Gregory, Gregory, Casar (Houston, 1989) is a Democratic congressman from Texas belonging to the party progressive caucus –the progressive caucus on Capitol Hill, in Washington DC, which has around a hundred members. His seat is assured, since his constituency is so overwhelmingly Democratic that the Republicans have not even presented an alternative candidate, who has the majority in Congress – made up of 435 representatives – is another of the conflicts of this November 5, in which the Democrats aspire to achieve a good result – according to polls, the Senate is more likely to fall to the Republican side.
And while there is nothing left to vote for, he recognizes that “these are unprecedented elections”, in which “no one knows what is going to happen”.
How do you get to this Tuesday? Who will win?
Nobody knows, these are historic elections, between the replacement of the president, [Joe] Biden, for vice president, [Kamala] Harris and Trump’s follies, his lies and his criminal accusations.
In Texas, we are also working very hard to get rid of our Senator Ted Cruz, who is one of the most horrible politicians in the United States, and even the Republicans don’t like him. But everything is going to be very close, and looking at who has already voted, we don’t know exactly what will happen.
But for many of us in the Democratic Party, what we know is that we need to work toward policies that are more clearly pro-worker, pro-working class, because now, for the second time, Trump could win or come close to winning, and thanks to his anti-immigrant propaganda with which he wants to lie to the American people and tell our country that the cause of our problems are migrants, which is obviously false.
But if the Democratic Party does not create another narrative that big Wall Street banks and corporations are causing prices to rise and wages are not rising enough for workers in the United States, then Trump’s speech remains unchanged.
It has become clear during this campaign that we must defeat Trump’s false narrative, and after this election we can no longer be a Democratic party without a clear narrative that we are the party of the working class and the class country average. this country.
However, during the campaign there were many gestures toward former Republicans, like Liz Cheney, and fewer gestures toward progressive Democratic bases. Do you think this will work?
We don’t know what will work and what won’t. We know how dangerous Donald Trump is, and we also know that the vice president wants to work with the progressive wing of the party, and I hope we succeed in her attempts to tell Republican voters that they shouldn’t vote for Trump.
But there is also the campaign work of many of us progressive leaders who are in favor of international peace, justice in Gaza, the protection of unions, our environment, and who tell our base progressive what these elections are and what is important. we must support the vice president.
Therefore, I hope that this combination of the vice president trying to work with anti-Trump Republicans because they are pro-democracy will be useful during the campaign, and that we progressives can help her as well.
But what is clear is that in the next election, this will not continue to be of use, because at some point, Liz Cheney’s base will be the base of Republicans in general. Now maybe that helps, because Trump is a very different thing since he tried to end the election four years ago.
So, for me and for many in our party, it’s clear that while it may help in this election, it won’t help in the next one, and that’s why we need a change in messaging and now have a clearer identity. . This election is too close, even with such a qualified and strong candidate, and she is very close to Trump, who is a thief, a liar and a criminal. And we shouldn’t have such a close election against someone who is clearly a lying criminal. And the reason we’re so tight is because we haven’t made it clear that the Republican Party under Trump is solely in service of the biggest corporations and the richest in this country, we haven’t made it clear enough at the over the last eight years.
Do you think that a double vote can happen and there are people from the Republican bases, not from Trump, who vote for the vice president, and then for Congress or the Senate, they vote Republican?
That’s true, it’s entirely possible, but we also have excellent candidates from the Democratic Party. In general, senators who had the most difficult elections won in Republican strongholds. If you look at Sherrod Brown in Ohio and Jon Tester in Montana, for example, you see that Trump won their states by thousands and thousands of votes, but they also won their seats. Typically, these senators get more votes than the Democratic presidential candidate.
Trump won by eight points in Ohio, and Brown won his seat. Indeed, if Kamala Harris lowers that number to six or seven, then she can win her seat even more. And also in the House of Representatives. What’s happening is that many of those who voted for Biden have already voted for Republican congressmen, so we have more opportunities and options to win the House of Representatives: there are many Republican congressmen who are in districts that President Biden won in 2020 and Republicans subsequently won. in 2022.
So in 2024, with the energy in the vice president’s campaign, even though no one knows exactly what will happen, I believe that many Democrats will win back the districts that President Biden won ago four years.
The hardest thing for us is to keep the Senate, but no one knows what will happen.
Texas also has its own border issues, Southern state issues, and years of Republican tradition.
Since the beginning of the history of Texas, which is part of the United States, there has always been a popular and progressive current in the state. Lyndon Johnson, for example, was a Texan, and he signed the Hispanic Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act in the 1960s, as well as the creation of Medicaid and Medicare, our public health systems. …
Furthermore, we have a history of resistance against the far right in this state, but it is true that in the 90s, with the mandate of George Bush, who was governor then president, Texas became a very Republican state. And now we are working to change.
And when we manage the border well, when we have a system that serves, that treats people well, that reigns in order, then that benefits us; Migration has always benefited us enormously. The problem we have here is that the Republicans have militarized the border, they don’t want the asylum or immigration system to work well because politically they want to complain about that system and they are leaving millions of Texans very scared because they don’t know if they or a family member will be deported.
This is the great tragedy of Texas: while immigration helps us enormously economically and culturally, the Republican Party that governs here maintains a system of fear and terror against the migrant community for its own political reasons.
This weekend, the Ann Selzer Iowa poll was released, and in some ways, it revived hopes that a victory for the vice president could actually happen tomorrow by extrapolating the results of this poll, in the sense of how she might behave towards the female vote, the reaction to restrictions on abortion….
It’s entirely possible, but I don’t think we really know. We may have these expectations and hopes, but we will know better this Tuesday evening.
Here in Texas, if you watch the news, there are cases of women dying because of restrictions on abortion and on women’s health care: not only do we have restrictions on abortion, we also have restrictions on care for women when they have something complicated. . In short, it’s dangerous to be pregnant now in Texas. And I’ve spoken with many voters who say they’re going to vote differently, that they’ve already voted Republican, and they’re going to change.
I’ve also spoken with many first-time voters, some because they oppose these restrictions and others because they want them. So, we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but I hope the vice president wins because people want to change these restrictions that are putting every pregnant woman in the state at risk.
How do you think the Hispanic community will fare given the comments about Puerto Rico at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally and the fact that they have also often been less supportive of voting for a woman?
We have surveys, I’ve spoken with many people in the Hispanic community and I believe that in all of the American people, not just Hispanics, we have to continue to evolve to say that it doesn’t matter whether it s If it’s a woman or a man, what should it be? what matters is that he is the best leader we could have. Place. And I believe that this is not a problem for the Hispanic community, it is something that we must correct and continue to work between the different ethnic minorities in the United States.
On the other hand, for the Hispanic community, this lack of respect towards Puerto Ricans shows who Trump is, a person who has no respect for our community. And this was clearly stated. That’s why I think there will be Latinos who vote for the vice president, because Trump has no respect for our community.
And the Democratic Party needs to make these same voters understand that not only do we respect them, but we also have an economic plan for their families and, in addition to showing that Trump has no respect for Latinos, it would help us more . show that respect to these communities by telling them clearly that we will increase their salaries and reduce the cost of living.
