Thread by @Noahpinion

And just to be a little incendiary, I think progressives' failure to understand the Hispanic success story is that they've Twitter-angsted themselves into the belief that no one can move up and better themselves in America.

Wrong!

https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1468679756539334656

Yes, there is structural racism in America, and yes, the system gives a lot of advantages to the kids of the rich.

But "unequal opportunity" doesn't mean "no opportunity", and in fact there is LOTS of opportunity still out there in this country, and it matters a lot.

Trump came in telling a negativistic scare story about Hispanic immigrants. But progressives' obsession with catastrophizing everything about America made them unable to respond with a positive success story about Hispanics -- even though the success is real and obvious.

Yes, Hillary and other older center-left politicians kept telling the positive success story about the children of immigrants, etc. etc. But the Twitter shouters and cable news people embraced a story about America that was just as dark as anything Trump had to offer.

In fact, progressives offered voters a menu of TWO dark negativistic stories about Hispanic mobility in America -- an identitarian narrative in which Hispanics suffer the same structural racism as Black Americans, and a socialist narrative where only Jeff Bezos' kids can succeed.

The Twitter/cable age somehow robbed progressives of our legendary nuance -- the ability to say "There are many problems with this country, but also much that's great about it".

So we largely missed the Hispanic success story.

When I urge progressives to "Try Patriotism", I don't mean "wave a flag and be jingoistic and love 'Murica unconditionally", I mean "Recognize and value the good things about America".

Because voters recognize and value those things.

noahpinion.substack.com/p/try-patrioti…

And of course to conservatives, if any conservatives were actually listening to me, the message would be "If you want to get more Hispanic voters, recognize and praise the economic gains they've made, and promise them more of that."

The American immigrant story -- arrive with little, work hard and move up over three or four generations, win a place in the middle class and a place in the national tapestry even in the face of discrimination -- is still firmly in place, folks.

Movement progressives have moved toward a negativistic story of immigration -- one where people come to America not because they can succeed here, but because Western imperialism wrecked their countries and gave them no other choice but to migrate.

https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1352732233904386059

In this dark, negativistic telling (which you can read in Suketu Mehta's "This Land is Our Land" amazon.com/This-Land-Our-…), immigrants are brutalized twice -- once by the imperialism that forces them to become immigrants, and again once they arrive in America.

Of course there is a grain of truth here -- there are some people who migrate because of violence and instability in countries like Nicaragua that American meddling destabilized, and some immigrants are treated quite badly by CBP and ICE.

But this is not the main story of American immigration. The main story is an uplifting success story -- of people who come to America for the opportunities it offers, who find themselves welcomed here, and who succeed in winning a better life for themselves and their descendants.

In the Twitter/cable age, movement progressives have lost the magical nuance that people like FDR and JFK and LBJ and Clinton and Obama possessed -- the ability to praise America for all the good it offers people, even while recognizing the problems that need to be fixed.

Movement progressives need to rediscover that nuance, and that optimism, before conservatives pull their head out of Trump's butt and rediscover Reaganism. If they don't, I predict the Hispanic shift toward the GOP will be not be modest or transitory.

https://twitter.com/JuliaManch/status/1468591686003609602

Anyway, that was all I had to say, thanks for coming to my TED talk, and have a great day!

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