Dems losing the Hispanic vote

 John Sexton:

The Atlantic published a lengthy story about this topic today. Author Tim Alberta opens the piece by describing how one Phoenix couple, Mary Rose and Earl Wilcox, set out to become a focal point for Hispanic activism on behalf of the Democratic Party for more than 20 years. But recently something changed and not in the way they expected.

Finally, in 2020, a breakthrough: Joe Biden didn’t just win the election, he won Arizona, only the second time since Harry Truman’s administration that a Democrat had carried the state. Given Biden’s winning margin—three-tenths of a percentage point—and the unprecedented turnout of Hispanic voters, there could be no disputing who had delivered Arizona to the president-elect…

On Election Night 2020, they toasted to a new era.

And then the strangest thing happened. People started coming into El Portal to vent their frustrations and unload their grievances—against the Democratic Party.

​​“Our community, we may not be educated at the highest levels, but we have a lot of street smarts. We know when people are bulls**tting us,” Earl tells me, motioning to the people sitting around us. “You know what they say to Democrats now? ‘Es pura cábula.’ Bunch of bulls**t.”

This isn’t speculation. The Wilcoxes run a restaurant so they have lots of time to listen to what their Hispanic patrons are saying about the Democratic Party these days. And what they’re saying sounds a lot like what Republicans are saying: The party has moved too far left. It’s no longer a party that seems committed to the ideals of success through hard work or even to capitalism itself. That’s not a message that resonates with a lot of Hispanic voters who came here specifically because they do believe in those things.

María-Elena López, who held a variety of positions under [Juan] Cuba in [Miami-Dade] county party, saw this shift taking place in real time. She believes that there is no real mystery to it: While Trump successfully portrayed himself as a populist achieving hard-won economic growth—signing tax cuts into law, touting a record-shattering stock market, boasting the lowest Hispanic unemployment rate in history—Democrats came across as a bunch of out-of-touch idealogues. Promises of shared social progress, she told me, offend the sensibilities of many first- and second-generation immigrants who hate the idea of government handouts.

“We’re not a political party, we’re a charity. And you know what? These people don’t want charity,” López said. “These immigrants come here to make money and keep their families safe. They are not here because the sea levels are rising, or because of social justice, or anything else. We’re out there talking about racism and the Green New Deal and defunding the police, and we’re freaking them out.”

And that’s how you get Hispanic conservatives like Mayra Flores (pictured above) winning elections. Ruy Teixeira, one of the co-authors of the book that helped get the “demography is destiny” ball rolling on the left, says he thinks this isn’t a pendulum swing it’s more of a long-term realignment.

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There is more. 

The Democrats do not have to lose a majority of Hispanics to lose elections.  When a significant portion of Hispanics and blacks vote Republican the Democrats can't overcome that.

See, also:

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