Pat Robertson doesn’t have a frigging clue. If the anecdotal evidence I’ve been hearing locally is any indication of how minorities are feeling nationally, the GOP needs to wake up and smell the caf con leche in a serious way and be very sincere in anything they say.

Pre-election trip to medical office: This was a mixed group of black & hispanic people, both patients & employees of the place. None of them struck me as particularly high-info voters, but the GOP’s racist dog whistling was not lost on a single one of them. To a man/woman they all intended to vote and vote Dem because of it. True NJ is a blue state, I’m just saying that if low-info voters are paying attention here, they’re probably doing so elsewhere as well.

Doctor’s office today: This was a group of elderly black ladies chatting behind me. I’ve lived in poor black neighborhoods twice since moving to the East Coast and I feel comfortable betting that they are very much like the elderly black women who lived in my neighborhoods—they worked hard all of their lives at low-paying jobs (often more than one at a time) to make ends meet, they often have to take care of their grandkids (and even extend their caring to the grandkids’ friends), and they are devout Christians who dress in their Sunday finest and go to church every weekend. These women are not “progressives” or even especially liberal. They are old school and they are serious.

Again, the racist dog whistling was not lost of them. They were also very much disturbed by the hatefulness of the GOP (they mentioned it several times) and the characterization of the middle class & working poor as lazy freeloaders looking for a handout. Romney’s 47% comments seriously pissed them off. They voted Dem and will continue to do so unless & until the GOP changes its ways.

Taxi ride today: My regular taxi driver is a naturalized citizen originally from El Salvador. She’s an older woman and pretty conservative—she is a staunch Catholic who grew up in a small town where they had no running water (they took their baths & washed their clothes in the river), they had only intermittent electricity and no TV until she was older, and when it was time for dinner you went out and grabbed one of your chickens to kill & eat it.

The crap she’s been hearing from the GOP about immigration—not to mention their characterization of immigrants as criminals and/or disease-ridden trash who just want to pop out “anchor babies” and leech off the system—and from people like Joe Arpaio seriously chapped her hide. Again, this is not a high-info voter—in fact, I only knew she was talking about Arpaio because she mentioned “the sheriff in AZ who makes criminals wear pink underwear”, heh.

Anyway, she might not have been aware of all the names & party platforms, but she damned sure knew which party was anti-immigrant. She was very proud of her fellow hispanics for voting 70% for President Obama. She said that while they may have been lazy about going to vote in the past, that is OVER now thanks to the GOP. They are engaged and they are pissed.