I’ve written several times about the fact that the Left has outsourced censorship to the giant tech firms of Silicon Valley. Given that much political debate now takes place on social media, generally thought of as a public space, it is a handy way around the First Amendment. But the role of the giant tech companies goes beyond suppressing conservative voices, to include promoting liberalism and the Democratic Party.

The tech companies all take the same position as the Democratic Party press: sure, we’re all liberals here, but it doesn’t affect what we do! In our business lives, we are scrupulously neutral.

No one has bought that line with regard to the liberal media in a long time, and there is no reason to believe it with regard to Silicon Valley, either. The latest evidence comes from a leaked Google email that found its way onto the Tucker Carlson show last night:

A Google executive’s leaked email reveals efforts to increase Latino turnout prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the executive’s “surprise” at Donald Trump’s performance among Latino voters. The 675-word email, first obtained exclusively by Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” was written by the tech giant’s former head of multicultural marketing and details a range of efforts to increase Latino turnout, including the support of a partner organization that helped to drive voters to the polls.

The full text of the email may be online somewhere, but I haven’t seen it, so I have to rely on the Fox summary.

“We worked very hard. Many people did. We pushed to get out the Latino vote with our features, our partners, and our voices. We kept our Googley efforts non-partisan and followed our company’s protocols for the elections strategy,” the email begins. “We emphasized our mission to give Latinos access to information so they can make an informed decision at the polls, and we feel very grateful for all the support to do this important work.” At the end of the email, the author wrote that Latino Googlers are “probably hurting right now” and that the election results are “tough to handle now that we know not all of us were against this.” The Google executive acknowledges that Latinos, long considered the “sleeping giant” of American politics thanks to the country’s rapidly shifting demographics, did vote in record-breaking numbers and turned out early—but a significant percentage supported Trump instead of Hillary Clinton. “Ultimately, after all was said and one [sic], the Latino community did come out to vote, and completely surprised us. We never anticipated that 29% of Latinos would vote for Trump. No one did,” the executive wrote.

The only reasonable interpretation is that Google tried to help Hillary win the election, in part through this initiative, but fell short.

Google distanced itself from the memo with the usual rationale:

A Google spokesperson previously told Fox News: “The views expressed in this email are the employee’s personal political views and are not representative of any official stance from the company. Google’s elections efforts—both in 2016 and leading up to this year’s midterms—have been entirely nonpartisan.

Right. What to do about the liberal (often, far-left) bent of the tech giants, several of which are monopoly platforms, is a big question. Break them up under the antitrust laws? Turn them into regulated utilities like the water company? Found competing conservative/moderate platforms? That is a big topic to which we will return many times in the months and years to come.