Ariana at the quinceanera

A big key to Donald Trump’s political success is his sociopathic willingness to say/promise anything if he believes it will be to his advantage to do so, with literally zero regard to whether what he’s saying has any connection whatsoever to reality.

From a story (gift link) about how a Latino Democratic candidate is working to win back a poor rural congressional district in the Rio Grande region of Texas:

The 15th is one of the state’s poorest districts, and “upward mobility” is always top of mind here, he said. Democrats “have to talk more in the economic language that people understand, about how can I provide for my family?”

“I feel like Democrats focus on the poor, but a lot of people here do not consider themselves poor. They consider themselves broke,” he added. “There’s a big distinction, because if you consider yourselves poor, you’re kind of accepting your fate. We’re not like that here. We say, ‘We’re broke, but tomorrow we’re going to make it.’” Many voters in the district gave Mr. Trump a chance “because of the promise of a better life for their own families.”

”Now the backlash is going to be very, very big,” he predicted.

Michelle Renee Rangel certainly has had enough. The owner of a Mexican bistro in Falfurrias, she was a staunch Democrat until Mr. Trump came along. “He promised a lot of things,” Ms. Rangel said at a Thursday night meet-and-greet she had organized for Mr. Pulido. The president’s message of economic opportunity won over her and her husband, who both stayed up late to cheer his victory on election night. “We made a mistake,” she said.

Ms. Rangel also has been surprised by Mr. Trump’s brutal, indiscriminate immigration policies. She used to work at a feedlot where most of her co-workers were Mexican. “When I voted for Trump,” she said, “I didn’t think that my friends were in danger.”

I asked Mr. Pulido how people in the district were viewing the administration’s border and deportation policies. “Those are two separate issues,” he said. “Everybody says, ‘It’s a good thing that we don’t have a bunch of people coming over.’ That’s chaos, and nobody wants that.” But “the enforcement issue” has the community “paralyzed.”

These are not the sort of distinctions you tend to hear from Democrats more in tune with the national activist class.

This is the classic problem of dealing with rural culturally conservative people, who know basically nothing about economics or politics, and especially about the relationship between the two, and therefore represent an especially target-rich environment for Trump’s sociopathic talent for simply lying and bullshitting his way through every possible issue.

Pulido understands that he has to thread a very fine needle in this context, and the best way to do that is to be better at culture war politics than his opponent:

Quinceañeras, coming-of-age celebrations for girls turning 15, are a big part of Latino culture. They have also become a big part of Mr. Pulido’s campaign in his South Texas district, where about 80 percent of the electorate is Hispanic. For this, Mr. Pulido credits his Republican opponent, Representative Monica de la Cruz. Reacting to Mr. Pulido’s win in the March Democratic primary, Ms. de la Cruz mocked his fitness for the job, saying the race “isn’t about who you want performing at your niece’s quinceañera.”

Mr. Pulido clapped back. He accused Ms. de la Cruz of disrespecting the community’s heritage. Then his campaign put out a video asking families to invite him to their quinceañeras. Within 24 hours, Team Pulido had 1,000 requests. By mid-April, that number had reached 3,000 and included invitations to quinceañeros (the boy version), birthday parties for older adults, weddings, proms, graduations and even a baptism. Mr. Pulido is trying to accept as many as possible. His record so far is seven in one weekend.

Team Pulido’s quinceañera project has earned the candidate a flood of positive attention and emphasizes some of the ways he diverges from the stereotypical national Democrat. “Change is a tricky thing. Cities — progressive cities — love change,” he told me over breakfast in Edinburg, his hometown. “My area is rural. It’s about tradition. It’s about culture.”

It would be nice if people didn’t have the long-term memory of fruit flys, which is what allowed Trump to get re-elected after Joe Biden completely botched the federal government’s response to Covid in 2020.