President Trump's public approval numbers have hit 50% among likely voters, according to a new Rasmussen poll, which is good news for midterms.  And who should be pushing those ratings to el norte?

No kidding: Hispanic voters.

You know, the ones who are supposed to hate Trump with a passion.  After all, doesn't the press dutifully report that Trump is an enemy of illegals, and aren't illegals in the same conventional wisdom simply synonymous with Hispanics, and with Hispanics and illegals all the same thing, isn't it all just proof that Trump is racist?

Here's what the Washington Times, now featured on Drudge, had to say:

Are Hispanics shifting their allegiances to President Trump?

A recent Harvard/Harris poll recorded a 10-point spike in Hispanic support for Mr. Trump.  It hasn't received much attention from the mainstream media, which is heavily invested in its portrait of the president as an unrepentant – and unpopular – "nativist."

Coming in the midst of the nationwide controversy over children and families at the U.S.-Mexico border, it suggests that Hispanics may not be the entrenched liberal voting constituency that Democrats so often imagine.

This makes me say "whoa."  Because ever since 2008, when I attended the Democratic Party's convention in Denver as a reporter, I've sat through Democratic caucuses and listened closely to how Democrats have staked large amounts of the party's fortunes and resources on controlling the Hispanic vote, with visions of controlling it permanently the same way the control the black vote (or, well, did).  With Democrats distilling Hispanic voters down to the issue of illegals and illegals alone, they've fought tooth and nail for the causes of illegals in this grand goal, which in practical politics amounts to buying into every sob story put out by an activist group, and taking the side of illegals over citizens and legal residents, most obviously in the matter of screaming DREAMers, sanctuary cities, deportations of criminals, and now family separations of illegal border-crossers.  They've put all their eggs in that immigration basket as their big win-the-Hispanics-forever strategy, and Hispanics have moved on.

As the report analyzes, Hispanics are far more interested in the things the rest of Americans are interested in: good jobs in an economy that's premised on more than welfare handouts and bureaucrat-hiring, as the Obama administration was.  Tax cuts and regulatory cutting have gotten that ball rolling, strongly.

The Hispanic unemployment rate has hit a historic low.  Turns out Hispanics would rather have a job than what the Democrats are offering them as an alternative: grievance group politics.  More to the point, they aren't responding to the Democrats' definition of them solely in terms of illegal immigration issues, or even as immigrants altogether.  Given a choice between a job and being defined solely through the interests of illegal aliens, they'd rather take the job.

Trump has also promoted infrastructure spending that involves actual construction of infrastructure, the kind that can get many Hispanics, who have a large presence in the construction trade, employed.  In the Obama administration, infrastructure money went to pay off bloated pensions for public employee union members, a large number of whom were white.  Hispanics are a youthful demographic, and Obama's prioritizing of pensions came at a cost of their jobs and their economic growth.  You can see why that setup has never been attractive to Hispanics.  Trump, by contrast, is all in for creating real jobs – including, interestingly, the construction of the border wall, which Hispanic construction firms have enthusiastically embraced.  Wow.

There's also the issue of crime, not touched on in the report but very much a live Hispanic issue.  As House minority leader Nancy Pelosi waxed soulful about MS-13 gang members having "souls" or whatever, imagining that Hispanic voters are all in for these criminals and probably indistinguishable from them (from Pelosi's lofty heights, it's hard to see clearly who the descamisados down there are), the reality for Hispanic voters is that people like MS-13 gang members have been an absolute plague on their communities, and they want them gone.  Trump has taken aim at MS-13 and that has to resonate with Hispanic voters.  After all, who are MS-13's prime victims – whether from kidnappings, ransoms, shakedowns, crossfire, robbery, or murder?  Yep, Hispanics first.  Hispanics cannot stand these criminals who keep their communities down – hampering investment, destroying property values, and throwing cost after cost for security and cleanup at them.  Yet Democrats simper out there and defend MS-13.

Education is another big one, given that Hispanics are part of a youthful demographic, and here President Trump has acted in their interests, too, appointing a charter school advocate to run the Department of Education and focusing on opportunities for young people.  Many Hispanics have got to be responding.

There are some stunning other details in that report.  The report says Florida's Puerto Ricans, the new residents of the state who've fled their commonwealth's bankruptcy and hurricane corruption, are flocking to Republican candidate Rick Scott, along with younger Cuban-American voters.  That stands out because ordinarily, these voters are all reliably Democratic Party voters.

Meanwhile, in other corners of the U.S., the nonstop appeal to Hispanics as an identity politics issue, with some variant of racism as the only motivator, is falling flat.

If Trump's numbers hold at 50% or above, it's almost certainly a surefire thing that the great blue wave isn't going to happen.  If it doesn't happen, Hispanic voters will be a key reason.  Wouldn't that be cool?  And by the way, I think it could happen.  The earliest and most militant supporters of President Trump that I knew of were Mexican-American voters from Pasadena, Calif.  They liked his honesty and have never felt affinity for the swamp culture, even as many have voted Democrat in the past.  Now they're moving Republican with Trump, so you can just imagine the panic going on now in Democratic campaign war rooms.  Trump's just taken their lunch money.

This ought to absolutely incense the left.  Bring that on.