Latinos and the Future of American Politics
*Why you should read this: Because it’s worth the time investment – it’s a 20 minute read. Because it takes a frank look at U.S. Latino politics and sketches a path forward. Because it’s a good conversation starter. VL
By Manuel Pastor, American Prospect (20 minute read) 
There is a heated debate about the accuracy of [the Latino vote] analysis and it seems clear that “la culpa no es nuestra [ours]”: Latino voters posted a healthy turnout, managed to help elect Democratic senators in Colorado and Nevada (including the first Latina to ever serve in that body), and were even key to pushing California’s Orange County, long a bastion of right-wing Republicanism, to vote Democratic in the presidential contest for the first time since the Great Depression.
So while an even more progressive Latino vote could have made the presidential difference in, say, Florida (always a challenge given the Republican-leaning Cuban population), the problem this year was not the weakness of the still-evolving brown electorate. Rather, it was the quiet storm in the so-called Blue Wall: the batch of Midwestern states that have been battered by economic change, made anxious by demographic shifts (which have, in fact, only begun to touch them), and so were very susceptible to Trump’s unvarnished appeals to racial and economic restoration.
[pullquote] [tweet_dis]Any post game analysis of the 2016 election needs to be clear on what exactly happened to the Latino and immigrant electorate this year.[/tweet_dis][/pullquote]To some degree, the current liberal and progressive neck snap to the Midwest is understandable: We do need to catch up to Michael Moore and fully grasp just what led white voters (including a plurality of the white college-educated) to embrace a reality show billionaire with a self-declared proclivity for sexual assault. How did he make inroads by promising to deport or exclude people who mostly don’t live anywhere near those states? How do we detox our body politic so we can bridge differences and focus attention on what is likely a central task before us: generating a convincing economic program?
Read more stories about the future of U.S. Latino politics in NewsTaco. >>
[tweet_dis]We can’t let a healthy dose of attention to the distressed white voter, however, lead us to give up on mobilizing the emerging electorate, particularly the growing Latino population[/tweet_dis] that will constitute roughly 40 percent of the newly eligible electorate between now and 2030 (with the overwhelming majority of that coming from young Latinos turning 18). So any post game analysis needs to be clear on what exactly happened to the Latino and immigrant electorate this year, as well as on the immediate challenges ahead, particularly the threats posed if Trump’s economic plan crumbles and the deportation sideshow becomes the main psychic payoff to his frustrated voters.Do you like stories that reflect authentic latino life in the U.S.?
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Manuel Pastor is professor of geography at the University of Southern California and co-author of This Could Be the Start of Something Big: How Social Movements for Regional Equity are Reshaping Metropolitan America.
[Photo by Luigi de Guzman/Flickr]