[The Democrats'] debate is almost entirely theoretical, drowned out by the mad scramble to assemble an identity-politics coalition of generic "Hispanics," "blacks," "white women," etc. It's amazing how complacent the media is in carrying on with this kind of nakedly reductionist analysis. The notion that Hispanics may be voting one way or another for reasons other than their ethnicity seems never to come up.

Meanwhile, on the Republican side, women, blacks and Hispanics vote too, but that's not how the demographics and coalitions of the right work. GOP candidates actually have to win over people who believe things. (After all, the famed, and tragically frayed, "Reagan coalition" was about different groups of principled people, not a mere hodgepodge of ethnicities and genders.) Exit pollsters ask GOP voters whether they're committed pro-lifers, whether they think the economy is the most important issue, etc. I'm sure they ask Democratic voters similar questions, but it's telling how little we hear about that. What Democratic voters actually believe doesn't seem to be that relevant, in large part because Democrats aren't voting their beliefs, they're voting affections.