2024 vs. 2020: Trump gained most in Latino towns, Kamala in Whitopias
The Racial Reckoning alienated Hispanic voters, but not laptop whites who moved to bucolic paradises to Work-From-Home.
More good election stuff from @SidKhurana3607:
These are all heavily Latino districts, mostly near the Mexican border. Most are downscale agricultural centers, with the exception of glittering Miami. In 2016, Trump merely held his own with Hispanics, achieving a normal GOP share rather than the much predicted wipeout of Trump that the conventional wisdom predicted based on his “not sending their best” remarks after coming down the escalator.
In the summer of 2020, I recall that the video from a border town of some big Mexican-American loon with a chainsaw scaring off BLM protestors struck me as a harbinger of something. Indeed, it turned out that Chainsaw Latino represented The Future in his realizing, long before most whites, that Democrats had pushed all their chips in on blacks (and trans), and that Hispanic-Americans were of little interest to liberals anymore. Border Latinos swung heavily toward Trump in November 2020 (although less so in other Hispanic communities).
In 2024, it looks like a rout for Trump among border Hispanics, and big changes even in glittering metros like Miami and New York, where Latinos are much more Caribbean and South American than they are on the land border with Mexico.
A big question remaining is whether Republicans can hold onto Latinos after Trump is gone. Vance, Youngkin, DeSantis? Maybe, maybe not. Who knows?
Meanwhile, Kamala in 2024 didn’t do better than Biden in 2020 in many places, but the ones she did thrive in appear to be Work From Home whitopias:
In your career, you don’t have to be in any particular place in order to lift something heavy, right? So, trade in your two million dollar house in the San Francisco Bay area for a million dollar house in some scenic backwater with lots of hiking and golf nearby. When it’s time to retire, you’ll be an active retiree spending lots of time in the great outdoors, right? (My advice is to be careful about moving to too high of an altitude to retire, like Aspen at 7,900 feet or Santa Fe at 7,200 feet: you may find the thin air invigorating today, but in retirement? Are you sure? Bend, OR at 3600 feet elevation and Grand Junction at 4600 feet sound more prudent.)
Are you concerned about the, uh, urban disorder unleashed by the liberal Establishment going all in on BLM? Well, you won’t have worry about such a sensitive if not completely inappropriate topic once you are settled in Asheville or Traverse City.
By the way, the term “Whitopia” was coined by the amiable black journalist Rich Benjamin in his 2009 book Searching for Whitopia, in which he moved to three mostly white bucolic places and participated in the local lifestyles. He found out he liked golfing, shooting, and mega-churching.
Actor Jeff Daniels is a busy man. When he's not playing great Americans in movies like "Gettysburg", he's a champion for racial justice. He appeared on Stephen Colbert and gave an impassioned speech about Black Lives Matter. He called for a "new America", declaring that America must be totally rebuilt to purge it of its racism. The studio audience was so moved that they barely let him finish before bursting into applause.
But even Jeff Daniels needs his downtime. He makes his home in a beautiful little town called Chelsea, Michigan. Chelsea is known for its history, vibrant arts scene, and natural beauty.
Just one small, insignificant detail about Chelsea: the town is 95% white and less than 1% black. Surely Jeff is unaware of this. Why would a champion for racial justice choose to live in a place that's so regrettably, egregiously, unforgivably white?
Really the biggest instinct of the white Kamala fans in these locations seems to be gatekeeping - physically, culturally, and politically.