Post-election dispatches from ‘Beigistan’
“Then Harris suffered a crushing defeat. Fifty-five percent of White voters chose a candidate who openly embraces White supremacy, but many Democrats were surprised by the underwhelming support for Harris from certain communities of color. [politicalresearch.org] Some communities’ voting patterns seemingly defied reason, such as the crossover voters between AOC and Trump. We’ll analyze the failures of her campaign for years to come, but to me, one thing was clear: Harris ran a particularly immigrant campaign: wildly optimistic, meritocratic to a fault, urging voters to believe — despite startling evidence to the contrary — in an American Dream that does not feel achievable, asking us to trust the process, and chastising us for demanding better, as though rocking the boat would tip us towards a Trump victory. Harris’ failure to build a strong immigrant voter coalition shows the frictions and discontents in the communities she expected to believe in her American Dream, and it’s worth asking why.”