Hillary Clinton's substantial victory over Obama in Puerto Rico yesterday has encouraged her campaign to keep clutching at straws. Terry McAuliffe, the campaign chair, argued that the result revealed a demographic failure on Obama's part: “It was a 100 percent Hispanic primary and it shows that he has a problem with the Latino community. He cannot close in this key core constituency.”
This is most certainly the wrong conclusion to draw. Turn out in Puerto Rico was staggeringly low, at a puny 16%. More importantly, the politics of the island territory are far removed from that of the United States proper. As one Puerto Rican put it,
"We are a colony. We do not participate in any of the US political processes, really. There isn't a general understanding of US national politics, nor of the "Republican" v. "Democrat" mentality. We are consumed by our local politics and whether we should become a state, an independent country or remain as we are."
It is also misguided to look for a barometer of general "Latino opinion" in the Puerto Rican vote. Issues like immigration policy - often important among Hispanic voters - have no resonance in Puerto Rico. The shared language of Spanish doesn't politically unite the island's inhabitants to Mexicans in San Diego or Dominicans in the Bronx. To assume as much is patronising, and perhaps even inflammatory.
It is hardly innocent to claim that Latinos won't vote for a black candidate. MacAuliffe's suggestion that Obama fails amongst Hispanic voters indelicately probes the supposed "black-brown divide", one of those mythical beasts of American politics. Though debunked by scholars, the stereotype of Latino-African American antipathy retains a crude power that should not be underestimated. Nor should it be appealed to by mainstream politicians.