Remember the Muslim Ban, Trump 2.0 Will Be Much Much Worse

MAGA is Turning Immigrant Hate Up to 11

My wife grew up in Ypsilanti, Michigan. She did her undergraduate years next door in Ann Arbor. Her parents still live in the vicinity. So, every few months, we load the dog into the back of the car and drive up there.

Grizzly is very cooperative. He likes riding in the car. He sleeps the whole way. Even if it is an eight hour schlep. He is oblivious to the cultural chasm that lies between the Washington Beltway and the greater University of Michigan metropolitan area. But as the driver, I can hardly miss it.

Once you get north of Frederick, Maryland, the world starts to change pretty dramatically. The landscape becomes, for the most part, farmland. The number of foreign cars on the highway falls off dramatically. And then, somewhere near the Breezewood interchange where Route 70 joins the Pennsylvania, Turnpike, the giant Trump signs start. Some of them are painted on the sides of tractor trailers. Some are painted on barns. Some are billboards.

Stop into one of the rest areas or visit in any of the little towns along the way, and you see MAGA hats and gun racks and frankly, people look at me a little funny. (And I wasn’t even wearing my Kamala hat. Which I should have done. Just to spice things up a bit.)

In the past, my sense is that this alternative cultural landscape extended all the way up, through Ohio and to the outskirts of Ypsi and Ann Arbor. But something was different on this trip. While the Trumpiest Trumpers were still out there, all along our route I saw many signs and bumper stickers that said “Harris” or “Harris Walz 2024.” This was not just in the parking lot of Zingerman’s delicatessen in downtown Ann Arbor. It was along the way in places I had never seen such things before.

And then, when we got to Ypsi and Ann Arbor, the number of blue Harris signs increased dramatically. They were on streets I’d never seen such signs before.

My Dad the scientist was fond of saying that the plural of anecdote is not data. (He was also fond of pointing out the singular of data was datum. Which sounds particularly science-y when coming from a guy with the kind of Viennese accent my Dad had.)

So, I am not going to draw too strong a conclusion from what I saw over these past few days. But it was different. The vibe was different. Young people and women and people of color with whom I spoke along the way were, when this came up, particularly energized and engaged in the election. Not everybody. Michigan’s large Arab community is still justifiably angry over the Biden Administration’s policies in Israel and Gaza.

Several people I know close to that community indicated that many were thinking of sitting out the election or voting for a third party candidate, like Jill Stein. Naturally, anyone who remembers back to the consequences of decisions like that in 2016 (when Hillary Clinton lost Michigan by fewer votes than Jill Stein and the other third party candidates received) would find, as I did, such arguments chilling.

But let me share an observation. It is very unlikely that these rightfully angry and alienated voters are going to be turned to supporting the Harris-Walz ticket with event the most powerfully delivered policy argument. Nor is it likely that any will end up voting Harris-Walz because of a major development in Israel-Gaza. The status quo is what we are most likely to see for the next few weeks.

That said, this past weekend, also saw a ratcheting up of Trump-MAGA racism targeting immigrants in Springfield, Ohio and across the country. The scenes from Springfield were especially nauseating. Proud Boys marching. Schools being shut due to bomb scares. Pamphlets being distributed by white supremacists that used the actual fonts employed on similarly worded Nazi hand outs about Jews in the 1930s.

Further, Trump and Vance and their supporters refused to repudiate the “immigrants are eating cats and dogs” lie even when confronted by the facts (which contradict virtually every aspect of their stories). In the wake of the arrest of a man who apparently intended to try to shoot Trump, rather than dialing back his rhetoric, he immediately blamed Harris and Biden for the undercurrent of violence in American politics today. At the same time, Trump repeated that it is his intention to deport millions of immigrants and Trump’s immigration monster Stephen Miller added that they would look at ways to denaturalize U.S. citizens from other countries so they could deport them too.

For those who lived through Trump’s Muslim ban, not to mention his ultra-cozy and enabling relationship with Bibi Netanyahu, recent developments are even more chilling. And, as a consequence, I think they may well help motivate some who are not happy with Biden-Israel Gaza policy to nonetheless vote for Harris and Walz because should they lose, the consequences could be so disastrous.

It makes more sense to me to focus on this as a way to mobilize those voters and, for all the encouraging signs I saw about voter enthusiasm for Harris, because the race is likely to be close, framing and communicating the threat Trump poses to all immigrant communities in the U.S., legal or illegal, seems absolutely essential.

It was one of two big takeaways from my trip of the past few days. The other is avoid downtown Ann Arbor on a gameday in the Fall. It is a giant cult, more than a little frightening and the traffic is a big mess.