WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump heads to Harris County, Texas, thisweekend to a major rally ahead of next week’s United Nations GeneralAssembly – for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The website for the “Howdy,Modi” rally boasts that the “live audience will be the largest gatheringfor an invited foreign leader visiting the United States other than thePope”: Some 50,000 people, many from Houston’s large Indian community, areexpected to turn out.
It’s eye-popping that leaders of the world’s two biggest democracies areappearing together at such an event – let alone that this particularAmerican president will be holding court in the epicenter of Texas’s bluewave and the most diverse city in America.
You’re not wrong if you think that doesn’t sound like friendly territoryfor Trump. But that’s a strong political reason for him to go: Democratsare making a big play for Texas in 2020 and Republicans are growingconcerned. The rally for PM Modi provides Trump with access to a potentialpool of Indian American voters that could turn out to be critical in nextyear’s presidential elections.
– “Texas is a battleground,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said at a breakfasthosted by The Christian Science Monitor last week. “The far left is pissedoff. They hate the president and that’s a powerful motivator.”
– There’s perhaps no place that hates the president more in Texas thanHarris County, which “completely inverted in 2016” from red to blue. Trumplost the county by 12 percentage points in 2016 – and former CongressmanBeto O’Rourke followed up with a 17 point win over Cruz in their 2018Senate race.
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– And it’s an important county, Republicans acknowledge: “Well, they say ifyou lose Harris County, you lose Texas . . . That’s the deal,” CharlotteLampe, a Cypress precinct chairwoman involved in the county’s RepublicanParty for decades told the Texas Tribune’s Abby Livingston. “If this turns,so follows Texas because we’re a big concentration of conservative voters.”Advertisement
Not-so-strange bedfellows: Trump and PM Modi are, in many ways, cut fromthe same cloth – right-wing populist leaders that stir huge crowds with bigpersonalities, who have faced been criticized for polarizing theircountry’s electorates. But it’s a big gamble for Trump to bet PM Modi’spopularity at home – and among diaspora communities abroad – will translateto support for Trump, reports the Washington Post
BY: Jacqueline
