Democrats Are Sniveling About Attacks on Kamala Harris on Spanish Talk Radio in Florida but the Story Doesn’t Add Up – Opinion

The widespread flight of LatinxHispanic voters of the Democrat party. I’m not sure they are re-registering as Republicans, but they are de-registering as Democrats. Hispanic voters tell pollsters that their preference is for Republican candidates.

Recent polling has shown that Hispanic voters were evenly split between Republicans and Democrats in the generic Congressional election of 2022. Biden was favored by one vote in the rematch in 2024.

These are among the 26 percent of voters who voted for Biden in 2020 over Trump.

— Andrew Follett (@AndrewCFollett) December 9, 2021

This story was covered by my colleagues: here Democrats Continue to Repeal Their Hispanic Minority Base; here Hispanic Voters Deliver Devastating News Democrats Are Dreading and here Memo to Democrat Party – Hispanic Voters Abandon You in Droves, Now We Know Why.

Particularly, Democrats in Florida are pressing the panic button. However, they’re doing it because of a strange issue.

If you’ve listened to AM talk radio at all, you have learned to recognize what the late, great Rush Limbaugh termed “seminar’ callers.

The term “seminar caller” was coined by conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh by at least July 1996. A “seminar caller” makes an “astroturfed” call to a radio talk show. The caller pretends to be an unbiased regular citizen, but then recites talking points that are contrary to the talk radio host’s political philosophy. “Seminar callers” are also called “plants.”

The word “seminar” supposedly comes from Democratic party seminars, but has become effectively outdated by technology. The majority of talking points come from email, political blogs and websites and not seminars. The term “seminar caller” is still used, especially among conservative radio talk show hosts.

When moderating comments, you also need to be able to recognise them. Rush refers to them as Democrats calling into Rush’s show. However, this works in both directions. It is possible for political operatives and others to call conservative radio shows in support of whatever craziness has been created by the GOP.

This comes from Politico

Florida Democrats raise alarm over what they perceive to be a coordinated, sustained campaign quickly unfolding in Spanish-language media that aims to damage the reputation of Vice President Kamala Harris.

The speed and fury of recent attacks by callers and radio guests have caused concern among state Democratic veterans. They suspect the participants are part of a larger, astroturf effort to diminish Harris’ standing among key Latino constituencies in a region where Republicans have notched sharp gains. This is made worse by the fact that there has not been any pushback from their party.

Kamala Harris’ problem is remarkably easy to understand. The Blaze’s Shemeka Michelle nails it:

@ShemekaMichelleMy bout was thrown to the ground😂😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/TdCoucPM1n

— Falon Finch (@FalonFinch) December 21, 2021

Politico’s Christopher Cadelago and Eugene Daniels use about 1500 words to describe a problem that has only been noticed by a Democrat pollster and a handful of activists.

One might wonder why the Democrats would be so feigned over Florida’s radio hosts talking trash about Kamala Harris.

In POLITICO’s review of two prominent Spanish-language stations, hosts and callers sharing critiques of Biden still outnumbered Harris. There were sporadic attacks on Anthony Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser, too.

Still, Roberto Rodríguez Tejera, a morning radio host who has been working in Miami media for three decades, said in a phone interview that he too has noticed the trend in calls about Harris on his own morning show. Amandi came to the exact same conclusion. He didn’t identify any suspects and speculated that Republicans were behind the plot.

“It’s not like you get 10 calls every day. It’s not like that. You get a couple of calls here, a couple of calls there,” Rodriguez said. “That’s how the phone banks begin that [have] worked,” he added, pointing to the way political operatives over the years have directed specific messages through callers on the radio programs. “But it’s a trend that you see that is growing by the day; is growing by the week.”

The Republican Party of Florida spokesperson did not reply to our request for comment.

The most logical explanation here is the old “he who smelt it dealt it” explanation.

Earlier in the year, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus tried to block the sale of Miami’s WSUA AM 1260. Newsbusters has the explanation.

Newsweek’s Adrian Carrasquillo reports:

Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) mobilized Wednesday to pressure the Federal Communications Commission to further scrutinize and reject the sale of the well-known Miami radio station Caracol 1260 AM to America CV, which owns the América TeVé network.

The congressmen’s decision comes on the heels of a Newsweek report that detailed how America CV immediately fired the station’s top-rated host, Raul Martinez, a Democrat and former mayor of Hialeah. Florida Democrats were concerned about the possibility of a takeover by conservative media on Spanish-language broadcasts because the abrupt termination was considered a political move.

In brief, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (a body largely composed of folks who couldn’t get elected dogcatcher in Miami-Dade County including, to wit, a literal Castro Brother) is using a labor dispute as cover to attempt to remove ideological opponents from the airwaves.

The effort to discredit Hispanic conservatives was not a recent one. It began during the 2020 elections and continues since. As the Trump campaign’s anti-communist message took hold, the left began to cry “disinformation”. Latinxtroturf organizations and defeated Democrats (like former congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who asked her former CHC colleagues to intervene in Radio Caracol’s licensing) joined forces to try to pressure Miami stations into silencing conservative voices.

Miami’s Hispanic population is unusual in that the city has many conservative voices. Univision and Telemundo, despite being headquartered in Miami, don’t get to impose narrative as they do in other cities. The left doesn’t run unabated in the Miami market as they do elsewhere, and Donald Trump’s improved performance over 2016 has sent them over the edge.

Last month on NPR, you have Mary Louise Kelly speaking to a Miami Herald/el Nuevo Herald reporter, Lautaro Grinspan, about the rise of “disinformation” on Spanish language talk radio in South Florida.

KELLY: This is a story that’s become familiar lately – families torn apart by misinformation. Lautaro Grinspan, a reporter for The Huffington Post spent much of the year researching this phenomenon in Florida. Lautaro Grinspan writes that talk radio was the key to extremism among the interviewees. He also asked me why talk radio was more popular than cable news or social media.

LAUTARO GRINSPAN : The reason for this is that listeners, particularly older listeners are more likely to trust the information on these platforms. Some of these stations have been around for decades. It may be something older immigrants felt that gave them a sense of belonging or connection to an exile community. So there’s a lot of cultural significance there. Experts also say that the legitimacy of some Spanish radio talk shows is due to their inclusion of prominent South Florida politicians and elected officials. These people often take active roles in conspiracies spreading and are sometimes guests on these programs. I’m thinking, for instance, of Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar, who back in January was a guest on one of the stations – Radio Mambi.

(SOUNDBITE RECORDING OF ARCHIVED)

MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR – (Speaking Spanish).

GRINSPAN

KELLY: You’re saying people are attracted to these stations because they’re familiar, but then they’re also hearing trusted voices, their own elected officials, in some cases, appearing and saying things that are not true.

GRINSPAN: Exactly. You also have to consider the fact that some listeners might come across similar plots in Spanish on platforms like Facebook. This further legitimizes these content. But actually, there’s a better point that I should make, which is that, of course, talk radio in English can spread just as much misinformation as talk radio in Spanish.

KELLY: Absolutely. It is not a problem that Spanish radio talk shows have. Sure.

GRINSPAN: But the difference is that Spanish language talk radio listeners – again, these are folks who likely only speak Spanish. They don’t have the same access like English speakers do here in the U.S. to other kinds of publications or more mainstream media – you know, like newspapers and the like – to balance out what they may be getting from these radio stations. So there’s less of a counter-narrative that they’re exposed to to the talk radio content.

KELLY: There are other Latino elected officials who are trying to pressure these talk radio stations and say, hey, if you’re going to put something on air, you got to fact-check it. You just can’t spread things that aren’t true. Is that the right way to have a conversation? Is that what they are saying? Are the radio stations listening?

GRINSPAN: Yeah. The stations have been under increasing pressure over the last year. Some members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus demanded an FBI investigation last year into information that targeted Hispanic communities. I don’t believe anything has come out of that yet. Some Latino organizations in South Florida are becoming more vocal and pressing for accountability. They also press stations to verify information. But if you talk to these groups, they’ll tell you that the rhetoric really hasn’t gotten better at all.

Note the demand for “fact checking.” fact-checkingateway drug the left uses to impose censorship of ideas and narratives upon all media.

To use NPR lingo, all things considered, it seems very, very unlikely that Kamala Harris is the subject of discussion on Hispanic talk radio in South Florida just because she’s incompetent and rode Willy Brown and perhaps his coattails as well, into the upper reaches American politics. The steady stream of calls to this extent is a result of some strategy.

This campaign is a win-win for the GOP. Quite honestly, I don’t even see an 8th-dimensional chess advantage in whacking her on Hispanic talk radio. Just because there is no advantage doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. In fact, given the GOP’s track record, the absence of a coherent end-game might be proof the GOP is behind it. It is more likely that the Democrats are behind this strategy. They failed to block the Hispanic-owned station from firing its progressive host. They have complained about “disinformation” on Hispanic talk radio. The calls regarding Harris can be seen as a Democrat Astroturf initiative. It will make more sense. Kamala Harris’s performance is one of the few areas where it would be safe to criticize something Democratic while doing no harm. By flagging the calls to Politico and whining about “disinformation,” this serves as a “brush-back” pitch to intimidate the station owners into self-censorship next year when elections roll around.