[Mind The Gap] Buyer’s remorse on Trump? Vote your pocketbook!

Raphael Reyes/Rappler

Sitting on the sidelines is no longer an option because our families here and back home are paying the price. Every vote counts.

AT A GLANCE

• Rising fuel and grocery prices in California are straining budgets for both Americans and their families in the Philippines, leading to reduced remittances.
• Filipinos in the US have historically been politically passive, but the upcoming midterm elections present an opportunity for them to mobilize and influence outcomes, especially regarding economic issues.

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When I gas up now, it’s past $6 a gallon for regular gasoline, and if you’re a big rig trucker, diesel is over $9 a gallon in California. When I do my groceries at the Island Pacific supermarket, a pound of bok choy for my pork neck bone sinigang, the same bunch that cost 99 cents before, is $2.99 now, even with my 12% senior citizen discount on Tuesdays.

And it’s not just our wallet being emptied here. The oil shock from the Iran war is also wreaking havoc on our loved ones in the Philippines, even as they continue to wade through stagnant flood water from the Habagat, worsened by crumbling flood control infrastructure, some of them with retaining walls built without rebar. And with diesel nearly P100 a liter, or about $6.50 a gallon, jeepney drivers are on the streets demanding higher fares.

At a time when they need remittances the most, we’re the ones cutting back as we try squeezing our own budget to put food on the table first. Those who count on $400 a month now get $200, if we can spare it.

With the US accounting for about $15 billion or 40% of all cash remittances to the Philippines every year, the whole country feels it when we pull back, with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas already forecasting remittance growth to slow to 2.7% in 2026, down from 3.3% in 2025.

‘It’s the economy, stupid!’

People say voters vote with their pocketbook. “It’s the economy, stupid!” — the line from Democratic strategist James Carville that helped win Clinton the presidency in ’92 — feels almost quaint now. But it’s happening again. Millions of Americans are struggling with the high cost of living, and just like the Iran war, there seems no end in sight to rising prices.

If you voted for Trump, that’s okay, nobody’s perfect. But you didn’t vote for higher prices, never asked for endless international conflicts even with our close allies, and never wanted Republicans in Congress to introduce a bill curtailing our immigration right to petition our own elderly parents.

Nor we imagined that our US citizenship can be revoked when audited for trivial mistakes, like a misstatement at the time of our application.

Because Filipinos have one of the highest naturalization rates — roughly 1.6 million, or 76% of our population — we are mathematically more likely to be caught in this arbitrary audit, with the United States Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) setting a quota of 100 to 200 cases a month to strip citizenship from naturalized Americans in 2026.

MAGA flag in tatters

Besides, Trump’s core support is showing deep fractures even among his MAGA faithful, especially those in Red States affected by the cost of tariffs and diesel fuel.

“Donald Trump is dragging down Republicans, even in some of the most Trump-y states,” according to New York Times contributing writer E.J. Dionne Jr. after reporting in Indiana and Kansas, where Trump’s approval is down in the 40s in both states.

While it’s impossible to argue with the rabid, Charlie Kirk-quoting Pinoy MAGAs, we have a potent voting bloc of the undecided and the disillusioned that can swing battleground states like Nevada where presidential and Senate races are routinely decided by thin margins.

Furthermore, while California is reliably blue, there are highly competitive US House districts across the Central Valley, Orange County, and parts of Los Angeles and San Diego. Since 41% of FilIpino eligible voters live in California, a surging turnout could help flip or hold the seats that can determine control of Congress.

Add to this the nearly 50 million Gen Zers ages 18 to 29 who will be eligible to vote this November, with more of them were registered as of July than at this point before the last midterm. Though more than 21 million eligible Gen Zers didn’t vote in 2024, their top concern now is the economy, which gives them a reason to show up.

Fence-sitters

Though there are more than four million Filipinos in the US, second only to the Chinese, we’ve been fence-sitters for so long in American politics that we’ve allowed those who came here after us, like the Indians and the Vietnamese, to gain a political clout we can now only dream of.

It could be apathy, why we are underrepresented in American politics. Our reluctance to take risks while sitting pretty on relative affluence from good-paying jobs made us lazy and indifferent to sort of flex our political power in terms of our large numbers.

We have often voted as individuals rather than organizing as a collective force, like in donating to candidates, which Indians generously do, or in walking the precincts or manning phone banks for our own kababayan running for office, or join protest rallies to support our rights as immigrants.

This midterm election, sitting on the sidelines is no longer an option because our families here and back home are paying the price. Every vote counts. As the Emperor in “Mulan” says, “a single grain can tip the scale.”

Let’s vote our pocketbook in November. – Rappler.com

Oscar Quiambao is a former reporter for The Philippine Daily Inquirer who now lives in San Francisco.