All together now: Good grief!
The other day I shared my frustration with readers, after enduring another elite newsroom story about the “shocking” trends among Hispanic voters in the 2020 elections. It turned out that quite a few Hispanics didn’t vote for Democrats the way that they were supposed to and it wasn’t just Cubans in Miami.
Of course there were economic issues involved. Of course there were efforts to paint Democrats as “socialists” or worse, using labels that really scare lots of voters in conservative Hispanic households (including Cubans, of course).
Of course, there are “religion ghosts” lurking in many of those memories of life in the old country.
Anyway, I wrote a post with this headline: “One more time — Why can't Democrats count on Hispanics, etc., to vote the way they should?” I noted that GetReligion has been running posts on this topic ever since the 2016 campaign in Florida, when there was evidence that evangelical Latinos helped make Donald Trump a winner there. As I said earlier this week:
There’s more to this story than Cubans in Miami. Reporters need to visit megachurches in and around Orlando. Also, if you have ever lived in Texas, you know that the political lives of third- and fourth-generation Hispanics is rather different than those of more recent arrivals. And, again, look for church ties. …
Now the editors need to ponder this truth: Political labels are not enough.
That post was about a New York Times political-desk story that was completely tone deaf to the religion angles in this important topic.
Now, low and behold, that Times team has gone and done it again — this time looking at Miami and its powerful Cuban community, in particular. The double-decker headline states:
How Hispanic Voters Swung Miami Right
Many expected that liberal young Hispanic voters would propel a Democratic wave. But Miami, a city where Hispanics hold the levers of power, confounded expectations.
It was more of the same, of course.
So many of the old themes were there, along with familiar faith-shaped holes in the narrative. Here’s a sample of one or two times when the Times almost spotted the ghost (which I would define as moral and religious issues that really matter to lots of Hispanic Catholics and evangelicals in pews).
… In July, Eliécer Ávila, a Cuban dissident, posted a photograph on Instagram showing himself and other Trump supporters posing in front of Miami shrine to Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, Cuba’s patron saint, with their middle fingers in the air. (The target of their disrespect was unclear, but the overall message was not.)
Also, note this:
Nowhere in the country do Hispanics control the levers of power as they do in Miami, and voters do not behave as they might in other places where their ethnic group is more marginalized. … Traditional “Latino” issues such as immigration, combating racism and identity politics often take a back seat to concerns over the economy, religion and foreign policy.
Do you get the impression that Times editors think they are in charge of defining what are “traditional ‘Latino’ issues” and what issues do not make that list? Maybe they should listen to Barack Obama? Take a look at that quote at the top of this post.
I could go on. But this time I think I’ll just point readers toward a punchy mini-think piece at Axios that is related to this topic. The headline: “Blunt 2020 lessons for media, America.” The vote here is CEO Jim VandeHei:
The media remains fairly clueless about the America that exists outside of the big cities, where most political writers and editors live. The coverage missed badly the surge in Trump voters in places obvious (rural America) and less obvious (Hispanic-heavy border towns in Texas).
* Let’s be honest: Many of us under-appreciated the appeal of President Trump’s anti-socialism message and the backlash against the defund-the-police rhetoric on the left.
The media (and many Democrats) are fairly clueless about the needs, wants and trends of Hispanic voters. Top Latinos warned about overlooking and misreading the fastest-growing population in America — but most didn’t listen. Hispanics will shape huge chunks of America’s political future, so a course correction is in order.
Here’s one more essential bite of that:
The media filter bubble is getting worse, not better. Look at what’s unfolding in real-time: Trump supporters feel like Fox News isn’t pro-Trump enough, while reporters and columnists bolted the N.Y. Times, Vox Media and others because they were not "woke" enough. This is an urgent sign that we are collectively losing the battle for truth and open debate.
* This could still get much worse if Trump supporters choose not just networks but social platforms like Parler and Rumble for consuming and sharing their reality, and liberals simply do the same in more traditional places. …
The bottom line: We're losing the war for truth. There's no bigger crisis for media, politics and society than the growing number of people who don't believe facts and verifiable figures. If we don't collectively solve this, we are all screwed.
Why do I sense that I will end up writing about this again? Think of it as Charlie Brown meets (deja vu) Yogi Berra.