Three Things You Need to Know About the #DNCLeak and Latino Voters

Jul 25, 2016
8:10 AM

DNC

Now that the political press has begun to dissect the Democratic National Committee emails published by Wikileaks, here are three things you need to know about the DNC and Latino voters. (Two of the points are not that important, but one of them is. Can you guess which one?)

Don’t take a moral stance on the Central American migrant crisis. Blame it all on the GOP.

One email thread from this past spring reveals a lot about how mainstream Democrats are spinning the latest round of deportation raids conducted under a Democratic administration. Here is what DNC national communications director Luis Miranda wrote in response to reports that immigration activists would be protesting the DNC:

We’ll also have core talking points for you guys to use generally. Below is what the White House said, some good and some bad. Our points will be smarter but something to be clear about is that reports that there are NEW raids are wrong. This is a continuation of operations announced in January and March. The problem is these groups don’t want to hear this, they want us to send a message to Central Americans to keep paying smugglers and put those kids at risk of abuse and even death. Frankly the rhetoric on this and calls for TPS [Temporary Protective Status] are irresponsible, they send a message that ends up in more lives lost. So we’ll focus our points on how much has already been done to make things better, and that the GOP is standing in the way of real reform. We’re not going to get into a fight on the Central Americans specifically, we’re going to focus on Republican obstruction.

This is what former DNC media booker Pablo Manríquez (also an early contributor to this site) wrote back to Miranda:

FLAG: This has disproven several times over since January — “they want us to send a message to Central Americans to keep paying smugglers and put those kids at risk of abuse and even death. Frankly the rhetoric on this and calls for TPS are irresponsible, they send a message that ends up in more lives lost” So be careful when answering as the press and advocates will be better-prepared than they were the last time. Basically what numerous studies have shown is that no one is leaving CentAm for TPS. In fact, most refugees have never even heard of TPS. All evidence shows people are leaving because they don’t want to be raped and/or murdered.

Miranda’s response to Manríquez? Blame it on the protesters:

It has been disproven only in the eyes of advocates. I’m not going to say that to press, but what advocates are calling for is reckless, irresponsible, and puts more lives at risk.

No, the Democrats don’t think Latinos need “taco bowl engagement.”

The conservative media is currently in outrage mode, saying that Democrats are being racists for this sentence written by Rebecca Christopher in an email thread about Donald Trump’s now infamous taco bowl tweet: “Attached is a script for a new video we’d like to use to mop up some more taco bowl engagement, and demonstrate the Trump actually isn’t trying.”

Critics from the right are screaming, but they are wrong. The DNC team was doing exactly what it should have been doing: capitalize on Trump’s stupid move. In fact, there is another email thread that gives this all context. Here is what Christopher wrote: “Attached is a script for a video we’d like to make based on Trump’s strange Cinco de Mayo tweet today — let me know if you have any questions!”

Latinos are not consumers or a brand, so please stop it right now.

Of all the emails and documents we have seen from this leak, this by far is the most insulting.

However, in fairness, Wikileaks did not include the entire document that contains the data about the “Hispanic consumer.” Here are points from the same document that should be noted:

US Hispanic Millennials feel betrayed by politics, elected officials and parties
US Hispanic Millennials distrust politicians and parties
The US Hispanic Demographic is made up of multiple “Hispanic” or “Latino” cultures

There is no homogeneous Omni-channel platform that can scale across each Hispanic/Latino community in the country to: Discover/learn issues and how they impact local communities; Share and express point-of-view re: issues; Feel included in process; Be motivated to take action (Register and vote)

You can read the full document here.

On another note, we have noticed that most of the attention has shifted to the “taco bowl engagement” and the issue of Latino millennials, but very little is being said about the Central American migrant crisis thread. Maybe the focus should be on that one?

If you want to search the Wikileaks database, go here.