They said a “Blue Wave” was coming. Red states would be washed blue; ‘battleground’ or ‘swing’ states that opted for Donald Trump in 2016 like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida would choose Biden this time around. It would be a wave big enough to tumble Republican strongholds like Arizona, Georgia and maybe even Texas.
At the point of writing, it would be charitable to call it a ripple. Biden has clawed back key swing states like Wisconsin and Nevada, which have edged him that bit closer to the critical 270 electoral college goal post he needs.
Of course, Biden’s narrow lead in some states all but guarantees “a protracted legal battle and constitutional crisis that could send the national election to the Supreme Court for the second time in as many decades” according to the Atlantic journalist Derek Thompson. With Donald Trump threading seeds of doubt over corrupt mail-in ballots for weeks now, not to mention announcing a premature victory when major swing states were still continuing to count ballots, it would have taken a Democrat tsunami to take down Trump’s false claims. And even then…
With an endless sea of polls backing Biden again, as much as 63% to Trump’s 35% the day before the election, whatever happened to “Blue Wave”?
What Happened to the “Blue Wave”?
In the coming days, extensive analysis from international media platforms across the world will be dissecting the US Election and attempting to answer this very question.
Each will examine, contrast and compare data from a variety of contributing factors. How voting is influenced by age, gender, location, class, sexuality and race. Along with partisan issues that exit polls have depicted will divide voters in this historic election; the economy, healthcare, coronavirus, law and order and racial inequality.
Depending on where you stand on the above issues loosely determined how you would vote. If you opposed wearing masks, you voted Trump and Republican. If you supported the Black Lives Matter movement, you opted for Democrat.
The problem is life is rarely that neat. People rarely fit into one neat identity box as much as pollsters and political campaign teams might make you believe that they do.
Florida: the battleground state
Just look at the Latinx or Hispanic vote. In the run-up to the election, the Latinx demographic was branded as crucial to Biden’s presidential campaign. As of writing, Biden has won 66% of the national Latinx vote.
In Florida, he only managed 52% – that cost him the state and the most direct route to the White House.
Days before the election, Biden’s safe passage through Florida was almost thought a done deal. The New York Times reported that Biden has a “modest advantage” in Florida with a 3.2 percentage point margin of error. Yet, at 12.25 am (local time) on November 4th it was all over for Biden. Trump had won with a 3.78 percentage point lead with 96% of the vote counted.
Trump actually improved on his win in Florida, compared to his 2016 race against Hillary Clinton with 51% of the vote. His lead crucially included being up 12 points with Latinx voters from 2016. Biden was more popular with younger voters, making up 60% of the vote in the 18-29 age bracket. His popularity dropped sharply to 46% and 47% with the 30 and above age group.
In the UK, Trump’s boasting about building a wall on the US-Mexico border (and getting Mexico to pay for it) has played on a mocking loop for four years now. But with there only being 15 miles of new primary barrier (where there wasn’t a wall before), the US seems to all but forgotten that it was his policy in the first place. Even during the presidential race, there’s been very little mention of the immigrant children, torn from their parents and left in cages in detention camps in El Paso, Texas.
With this representing just the tip of the iceberg, where did Biden and the Democrat party get it wrong? They’ve got Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, isn’t that enough?
The Democrats are going to need more than AOC
Sure, every major media organisation has her pegged as the US’ 2024 President but she is one woman. And a nation including over 60 million Latinos deserves the representation that comes with being the second largest demographic group in the US.
In 2019, there were only four Latinx US senators, with Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada being the only woman. The 2020 election has seen a slight rise in Latinx representation, with the likes of Ben Ray Luján in New Mexico and Ritchie Torres, who became the first openly gay Afro-Latinx member of congress in New York, among a few others.
It’s much-needed progress that is worth celebrating but ironically, representation only represents part of the problem.
A Culture of “Hispandering”
Cast your minds back to a month ago. Presidential candidate Joe Biden is in Kissimmee, Florida at a Hispanic Heritage Month event.
Suddenly, the crowd cringes.
Despacito has started playing.
Oh no, it’s from Biden’s phone. Don’t do it Joe. Don’t do it…Yup, he’s dancing. You’ve done it now, Joe.
This is simply the latest instalment of an outdated Democrat tradition, known as “Hispandering”. So outdated, that the pun has actually been around since 2002. The problem, long before that. It refers to the politically charged attempts made by politicians to satisfy Latinx voters. Think #DespacitoJoe or Hillary Clinton’s list about why she’s everyone’s beloved Abuela from four years ago. Even J.Lo’s support couldn’t save her.
It’s more than being culturally insensitive, it’s arrogance
Put aside the awkward political blunders for a second. As eye roll-worthy as they are, they aren’t the obviously harmful racism that we are used to seeing across the world, especially in the US in recent months. At least the Democrats are trying, right? But it’s like your dad asking about your love life. The intentions might be good but now you’re both left staring at your hands wishing you hadn’t been born.
Playing Despacito or coining yourself as the ultimate Abuela of the Latinx community could be rationalised as an attempt to connect with a community that they don’t belong to or necessarily understand. But really all it looks like is privileged white political robots trading meaningless gestures in exchange for their own selfish political advantage.
Silence when faced with racism is racism. Biden has publicly named Trump as a symbol of hate and division and “one of the most racist presidents we’ve had in modern history”. He has criticised Trump’s detention and separation policy as “criminal” but as Vice President between 2009-2017, he was a key player in an administration that deported more people than any other, approximately 2.5 million people between 2009-15.
Perhaps something that Biden conveniently forgot during the 2012 election campaign when he criticised Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for refusing to disclose his tax records. In a speech to the National Council of la Raza, Biden claimed that: “He wants you to show your papers, but he won’t show us his”. A claim that has been chastised by Julio Ricardo Varela from NPR’s Latino USA as “hispandering”.
A most unlikely partnership
The reasons why Trump is so popular among Latinx voters is complicated and to many, seems incredibly unlikely. But that’s only because the media treats the Latinx community as one conglomerate group when, of course, it’s not.
The Latinx community are often measured by the same yardstick as the Black community, a group that overwhelming voted for Biden at a whopping 87%. The Black community share a culture that is rooted in their unique experience with institutional, systemic racism and racially charged police brutality in the US, something that we should all be more than familiar with, following the Black Lives Matters protests across the US and solidarity demonstrations all over the world this year.
The Latinx community cannot be treated in the same way. They have emigrated from 33 distinct countries across Central and South America for a whole host of different political, social and economic reasons.
The fact remains that, as a group, they do not share an all-encompassing term. In 2013, Pew Research Centre conducted a survey that revealed Latinxs and Hispanics do not have a strong preference for one term over the other. However, it’s important to note that there is an obvious distinction between the two; Hispanics originate from Spanish-speaking countries, while the term Latinx incorporates all Latin-American countries. This creates a substantial overlap, but this terminology considers non-pre-dominantly Spanish-speaking countries like Brazil, Suriname and French Guiana.
It’s no surprise then that a not-so-conglomerate group would vote so differently. Take Cuban-Americans, of which there are 1.4 million eligible voters in the US. According to Pew Research Centre, 58% of registered Cuban-American voters “affiliate with or lean towards the Republican party”, compared with 38% affiliating Democrat. Cuban and Puerto-Rican Americans account for the largest Latinx groups in Florida. Historically, these communities have counter-balanced each other in the Sunshine State. While Cuban Americans typically lean right, away from an extreme-left, as a result of the polarising and unstable history of socialism that prompted human rights abuses and led to a crippling economy that has plagued Cuba since before the 1959 revolution. In contrast, as a group, Puerto Ricans are politically left-leaning and tend to vote Democrat.
Yet, in unprecedented times, Florida’s voting eco-system has shifted right with Cuban-American voting turnout being one of the highest in the Latinx community.
Florida is Trump’s stomping ground, his home away from the White House. Or rather, the White House is his home away from Florida. NBC News Digital has tracked his visits to his various properties and golf courses since his presidency began, including the number of days he has spent at Mar-a-Lago, his estate in Palm Beach. He’s spent 133 of 1338 days in his presidency in Mar-a-Lago alone and visited Florida 17 times in 2020, even during the coronavirus pandemic.
But it took until September, three weeks before the election, for Biden to even visit Florida at the infamous #DespacitoJoe event. A visit to Florida is a calculated risk and a confident move, especially for a Democratic candidate since it involves spending considerable campaign resources.
Visiting Florida and appealing to the Latinx vote wasn’t worth Biden’s time until he started to see votes by ‘Biden’ boxes in his eyes, the way cartoon characters see dollar signs.
Watch this space
It would be too easy to chalk up “Hispandering” as conservative slang; a cheap blame game aimed at “politicians they felt were disingenuously wooing Latino voters with friendlier stances on immigration”. That would allow the Democrats to dodge any accountability which is not only unrealistic but also untrue.
Republicans and Democrats alike have to do better. “Unity over division”, as Joe would say. Biden needs to be a driving force for meaningful, enduring change. Or at very least pass the wheel to someone that will be.
There needs to be far more representation across the board in the US political sphere. The tide is turning but we’re not likely to see it under Biden. The future of the US is in ‘the Squad’. It’s in the new progressive representatives, senators and change-makers coming through the cracks in a broken American society.
If future politicians want the Latinx vote, they are going to have to earn it. Symbolic gestures that amount to very little just won’t cut it anymore. Biden lost Florida where he could have won it. It could have lost him the election. And if attitudes don’t change, it might cost Democrat’s future wins and America’s future even more.
Rebecca Carey
All Featured Images courtesy of Susan Ruggles via Flickr. No changes were made to this issue. Licence is available here.