Hey, Democrats: steer clear of Doralzuelan denialism right now
COMMENTARY Democrats in denial about the liberal condescension that helped elect Donald Trump are like Venezuelans still in denial about the elitist corruption that helped bring Hugo Chávez to power.
Democrats and liberals are awash in dread and despair after Kamala Harris' blowout loss last week to former President and now President-elect-again Donald Trump — a man they understandably regard as the malignant antithesis of democracy and decency.
But in South Florida, anyway, I would point them to a place where they can see the response they surrender to.
The place is Doral. The response is denialism.
I'm not talking about 2024 U.S. election denialism in Doral. Most voters in that Venezuelan enclave support Trump. I'm referring to the 1998 election denialism that still hangs in the Doral air like that's been left outside too long.
Doral is full of Venezuelan exiles who watched that 1998 vote bring the late strongman Hugo Chávez to power, six years after he'd led a failed coup — a violent insurrection that brings to mind Trump's attempt to overthrow the U.S. Constitution and overturn the 2020 election he lost.
After Chávez's victory — which ushered in one of the most ruinous and dictatorial leftist revolutions in South American history — the Venezuelans who would later become Doralzuelans blamed everyone and everything for his ascent ... except themselves.
They faulted everything except the corrupt elite so many of them were tied to.
¡Cónchale! they cried, how could they and their patrician east-side-of-Caracas class have pushed Venezuela's west-side-of-Caracas plebeians into the arms of a vulgar autocrat like Chávez?
Well, there were plenty of warnings — like the popular, chronicle of establishment scandals titled Diccionario de la Corrupción en Venezuela, a book published in 1992, the same year Chávez staged his aborted military putsch to thunderous applause in the country's barrios.
People don't elect demagogic thugs like Chávez — or Trump — unless they're pretty damn angry. But Venezuela's , or yuppies, never really acknowledged were the focus of that anger.
Too many still don't, a quarter century later, while they watch from Doral as Chávez's barbaric regime rolls on — and they wait delusionally now for a Trump military invasion of Venezuela to set everything right.
Another "c" word
So, a warning to South Florida Democrats: don't be Doralzuelans.
In your case, the denialism issue isn't corruption. It's another "c" word: condescension.
For several decades now, you've managed to alienate working- and middle-class voters — even Latinos and Blacks, it turns out — not by robbing them but by talking down to them.
It's hard to forget an episode back in 2015 — about the time Trump descended his escalator and announced his presidential aspirations — when Kim Davis, a county clerk in Kentucky, did jail time for refusing to certify legal gay marriages.
She was of course in the wrong, both legally and morally. But liberals couldn't let it sit there.
They took to Facebook and other platforms ridiculing Davis' less-than-Manhattan appearance and less-than-Harvard education — seemingly clueless to the fact that her county had a 30% poverty rate, that she and her neighbors spent a lot more time making ends meet than they did going to salons or reading Salon.com.
It turns out folks who weren't necessarily heartland homophobes like Davis took a look at that smug snobfest — and considered voting for Trump.
It turns out, too, that people who weren't necessarily xenophobes listened to the support Harris and other Democrats had voiced for decriminalizing illegal immigration — and then gave a thumbs up, as most Americans have , to Trump's draconian plan to deport all undocumented migrants.
It turns out citizens who weren't necessarily racists watched worthwhile diversity, equity and inclusion projects at colleges and companies morph into intolerant cancel-culture orgies — and then asked in exasperation if maybe Trump held their common sense in higher regard than San Francisco did.
It turns out men who weren't misogynists heard woke gender jargon like "Latinx" — and cringed.
It turns out women who weren't evangelicals got shouted down in what they thought would be reasonable discussions about transgender girls in sports — and felt demonized.
I'm not justifying Trump votes or excusing Trump voters. But that condescension — that liberal overreach — helped elect Trump as surely as corruption helped put Chávez in power.
