Which Explains Why Democrats Are Losing Them
“The Latino vote has changed and is continuing to do so. Democrats, for their sake and the country’s, are going to have to fight for a base they have always been able to take for granted.” [i]
THE ROCKETS’ RED GLARE
Early Rocket, Licensed from Picryl
Election Day 2024 is less than eleven months away and Gallup just sent up another Latino polling rocket. This latest bomb is more bad news for Democrats—worse than the first rocket, which was fired in 2020.
Gallup polling released in February shows that the Democrats’ historical advantage among Latino and Black voters has been steadily eroding and is now at an all-time low. [ii]
In 2016, when Donald Trump was spewing his trademark racist nonsense, Gallup’s polling showed that Democrats enjoyed a solid lead among Latinos over Republicans. Only 26 percent of Latinos identified as Republican or leaning Republican. A firm 62 percent identified as Democrat or leaning Democrat. The net result was that Democrats enjoyed a 36 percentage-point lead over Republicans.
BOMBS BURSTING IN THE POLITICAL AIR
But the 2020 election cycle was an unpleasant surprise for thoughtful Democrats.
Yes, Joe Biden won. But Latinos moved toward the Republicans.
Those identifying as Republican or leaning Republican rose three points to 29 percent. Those identifying as Democrat or leaning Democrat fell five points to 57 percent. The net result was an eight percentage-point drop in the Democrats’ lead.
It got worse over the next three years.
Gallup’s latest release, based on data collected in 2023, showed that 35 percent now identify as Republican or leaning Republican. Less than half, 47 percent identify as Democrat or leaning Democrat. In sum, Democrats now have only a 12 percentage-point lead over Republicans.
THE HELMSX FACTOR
For Captain was the Butterfly
For Helmsman was the Bee. [iii]
Apparition, licensed from iStockphoto
The factors driving this trend appear to be beyond the understanding of the progressive apparatchiks who are at the helm of the foundering S.S. Joe Biden.
Liberal true believers have long ignored the complex reality of an emphatically heterogeneous mass of tens of millions, hailing from different roots and defying stereotyping. They have forced this roiling sea of cultural (even linguistic) differences into a government-issue boilersuit labeled “Hispanic,” “Latino,” or, in an act of hideous cultural arrogance, “Latinx.”
The result is one compass point short of ludicrous. “A first-generation immigrant from Spain speaking high Castilian Spanish, a white European in every respect, is considered by the government to be Hispanic, the same as an Afro-Latino native to the Caribbean.” [iv]
Say what?
The people steering the good ship Joe Biden onto the reef have long cast those wearing this ethnic uniform in the polemic role of “the oppressed,” who care most about immigration and want to throw open America’s gates to damned near anybody.
Republican political consultant and data expert Patrick Ruffini analyzed the 2020 shifts in Latino and Black preferences in his book Party of the People, He offered this explanation:
“These shifts defy the conventional wisdom that nonwhite voters are motivated by progressive identity politics. Immigration ranks far down on the list of Hispanic voter priorities, below issues like jobs, the cost of living, and health care. Black concern about crime often comes from a place of support for a strong and consistent enforcement of the law.” [v]
Mike Madrid—a political consultant and expert on Latino voting in the United States— wrote a fascinating piece for the Los Angeles Times last December. He arrived at a similar assessment. “The Latino electorate is moving away from the aggrieved immigrant narrative favored by Democrats and toward an assimilating, working-class identity that mirrors its non-Latino counterparts.” [vi]
“Losing even a marginally greater segment of the Latino vote to Republicans in swing states such as Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin could spell disaster in less than a year when we hold one of the most consequential elections in our history,” Madrid wrote.
Ruffini admits that for a long while he did not understand the dynamic underlying these shifts. [vii]
“My mistake was in substituting my own personal passions and biases—as the quintessential suburban, college-educated voter—for a neutral, clear-eyed assessment of who the actual demographic majority in America was and where they stood.”
The professional staffers, consultants and organizers playing whist with Commodore Joe in the captain’s cozy cabin lack such a clear-eyed view. Here is what outspoken political analyst David Shur said about them in 2021, and it’s still accurate today:
“I think the core problem with the Democratic Party is that the people who run and staff the Democratic Party are much more educated and ideologically liberal and they live in cities, and ultimately our candidate pool reflects that.” [viii]
Which doesn’t accurately reflect a changing America.
EX UNO, MULTI
Construction workers, licensed iStockphoto
“Non-college educated white people have more culturally in common with working-class Black and working-class Hispanic voters,” Shur said of the 2020 election. “So, it should be unsurprising that as the cultural power of college-educated white people increases in the Democratic Party, non-white voters will move against us.” [ix]
“The joke is that the GOP is really assembling the multiracial working-class coalition that the left has always dreamed of,” he quipped.
In other words, this movement away from the Democratic Party is not driven by Donald Trump. It is a social and political reordering that was bound to occur despite Trump’s hate filled MAGA doctrine. As the Democratic party has become more educated, more wealthy, more elitist, more insular, its principles and programs have becomes less attractive to working-class voters of all races and ethnicities.
Donald Trump has simply done what charismatic authoritarians have done in the age of mass politics. Like Lenin, Mussolini, and Hitler, Trump mashes the mass’s splinter of discontent.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
I like Shur’s prescription, although I doubt that the careerists setting Captain Joe’s sheets will listen.
“Democrats should do a lot of polling to figure out which of their views are popular and which are not popular, and then they should talk about the popular stuff and shut up about the unpopular stuff.”[i]
More to come.
“Be there, will be wild!”[ii]
Carousing, licensed iStockphoto
[i] Mike Madrid, Los Angeles Times, December 3, 2023, "Opinion: Biden’s struggle among Latino voters is real. Here’s why and what he can do about it," https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-12-03/joe-biden-latino-vote-donald-trump-2024-election-univision.[i] M. Jones and Lydia Saad, Gallup, February 7, 2024, "Democrats Lose Ground with Black and Hispanic Adults," https://news.gallup.com/poll/609776/democrats-lose-ground-black-hispanic-adults.aspx.
[iii] Emily Dickinson, “A soft Sea washed around the House.”
[iv] Patrick Ruffini, Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP. New York: Simon & Schuster (2023), 134.
[v] Ruffini, Party of the People, 20.
[vi] Madrid, Los Angeles Times.
[vii] Ruffini didn’t get everything right in his book. For example, he thought Ron DeSantis could lead the GOP without Trump. Oops! But I still think he got the Latino dynamic bang on.
[viii] Ezra Klein, The New York Times, October 8, 2021, "David Shor Is Telling Democrats What They Don’t Want to Hear," https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/08/opinion/democrats-david-shor-education-polarization.html.
[ix] Zack Stanton (interviewing David Shur), November 12, 2020, Politico Magazine, "How 2020 Killed Off Democrats’ Demographic Hopes," https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/11/12/2020-election-analysis-democrats-future-david-shor-interview-436334.
[x] Klein, The New York Times.
[xi] Donald Trump tweet, December 20, 2020.
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