“He should be scared in Pennsylvania because there is an energy, there is a surge,” said CNN commentator Van Jones on Election Day.
Specifically, Jones said, “The Puerto Rican vote by itself has been lit on fire … . There is a big tidal wave of Puerto Rican vote coming in Pennsylvania.”
This was the standard account over the past week, repeated again and again because a comedian at a Trump rally called Puerto Rico an “island of trash.” Supposedly, Puerto Rican and other Hispanic voters were going to turn out against former President Donald Trump in massive numbers.
The Democratic mayor of Allentown, Pennsylvania, a majority Puerto Rican city, predicted a huge Democratic surge.
Ana Navarro said on CNN, “I’m focused on the Lehigh Valley. It’s the third largest Puerto Rican community in the country, and boy, did they pick on the wrong community at that Madison Square Garden rally. I think it’s going to mean a five-plus change” for Harris.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran a feature on the “energized” Puerto Ricans of Pennsylvania.
“We have seen a difference in attitude, a difference in spirit after what happened,” Ms. Zapata said. “We are super proud about our island, our flag and our family, our people. And that hit us super hard.”
The Washington Post had its own version of the same story:
Liberals everywhere had their anecdotes:
Instead, Trump made huge gains among Hispanics in Pennsylvania, according to exit polls, and early data suggest he improved on his 2020 showing as well.
Stephanie Ruhle posited that Puerto Rican women in Osceola County, Florida, were going to deliver victory to the pro-abortion ballot amendment because of the joke.
Instead, Trump won it, the most Puerto Rican county in Florida, after losing it by double digits last election.
I wrote about the broader matter last week, before the trash island joke:
“The immigrant nonwhite population and their descendants do not hold the same sensitivities about race, equality, and immigration as do the liberal elites … .”
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“Everyone agrees racism is bad, but not everyone agrees on what counts as racism.”
“For the working class, and most Hispanics are in the working class, off-color jokes, stereotypes, and insults may not count as racism. Under Trump, the economy was spectacular, particularly for the working class. We were near full employment, and inflation was low — some ugly language and cringy taco bowl tweets don’t matter as much as those things.”