The backlash is happening, and it will be long-lasting.

 As we learned from the rise of Barack Obama, we live in an age of identity politics; that is unfortunate, but it is the reality.  As a nation, we are disuniting.  Barack Obama has led the way in slicing and dicing Americans and stoking racial discord.  But, apparently, he is not alone.  Donald Trump is now doing the same with the Hispanic community.

Ernest Londono writes in the New York Times:

Hispanics, among the fastest-growing of all segments of eligible voters, played a crucial role in President Obama’s two elections. Yet, over the past couple of decades, pollsters and political operatives have regarded the Latino vote as a sleeping giant waiting for the right jolt.

Hispanics have understandably responded to the xenophobic Trump campaign — which has hardened the immigration positions of other Republican candidates — with outrage. But many political organizers see him as a godsend.

In 2012, 48 percent of eligible Latino voters cast ballots in the presidential election, lagging behind white and African-American voters, whose turnout rates were 64 percent and 67 percent, respectively. Eligible voters of Mexican origin had an even lower turnout, 42 percent.

An estimated 5.4 million Latinos are eligible to become American citizens but have yet to take that step, making them by far the largest pool of non-naturalized immigrants who could become eligible to vote by 2016. Among them, Mexicans have been the least likely to naturalize. The cost of the process, roughly $680, and anxiety about taking a civics test are among the reasons many Latinos have not become citizens.

In 2016, an estimated 26.7 million Latinos will be eligible to vote, 58 percent more than a decade ago.

Mr. Trump has promised to deport millions of unauthorized immigrants, seize the remittances Mexican immigrants send to relatives back home and charge the Mexican government for the wall he intends to build.

History seems to be repeating itself, writ large.

When California’s GOP governor, Pete Wilson, championed a 1994 initiative that barred illegal aliens from attending public schools and “seeking medical care” (it passed but was never carried out), Latino immigrants responded by becoming naturalized in droves and led a surge in voter registration.  Largely as a result, California has become a solidly Democratic state, likely to remain so (and all those electoral votes will flow to Democratic presidential candidates).

There is no doubt that Univision is a solidly Democratic network that makes MSNBC seem conservative.  There is also no doubt that Democrats are mobilizing to turn Hispanics into Democrats.  There is also no doubt that they will spend enormous resources to turn this bloc into American citizens and get them to vote.

And Donald Trump is adding fuel to the fire with his needlessly inflammatory language.  It is the same type of language that in previous American history has been applied to Catholics, Jews, Asians, blacks, and others.  We look back at those times as being a blot on America’s great history.

There is no doubt that as a nation we need to enforce our laws and protect our borders – those are the very definitions of sovereignty.  I think Trump and others have a very solid point in the fact that immigration on the scale we have seen has been terribly damaging to the African-American community and to income equality.  Would black unemployment be lower and wages higher without the huge influx of immigrants over the past 40 years?  All Republicans should highlight this point.

There are smart ways to promote those ideals – and there are smarter ways to do so then the methods The Donald uses.

Gracias, Donald, gracias.