Thread by @marcambinder

1) Denying agency to Cuban American voters in Miami-Dade and assuming they were the victims of disinformation OR that Dem consultants didn’t spend enough money “reaching out” is a fundamental misreading of why people vote.

2) some (but not all) consultants who spend money on ads (which generally don’t work) targeted at “Latinx” voters as a group are grifters. Cuban American voters do not consider themselves as Latinx. They are Americans with Cuban heritage, South Floridians, with diverse concerns.

3) for a party that embraces intersectionality, some folks in it (not all) sure have a habit of assuming that, for example, the politics of immigration play the same with women and men whose parents emigrated from very different countries for very different reasons.

4) the pandemic presents unique challenges for all campaigns and the Biden folks had a strategy and they stuck to it. Lots of complaints that they didn’t have a robust Latino voter program. The predicate of that question IS precisely the problem. There is so such thing.

5) I was told by a student - whose identified as Chicana - that my use of the term Latinx in a class was offensive to her. I asked why. She said the word was invented to separate her from the heritage she grew up with. That struck me. So I learned more.

6) the term Latinx is preferred by young people of Hispanic or Latin heritage who identify as progressive and includes the queer community. One final point: I have always been confused by how some folks assume that women and men who are not white share their same experiences.

7) again, intersectionality - which, when not a caricature of itself, is a very useful concept - would have us look uniquely at the experiences of young Black men and young Black women. But politics still doesn’t.

8) Final point: Trump’s personal style - I cheat at golf so I don’t really care if you cheat at golf, and screw the elites who are thumbsuckers - Is NOT my own. BUT i can see its immense appeal to Americans who do not like being told that what they think and do is wrong and retro

9) and I haven’t seen the cross-tabs but I wouldn’t bet against there being not insignificant support for Trump among “minorities” who both accept the science of Covid AND reject what they see as state/local government imperiousness.