Among Latinos There Are Also Latinas!

I've been browsing reports and studies about the side that lost this latest election and their attempts to self-examine "what did we do wrong?" -- as well as those written by the supposedlt non-biased political journalists and pundits who are also telling us with their 20/20 hind vision, "what they did wrong!"

Both give the most space to the Republican party's failure with the issue of immigration and the latino voter -- even the Florida Cuban vote went 48 - 49 % for Obama.

In this case both the party speakers and the pundits leave out entirely that the latino vote, like all the voting segments, consists of at least 50 % women. Judging by my own long voter line, in a neighborhood that isn't counted as latino in the least, there were more latino women, in each age demographic voting, than men. And we had a lot of latinas in that line. Thanks to Laura Quilter, there is data confirmation of this: It turns out that indeed there was a 12-point gender gap: 75% of Latino women voted for Obama, but only 63% of Latino men.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/11/gender-gap-opens-in-latino-obama-vote
That's not been the case in my voting district previously in presidential elections. This might be because because we gerrymandered, er, re-districted, yet again, in order that the Republicans got a more 'fair' shake in these districts. Maybe this is another favorite part of the Republican strategy of voter repression that bit back?

I would like to add this bit, concerning the re-districting. It was done to move the vote of the expanding Chinatown from our district -- after having moved those precincts previously into our district -- because Chinatown tends to vote strongly for Dem candidates. The idea behind this latest crazy quilt meandering line of re-districting was to bring in the supposedly more conservative latino vote. But as usual, most of these people doing this can't get it through their silly little heads that latinos are a very diverse population. The latino population from 'over there' in this redistricting has a strong Dominican Republic component. They've been here by now for at least two generations. Like their neighboring Haitians -- or anyone I've ever met from the Caribbean -- their work ethic is very strong. Yes, and so are their ties to family. But as working voters -- and do these women ever work! -- these women know what is up with health care, discrimination, hatred of women, hatred of public education and all the rest of the values issues that brought their families to the U.S. in the first place. My take is the Republicans of whatever ilk do not understand or know any of this.

So this time around there were few if any Asian voters in my line -- Chinatown was devastated by Hurricane Sandy -- still, I'm sure they were voting in droves at another polling station in another district.

Something else that is entirely ignored at least in the re-examination of what went wrong I've been seeing is health care. The howling cohort yesterday include yet again 'death panels' in their chorus. Yet they seem entirely unaware that at primary rallies earlier this year those voters who were in support of the Republicans howled "Let 'em die!" when asked what should be done for people too poor to afford health care. They never noticed the endless string of lies that Romney told voters in, o say, Ohio, regarding jobs that Somebody Else was going to outsource. They've forgotten that Romney himself is the great enabler of outsourcing.

They have forgotten all this. They have forgotten Sheriff Arpaio in Arizona and those like him in many other places. They have forgotten the 100% anti-choice plank in their national campaign platform. Instead, what that end of the party is doing is crying, "Secession is the only solution now, UNFAIR!, they stole it! They are crazy! They made up the War on Women! THEY LIE, LIE, LIE -- and the MEDIA was against us."

It was a horror show of hate, this campaign -- and long before the campaign officially began. Particularly the (R) primary process.

Along with all the other events and characters in the most extreme red states like Arizona.

Evidently though, even the people who commit such acts of hatred, such as vocally, very loudly, advocating death for people who can't afford insurance premiums and hospital care, do not perceive their behaviors this way, and cannot understand why anyone objects.

They really do perceive themselves as patriots.

Extreme personality disorder seems the only explanation. Now that their hand-wringing in the two days after the election includes, "We must reach out to the latino voter," I cannot see that working. For one thing they don't know who the latino voters are -- i.e. they still don't see that they are varied lot, not a single entity. For another, they don't care, so how are you going to convince somebody about whom you know nothing, care less, and don't respect to vote for you? Particularly since you have a party united on least one thing: get women out of politics and back into the kitchen, without reproductive control of her own body ... recall how They treated Sonia Sotomayor during the confirmation process and how they still speak of her? It's never occurred to Them, even, that latinas notice such things. That's how little respect for women as human beings all These Sorts have -- no matter what color, what age, what demographic the women are 50% of. If you feel that way about half the world, that includes members of your own household, how can you reach these voting groups?

On the other hand, I fully comprehend that our POTUS is waging drone war upon large numbers of innocent people, and there is no transparency, and I want him to STOP doing that! Along with so many othe things. So we have to pressure him on that. We have so much work to do. But at least we have room within which to work, which the claustrophobic constrictions of the Other Ones, don't and would not provide