Latino Men Were the Big Defectors—but They Weren’t the Only Story

So it wasn’t all Latino men, by any means, but in the exit polls, their vote is the only eye-popping shift. The “floating island of garbage” didn’t matter. May have helped, who knows. There’s no breakdown yet that I’ve seen of different Latino groups, but Trump’s Puerto Rican support apparently did not crater. He outright won heavily Latino counties in New Jersey, for example, that Democrats usually win on autopilot.

So the question is why. Cataclysmic as this result is, and what it’s going to lead to in this country over the next four years, I think people may have a tendency to get too hysterical in answering this question.

For example, Harris didn’t suck as a candidate. In fact, she ran a good campaign overall. I thought “We’re not going back” was powerful, and her optimistic tone made a good contrast to Trump’s darkness. She was overly cautious on some things. Israel apparently hurt her in Dearborn, but there was no widespread left-wing revolt against her. Jill Stein got a paltry 611,760 votes, versus 1,449,370 in 2016. Cornel West didn’t even register in the Associated Press tally I checked Wednesday morning. Likewise, few centrists ran away from her. Except for Latino men, and to a lesser extent Latina women, she held the Democratic Party together. Polls kept telling us that Democratic enthusiasm was through the roof.