Julian Castro on shocking Clinton defeat, effect of Hispanic vote
Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro, a rising Democratic star, joined “CBS This Morning” Wednesday to discuss his party’s stunning loss in the presidential election and to weigh in on how the Hispanic vote may have affected Hillary Clinton’s bid for the White House.
Speaking from the CBS’ New York studio, Castro called Tuesday’s results a “shuffle the deck kind of election,” where “frustration with Washington, D.C.” was the dominant sentiment in the voting booth.
“She was a very impressive candidate,” Castro said of Clinton, but noted that the “constant barrage on the email issue,” combined with Trump’s “good job of using social media” and “messaging in his own way,” hampered her path to the White House. Losing states like Michigan and Wisconsin, which were Democratic strongholds when Obama ran in 2008 and 2012, he added, “was never part of the plan.”
“Now, he and this Republican party - they own it,” Castro said.
Asked whether he believed Trump was still unfit to be president, Castro replied: “My opinion about whether he should be president hasn’t changed from last night to today, but I do think that it’s up to up to all of us as Americans to do what we can to unite the country.”
“It’s up to (Trump) more than anybody to make sure he approaches the presidency differently from how he approached the campaign. Being president isn’t like being a campaigner,” he said.”One of the things he benefited from is very, very low expectations.”
When asked about the Hispanic vote -- and the higher percentage of Latinos that supported Trump versus Mitt Romney in 2012 -- Castro challenged the notion that Democrats had a problem with that voter bloc.
Trump “lost 70 percent of Hispanics,” Castro said. “And I think Hispanics turned out in better numbers, and they made the difference in states like Colorado.”
Asked about whether the Democratic party should conduct a campaign “autopsy” following the election, the former San Antonio mayor responded in the affirmative.
“Of course, any time especially in an election like this where you’re expected to win and you don’t, it makes sense to go back and understand what happened,” Castro said.