important, he in all likelihood would have developed – and articulated – a sense of mission and purpose that, truth be told, we are lacking as a community and in too many of our leaders.  In too many ways, we are voiceless with our votes.

I was a young, inexperienced reporter in 1978 when I traveled up from Corpus Christi to San Antonio to profile Willie for my newspaper.  I was barely 26.  I walked into the office of his voter registration project on North St. Mary’s Street near the river.

There I met a man who could see the future and who wanted to help drive the mostly Mexican-American population of Texas and the country into that new future as rapidly as possible – one fueled by a demographic revolution that will not reach its apex in my lifetime but presents a new challenge for us:  What we do with the years ahead?

But I – nor any Hispanic/Latino of note whom I have met in my years in journalism and government – possessed his energy and commitment.  He grew personally and supported the progressive cause that includes the advancement and equal protection of all minorities and women and gays and lesbians.  More so, he would have fostered the ideals and principles and values to guide a minority when it becomes a majority.  He would have reached for something new, and he would not have repeated the atrocities visited upon us in the past.

I remember his eyes growing wider as we spoke.  “In the end, it is all about the numbers.”  I can hear his voice today.  And while all of our lives march inexorably to some end or another, the end that Willie was referring to is what we now are witness to: That Hispanic/Latinos have achieved the numbers to develop a new direction with a new sense of self and confidence to move into the days ahead.

“We are good in some counties, and we are making a difference, but we are not there yet,” he said to me.  Willie was referring to the handful of counties throughout the nation in which the Mexican-American predominated back then.  “But we will get there.”

Indeed we have – with the numbers at least.  But without his frenetic and near-maniacal manner that tossed around a million ideas in his mind, we have not gotten to where we should be.  We are more muddle than made.

Now comes the sad news that one of Willie’s closest associates, Choco Meza – as committed as he to the cause of Hispanic/Latinos and of women – died at the very moment that the country is on the verge of electing a woman to the Presidency.  Another veteran of those early days at Willie’s office, Grace García, a personal friend of Hillary Clinton, would have been in the thick of the presidential campaign.  But she, too, died too young in a car accident almost two years ago.

Women do have the numbers, and the victories for them as for Hispanic/Latinos have come slowly at times.

But they come.

We will get there.

Jesús (Jesse) Treviño is the former editorial page editor of The Austin American-Statesman.

Becoming part of the 80-percent

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Hillary Clinton is moving to get more than 80 percent of the Hispanic/Latino vote in November, a measure not seen in half a century.  Perhaps Lyndon B. Johnson received as much or more in his lopsided win in 1964.  In this day and age, support of that kind among Hispanic/Latinos can trigger a landslide.

Clinton appears to be winning majorities across the entire Hispanic/Latino population.  The latest defection is Carlos Gutiérrez, the Cuban-born Secretary of Commerce in the administration of George W. Bush.

The highly respected Gutiérrez sees his vote for Clinton in November as a vote for free and open trade, and he has voiced grave concerns about Donald Trump’s hateful anti-immigrant rhetoric.  To some extent, Gutiérrez perhaps now sees part of what many Hispanic/Latinos for years have seen in Clinton.

For me — for whom cynicism comes easily from my newsroom years — I remember the day I became part of the 80 percent.  My time as a journalist had passed when the Monica Lewinsky scandal involving Bill Clinton blew across the front pages of the nation’s newspapers and millions of television screens with the force of a hurricane.  And Hillary, of course, was in the middle of the storm.

My first time to lay eyes on her was at the beginning of the tempest.  She was the featured speaker at the annual dinner of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts in 1998 at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington.  The swirling scandal was engulfing the White House five blocks away, with talk of the President’s imminent resignation cascading across town.  Inside the Mayflower, the expectation built among the small, intimate crowd as the time neared for her to appear.

Many in the room were Clinton political appointees, and their tense, worried expressions collapsed into chagrin when someone at the table interjected the specter of impeachment. The person seated next to me suggested Clinton should have called in sick. Another speculated she would look a mess.  Someone referenced The Taming of the Shrew.  Soon enough, the number of Secret Service agents deployed grew, flooding the room.  Expectation muffled the chatter and noise.  Gossiping mouths stopped in mid-sentence; wide, inquiring eyes said everything.

And then there she suddenly was.

She was resplendent in a blue dress.  Her hair, perfect.  Her smile wide.  She did not hold her head high so as to avoid. Rather, she was making direct visual contact with people and waving at friends she recognized.  She had entered the arena.

Audiences by tradition stand by rote when the President’s wife makes an entrance. But this crowd rose slowly, near-paralyzed at what it saw:  A woman not cowed; an individual with self-respect intact; a professional driving a stake into the ground to claim it; a winner in command.  Her glamour radiated her courage into the crowd.  The crowd embraced her in ever-growing applause.  Her countenance struck me, and I could only wonder what was coming next.

What came next was a long, protracted dinner that must have been excruciating for her.  With hundreds of eyes on her, Clinton carried on conversations with others at the head table as if they were talking about Kramer’s latest antics on Seinfeld.  At long last, the actor Jimmy Smits introduced her, and it was her turn to speak in a room at near-silence.  The waiters and waitresses had joined their also-entranced supervisors, all conjoined in the drama.

She started by joking about the many beautiful people in the room, cleverly underscoring her own bedazzling aura.  Then, after the usual acknowledgement of political potentates and luminaries large and small, she plunged into a speech that without any teleprompter or notes ranks as one of the best speeches I have ever heard about the state of the Hispanic/Latino community and its promise.  She was nothing short of brilliant.

She talked about her time growing up and coming to understand the complex history of the Hispanic/Latino in this country.  The statistics and figures and facts she drew from her head were as normal as the breaths she drew from within.  More important, she provided context.  She knew where everyone in the room fit in the current and future story of the country.

In an ever-confident voice, she talked about registering voters in South Texas Hispanic/Latino precincts in 1972.  She talked about children and the role of women, of Hispanic/Latino veterans, the need for all to commit to civil rights and social progress.  Her demeanor demanded respect.  She mesmerized the crowd.  And she caught me off guard.

I was not expecting anything like what I saw that night.  I wish I could swear that at the time I entertained the thought that she, not Bill, should be President.  I did not.  I was too in shock to see it.  But I see it now.

Since then, she has given hundreds of speeches to Hispanic/Latino audiences throughout the country.  When you are in the marketplace for as long as she, your brand gets around, and if your brand is one of competence, intelligence, courage, compassion and loyalty, the brand sticks.  And as every marketer in this country knows, Hispanic/Latinos are brand-loyal if anything.

What you see is what you get with Hillary Clinton.  She is neither shrew nor saint.  But compared to Donald Trump, she is eminently presidential.  Has been for years.

Since her youth, Hillary Clinton has given to the Hispanic/Latino community.  She has invested real, hard work on behalf of Hispanic/Latino children, so much of the nation’s future.  Her soul gives others hope.  Now a rate of return awaits her dedication and commitment.

An 80-percent-plus rate of return is about right.

Jesús (Jesse) Treviño is the former editorial page editor of The Austin American-Statesman.

An American Vote Lost

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It was one of those coincidences that has happened to me often in life.  Not but two days after Khizr Khan, with his wife, Ghazala, standing by his side in stoic support, delivered his jaw-dropping defense of the Constitution at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, I boarded the Southwest flight home to Austin via Dallas.

I had noticed what seemed to me was an Indian family in the waiting area.  They easily could have been Pakistani like Mr. Khan.  I took my aisle seat and knew the middle seat would not remain empty.  Indeed, while looking out the window for that unseen cloud formation that I always fear is going to force a screw out of the wing and send us plummeting to earth, a young man took the window seat.  And not long after him came another young man who I came to know by his nickname, Nish.  He was part of the family waiting to board in the last group.  He took the middle seat.

I soon learned that Nish, his parents and a brother after landing in Dallas were driving to Oklahoma City for a wedding, well, two weddings, really: the first a Christian ceremony and then another of the same couple he said would be in Hindu.  I immediately warned him to get on Interstate 35 quickly to try to avoid the construction mess near Denton, 30 miles north, where my sister lives, lest they add an hour or two to their trip.

With the plane rising into the clouds, I also learned that this young man was hell-bent on a military career, not unlike Captain Humayun Khan, who had died a hero in Iraq in 2004 helping defend his fellow soldiers and whose valiant legacy as embodied by his father at the convention might have been the turning point of the 2016 presidential race.  I asked Nish if he had watched the Khan speech.  He said yes, and the conversation, of course, quickly careened into all things Trump.

I was intrigued by Nish, who said he works as a paralegal at a law firm in northern Virginia while working to figure out a way to get into the Army’s officer training program.  His youthful earnestness and ambition were endearing, and so knowing something of how these things can be short-circuited, I began to give him some advice about how he might be able to jump-start the process of gaining entry into the military at the officer-training level.  He grew greatly enthused.

As we talked, he confirmed he was Republican at heart but that Trump was beyond the pale.  I got the sense he could easily vote for a Ryan-Rubio ticket in 2020.

I found his enthusiasm ennobling but also troubling.  I usually have not counseled young men or women to pursue careers that might cost them their lives.  But one cannot deny a patriot his calling whatever his political persuasion or his religion, something Trump, who would purport to be Nish’s commander-in-chief, does not.

Nish’s parents were born in India; Nish and his siblings here.  But Nish like so many products of immigrant parents knows instinctively that there is no escaping being labelled an immigrant in a land in which minorities are singled out for attack – even minorities who were here before the founding of the country.

Republicans like Trump and the know-nothing wing of his party do not realize that attacking minorities re-enforces the ethnic, religious and cultural constructs that support their different roots and identities.  Attacks on minorities even overcome sentiments within immigrant groups, for no one should doubt the sometimes real animosity that exists between Indians and Pakistanis.  In the fight against Trump, there is no difference among minorities.  Ask Cuban Americans who year after year increasingly are joining every other Hispanic/Latino group coalescing against recalcitrant Republicans.

Public opinion surveys reveal that an incredibly high number of Americans — as many as 40 percent! — believe most Hispanic/Latinos in the United States are immigrants – and ‘illegal immigrants’ at that.

In today’s toxic environment, Nish will remain ever the son of immigrants – even were he, God forbid, to perish somewhere like Capt. Kahn did for his country.

Were that horrible fate to await him, he with grim coincidence would join the thousands of Hispanic/Latino military service men and women who sacrificed their lives for a country that produces the Trumps of the world.

All of these thoughts were going through my mind as I listened to Nish soberly yet excitedly talk about his future.  What an incredible young man.  Trump does not know what he is losing.

But in Trump losing the American votes cast by Nish and millions more like him, America gains and the legacy of Capt. Khan and thousands of Hispanic/Latinos heroes vouchsafed.

Jesús (Jesse) Treviño is the former editorial page editor of The Austin American-Statesman.

As Important as the Khans

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Reports that Donald Trump almost matched Hillary Clinton in raising money for the month of August for his campaign should alarm everyone.  In the end, the news could overshadow the events leading up to and after the Republican and Democratic national nominating conventions.

The money Trump raised in July, about $82 million, came mostly from small donors.  If Trump can harness the full potential of his base, he could turn around a race he is currently losing.  If it is about the money, Hispanic/Latinos need to take note.

Trump has made religion and the color of one’s skin a cornerstone of his campaign though he might deny it.  He is close enough to the White House for Hispanic/Latinos to make a trip to the credit union if necessary.  After all, as I have said before, this election is an existential matter.  It was and is for the parents of Capt. Humayun Khan.

Trump as President is an immediate, direct threat to the existence of many in our community.  More so, he endangers the existence of the republic and our democratic form of government that in the end could endanger the very existence of humankind itself were he to get his hands on the handles and gears of war or delay us in making hard decisions about climate change.

Forget the rising oceans for now.  It should be enough for Hispanic/Latino parents to worry about their sons and daughters once again being shipped out to war to return mangled or killed or their skins and minds damaged in more ways than one.

It should be enough for Hispanic/Latinos — especially veterans who have voted Republican — to be repelled by someone who mocked a Gold Star mother; got his hands on a Purple Heart even though he got five deferments from serving in Vietnam; denigrated prisoners of war; and called a general who served all of his life in the military a failed person.

Imagine Donald Trump meeting flag-draped coffins at Dover.  Of what possible comfort could he be to a family in tears, this man for whom empathy is so distant?  Imagine the rage for any war-deaths that result from the decisions of a President who knows nothing about foreign policy but can command troops into battle.  How long before a constitutional crisis would ensue?

Against that backdrop and in tandem with our lower voter and electoral participation rates, Hispanic/Latinos have never contributed in any significant way to political campaigns.  Most Hispanic/Latino households do not have $25 lying around to give to anyone, much less a presidential campaign.  Worse still, high-net-worth Hispanic/Latinos have not been especially supportive either.

It is time for everybody to give.  This race could turn.

Bernie Sanders raised tens of millions of dollars in small sums from millions of contributors, many of whom never had given to a campaign.  Likewise, Trump’s campaign coffers could explode overnight despite his plunging poll numbers.  Hillary Clinton since her convention has opened up a significant lead over Trump in national surveys of registered and likely voters.  But that should neither excuse nor preclude us from giving.  Candidates with larger leads than Clinton’s today have lost.

As a group, Hispanic/Latinos cannot give much, but one million Hispanic/Latinos averaging $25 now and in September and October amounts to $75 million.  That is a lot of money but hardly enough.  Nevertheless, it will be money well spent, especially if the economy and the stock market were to tank were Trump to win.

Instead of giving up two hours of wages or so, many Hispanic/Latinos might have to give up their jobs — or much more.

Like the Khans, we have a lot of skin in the game.

Jesús (Jesse) Treviño is the former editorial page editor of The Austin American-Statesman.

THE COST ALREADY

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NEW HAVEN, CONN. — Several days later, on the train to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia knowing that I should get used to a surprise a day, I nevertheless still have to pinch myself to believe the raw hate and anger that swelled up from the floor of the convention hall and the delegates who nominated Donald Trump in Cleveland. It was shocking.

As astonishing were the odious speakers, culminating in Trump’s wretched ranting about race and ethnicity. His congratulatory stepping away from the podium and self-congratulatory bopping of his head up and down – feeling the fury he had unleashed come back at him in a rush from the delegates – reminded me of Benito Mussolini.  It was eerie, abnormal.

The many commentators on television who tried to equate this 2016 convention to the troubled 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago were engaging in lazy thinking. In Chicago, delegates fought angrily over the war in Vietnam. In Cleveland, the delegates in reality were hurling invective at half of the country that elected Barack Obama President, fearing, of course, that we will elect Hillary Clinton as well. I got a sense that the Republican delegates intuited their defeat come November, metastasizing their rage.

The Clinton campaign team played brilliantly their hand, running again and again the ad featuring the kids watching snippets of Trump at his foulest worst. Kids in commercials are a powerful force. This was LBJ’s daisy ad. For four days the ads began to build a huge virtual jaw into which on the last day the disdainful Trump walked, his ego clouding the reality around him.

But hate is a potent force that has turned elections in the past, and despite the disaster that was Cleveland, Democrats cannot afford to let up and must work to win the election.

Trump, though, has achieved one of the underlying sentiments of his fellow Republican delegates in Cleveland: He has stymied the growth of the political power of Hispanic/Latinos not only at the national level but the local level as well.

Another, more normal GOP nominee would have seen the demographic writing on the wall and chosen from one of a handful of plausible Hispanic/Latino Republican officeholders. Nevada Gov. Ruben Sandoval or New Mexico Governor Susana Martínez or the ever-ready Marco Rubio were well-suited to the office. Either Sandoval or Rubio would have been a nightmare in a normal contest. But Trump chose Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, forcing Clinton to not accentuate ethnicity and thus Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine emerged on the Democratic side.

For the next eight years, then, unless events intrude, Hispanic/Latinos, already disproportionately underrepresented in the Senate and the House of Representatives, will continue their too-slow entry into the American political mainstream. A Hispanic/Latino on the Democratic ticket and as Vice President would have spurred much-needed efforts at the local level to strengthen Hispanic/Latino involvement and engagement in public and civic life.

It should more than matter to Hispanic/Latinos that in the next eight years great decisions will be taken on issues and challenges that involve their immediate future in which they will have limited say. And it should matter that no one in the White House will take personal interest in the further enhancement of the Hispanic/Latino electorate at the local level.

It is no longer acceptable to entrust in a presidential administration our whole destiny. Nothing beats being at the table. Discussions at tables more often than not lead to compromise. And how quickly can fall off the needs and concerns of Hispanic/Latinos! It has been happening for decades.

I traded e-mails with a friend who earnestly supported the idea of Julián Castro being named Clinton’s running mate. He was disappointed but realistic.

“We have to win the election.”

Indeed.

The cost otherwise would be higher than it sadly already is.

Jesús (Jesse) Treviño is the former editorial page editor of The Austin American-Statesman.

THE UNTHINKABLE

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Hispanic/Latino leaders at all levels of the community now need to ponder a future few of us imagined only weeks ago:  The election of Donald J. Trump and his ascension to the Presidency and the harrowing horror that awaits.

The summer of 2016 augurs morass for the fall – in more ways than one.  Events in Baton Rouge, St. Paul, Dallas and now Baton Rouge again – and by extension Nice – make November fraught with portent, with more terrorist or mass shootings between now and then in the offing.

The crushing victory by Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump that I expected is now in uncharted waters.  Swift currents of hate and anger and reaction are moving Trump’s candidacy, once moored upon the beach of unviability, into larger streams of possibility.  The worst fears of many in the Hispanic/Latino community no longer loom only as nightmare.

Only last week, I assured a group of Hispanic/Latino professionals in Boston at an event hosted by El Planeta and Conexión near MIT that Trump would not win and that Hillary Clinton would be elected unless unforeseen events spilled out of control.  Almost suddenly, with each passing day, civil strife invokes the specter of reaction and disunion.  An increasing number of voters will find in Trump the candidate who intensifies their fears, feeds their hate or stokes their anger – or all three.

I remember the flush of voters in 1972 sweeping Richard Nixon to victory over George McGovern in the wake of violent protests against the war in Vietnam and loud demonstrations on behalf of civil and human rights.  The unrest scared the electorate into the arms of a man whom history would reveal as a threat to our very republic.  Trump needs no unveiling.  What we see is what we get, already jeopardizing the First Amendment.  Nixon is Jefferson in comparison to Trump.

I know we live in a changed nation whose new demography should provide ballast for the Democratic Party.  I also know, however, that floods can inundate and overwhelm.  Still, 1972 is not 2016.  This is not the country of 44 years ago.  I remain confident that Clinton will win but how many more events between now and the election will lift a swell for Trump?  I do not know how to factor into my thinking the specter of police killing citizens and citizens killing police.

But let us assume the worst: that Trump wins.

For the first time, Hispanic/Latinos need to think through – now – how we will react to increased aggressive policing of the streets and whole-scale police operations across the nation seeking to identify individuals not in the country legally.  A Trump Presidency will empower local law enforcement officers to engage – outside of their scope and mission – in actions that will harm the community directly and Hispanic/Latinos individually.  Not to mention that individual non-Hispanic/Latinos will feel encouraged to take matters into their own hands.

When the current Supreme Court started to undercut laws that once protected the civil rights of minorities, it set the stage for re-fighting the battles we thought we had won in the 1970’s and 1980’s – that now could spatter the streets with violence.

It is not out of the question that Trump as President would act against a Supreme Court that might summon the courage to stand up for the Constitution and for America itself if minorities came under direct attack.  Troops in front of the Supreme Court and citizens surging into the streets with easy guns at the ready.

It is no longer unthinkable.

Jesús (Jesse) Treviño is the former editorial page editor of The Austin American-Statesman.

Not Normal

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The normalcy of the Republican Party is no more, of course.  What many thought was going to happen did not.  The Donald Trump-Mike Pence ticket upsets what I believed was almost a given: That  the GOP would put a Hispanic/Latino on the ticket, more likely as its vice presidential nominee since I did not think Marco Rubio would achieve enough traction to secure the top spot.  As Rubio sputtered, I thought the chances of a Spanish surname in the second slot in both parties kept improving.

In my mind, any of the 16 other normal candidates for the Republican nomination probably would have gone that route, knowing that the new demography continues to tilt the electorate in the direction of the Democrats.  In response, I believed, the Democratic nominee – whom I always believed would be Hillary Clinton – would respond by choosing a Hispanic/Latino to prevent any erosion among Hispanic/Latino voters.

Almost nothing is going according to what even long-tenured observers thought would be one of the central operating scenarios that would drive the presidential campaign this year: a Hispanic/Latino on a presidential ballot.

In truth, an important opportunity has passed, for the GOP more so than the Democratic Party.  As important a moment has passed for Hispanics/Latinos.  I was hoping for a Hispanic/Latino on both tickets for a simple reason: It would spur the incorporation of Hispanic/Latinos in the national consciousness – something that is needed more than most people understand.  The fact that Hispanic/Latinos have not been an operational part of daily American life at all levels of business and government and media is the very reason Trump has done so well and the reason he choose another white male.

The moment that has passed is striking and it has the potential for roiling already roiled times.  If the GOP is now fast becoming a white party, it seems that Rubio – if he is able to win a tight re-election to the Senate – probably has even less of a chance now of ever reaching the White House.  He started off with such promise for 2016 and now ends with a slew of demerits he would have to overcome within his own party.

The ongoing battle for the soul of the GOP — assuming Trump loses — probably cannot have the face of Rubio leading the effort.

Since he has demonstrated a remarkable ability to evolve and adapt according to changing political exigencies – to put it kindly – he almost certainly must have given thought to changing parties.  Becoming a Democrat is not a reach for Rubio, and he could argue, like Democrats who left the party as rank and file or as elected officials to become Republicans for the past 30 years, that ‘I did not abandon my party.  It abandoned me’.  And he would be right.

Rubio’s fumbled engagement with immigration nevertheless shows that he understands the importance of immigrants to the future of the country.  Rubio is at a crossroads.  Personally, his remaining a Republican clouds his future in no small way.  Politically, he should know that he would be well-received by Democrats.  After all, the electoral value for Democrats of nailing down Florida in 2020 and beyond is inestimable.

On the Democratic side, the probability that a Hispanic/Latino on his or her own could mount a race for the Presidency in the near future without the boost of first serving as Vice President is not high – unless he or she were an exceptionally talented rendition of Barack Obama.  With apologies to the Hispanic/Latinos still being mentioned in the Democratic veepstakes two weeks before the convention in Philadelphia, the importance of the changed circumstances of 2016 is evident.

Hillary Clinton might yet surprise but her decision to not accentuate the issue that is driving significant numbers of white voters to Trump – in an age of increased terror that too many conflate with ethnicity – is understandable, especially for Democratic, reasonable Republican and independent Hispanic/Latino votes.  Their primary goal should be to stop the abnormal threat poses by Trump, not to win the vice presidential nomination.

These are not normal times.

Jesús (Jesse) Treviño is the former editorial page editor of The Austin American-Statesman.

Nice and Time

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The curdling and compounding effect upon fear and anger by terror and violence is real. The terrorist attack in Nice on July 14 was happening as I was in Boston reassuring a group of worried Hispanic/Latino professionals that I cannot see any way that Donald Trump can win and Hillary Clinton lose the election. I still believe it, yet the attack in Nice is precisely the unknown factor that can recast the race for President.

Few can resist the line Trump again immediately parroted after the horror in Nice once again overwhelmed the entire media and political landscape. We must, Trump said, close the borders and ban Muslims. To be sure, there is reason to re-enforce strategies and defenses against those who would harm us. But Trump means to embark on a national policy of exclusion of any person or group that to him represents the collective fear that produces anger at a national level – and that can win an election he has no business winning.

I have thought long and hard about the probability of Trump getting elected. I have believed from the very beginning — after it was apparent that the Republicans were going to nominate him — that he could not win a general election. I have believed also that the election would not be close. But the terror in Nice, to be blunt, comes at a fortuitous time for Trump as Republican delegates gather in Cleveland.

At the GOP convention that starts Monday, he will have the nation’s attention – a nation truly worried about the future at its most basic level. There, of course, speaker after speaker will rant without exhaust about the presumed answers to the spreading threat of terror. The wrong answers. But the nation needs to hear them in order to begin processing them in real time. And so, to be blunt again, the attack comes at a fortuitous time for Hillary Clinton, too.

The first reaction will help Trump. Yet Nice gives her, the more competent of the two candidates, time to display her strengths and, as important, gives the nation time to digest the latest terror.

An example of the advantage that time gives Clinton is the compressed period she has to react to Trump’s selection of a running mate. Given the upsurge in public sentiment in favor of Trump as a result of Nice, Clinton now has time, indeed, to pursue the idea that she might select retired admiral James Stavridis as her vice presidential nominee.

His selection would underscore her strengths and signal the nation that she will wage the war against terror that Trump only knows to declare.

In pure political terms, Trump’s timing in picking Mike Pence, the governor of Indiana, boxed him into a situation that should now cause Trump’s advisors to try to convince him to retract his offer to Pence. If he does pull back his offer and instead reacts instantly by choosing a running mate with military experience, he might get away with it, but the nation will see how without planning and thought he is. Clinton’s campaign had started vetting Stavridis weeks ago by comparison.

In a presidential campaign as in life, time is of the essence.

Jesús (Jesse) Treviño is the former editorial page editor of The Austin American-Statesman.