Thread by @SlavaMalamud

(Thread alert)
There is a tendency to assume that, due to the GOP's full-throated embrace of racism, culture wars and xenophobia, immigrants will naturally flock to the Dems. The same was assumed in the 1850s, leading to the advent of nativist Know-Nothings.
But this is a mirage

The reality on the ground, however, is very different and not necessarily favorable to Team Blue in the short term. This has to do with the mindset and attitudes of a lot of older immigrants. And there are several aspects to this mindset, because it's both stupid AND complex...

Let's take my own Russian-speaking community, which is probably about 80% Republican, oh whom probably about 80% is to the right of Josh Hawley, in the Marjorie Taylor Greene wheelhouse. I'm talking full-on "Democrats are evil's spawn and should be in the Gulag or dead" territory

For many of them, especially those who came over in the 70s and 80s, it boils down to "Communism is bad, Reagan was against communism, so he was good, Democrats opposed Reagan, which means they are Brezhnev." That's it. They refuse to see any daylight between Ronald and Leonid.

In fact, one USSR-born person with this exact, un-nuanced worldview was just elected into Congress, @RepSpartz.
But this is only a part of the problem, because immigrant right-wingers aren't just old people and aren't only driven by this simplistic view of the political spectrum.

The other aspect is much sadder and much harder for the Dems to deal with: cultural conservatism. Many countries that supply the most amount of immigrants, including the former Soviet states and the USSR itself, were and are extremely culturally conservative.

And this trait has a much stronger staying power than political ideology. Most of my fellow Russian-speakers are proudly homophobic, unabashedly misogynistic (or anti-feminist, in women's case) and staunchly, terrifyingly racist.

And they are not turned off by the GOP's xenophobic and anti-immigrant tilt because they view themselves as "the good immigrants", "the cultured people" from "a civilized country" whom Republicans would have nothing against. All of this, obviously, translates into "white."

They also love the GOP's obsession with culture-war wedge issues, such as mandatory standing for the national anthem and show-offish patriotism. They utterly fail to see the irony of pining for the Soviet idea of Love for the Motherland and decrying communism in the same breath.

Finally, despite their obsession with being "cultured" and "educated" (unlike, you know, "them"), they are conditioned to never trust mainstream media (since in the USSR it was government-controlled and rigidly censored) and are thus extremely easy prey for conspiracy theories.

Perestroika years were a golden age in Russia for psychics and quacks of all kinds: people were eager to believe anything that wasn't the official line. The entire country trusted a psychic who said he could "charge" toothpaste with healing power through the TV screen...

They still haven't gotten over this mindset, as is evidenced by the fact that more than 2/3 of Russians believe that Americans faked the Moon landing.
Of course, all of this applies primarily to the immigrant community itself and not to their first-generation American children...

Most kids shed their parents' ideology and prejudices by the time they get into college. But it's the parents who vote in record numbers, not the kids. To get over the parents' cultural and political hangups would require the Democrats to know the communities they deal with...

... and to tailor their message to what is important to them. Alas, I have not seen a lot of willingness to tackle this problem or indeed awareness of it on the part of the Dems, whether it be among ex-Soviets (a comparatively minor community) or any other immigrant populations.

I seriously doubt that folks from Venezuela and Cuba are much more sophisticated than my peeps in their worldviews. The Dems need to realize this and not take them for granted.
Until then, enjoy watching FL returns every four years and wandering what the hell has just happened.