If Democrats are the party of well-educated liberals in coastal cities and college towns, they will lose.
There aren't enough of them.
Democrats lost the White working class. Now they are losing the Hispanic working class. Trump increased his vote among Hispanic voters by 16% between 2016 and 2020. Democratic strategist Ruy Teixeira has been looking at this demographic for over 20 years. He writes that they don't like what Democrats appear to stand for.
Democrats misunderstood and misplayed the Hispanic vote. Teixeira helped lead the misunderstanding. In 2002 he co-wrote with John Judis The Emerging Democratic Majority, describing how immigration and demographic change would create FDR-level majorities for Democrats. Blacks supported Democrats in overwhelming numbers. He wrote that the growing number of Hispanic Americans would as well.
That didn't work out. Democratic policy and branding changed. Politicians in blue enclaves decided Bill-Clinton-style "triangulation" was too little, too conservative, a sell-out. They shaped a new Democratic message with help from policy advocates in universities and nonprofit advocacy groups representing abortion rights, climate, opposition to fossil fuels, gun control, #MeToo, racial equity, homosexual rights, and gender. Their positions seemed reasonable and virtuous to well-educated people in coastal cities -- but not to rural and working class Americans.
Ruy Teixeira now warns that Hispanic Americans aren't voting like "People of Color." They are voting like other non-college working people. The issues that shape the Democratic brand seem weird, wrong, and extreme to many Hispanic voters. He says that this includes their use of the invented word cultural liberals use for their group, "Latinx." The term is used about them, not by them.
Teixeira says Democrats make these mistakes:
1. Democrats presumed Hispanics were strongly in favor of wide-open immigration. Not so. People who can vote are citizens. Some are citizens of many generations. Others are new, via a citizenship route that may have been long and complicated. Many of them see "open borders" as line-skipping. They resent the cheapening of their own legal process.
2. Abortion. Many Hispanics are social conservatives and Catholic. They are uncomfortable with abortion. Abortion rights advocates define the issue as a rights issue: Who decides, not when abortion is OK. That lets abortion opponents characterize Democrats as extremists who defend very late term abortions.
3. Homosexual rights. Again, as with abortion, social conservatives are uncomfortable.
4. Gender transition. Biden is silent on this, so the Democratic position is defined by policy advocates arguing the strong form of the gender issue, that gender is a social construct, not biological. Language like "birthing parent" rather than "women" seems foreign and weird to many Americans. Same with boys and men who transition to participate in female athletic competitions. The notion of men and women, of male spaces and female spaces, goes back to the beginning of time. The leading edge position on this issue appears to deny biology, reality, and common sense. It is a hard sell.
5. Fossil fuels. Working class Americans are more likely opposed to high gasoline prices than to fossil fuels. Few working class Americans can afford electric vehicles. They feel pushed into a direction that isn't practical for them. They are accustomed to natural gas and it is available and inexpensive.
6. Race. Liberal Americans made great progress in race relations in the 1950s and 1960s with a message that race should not matter -- that we are all the same. Now the leading-edge Democratic message is the opposite, that racial identity is central to our lives. Race matters -- a lot. Biden publicly announced that the vacant Supreme Court seat would be filled by a Black woman. Some Hispanic voters consider themselves White, some consider themselves non-White, some mixed, and some want it not considered, thinking it should be irrelevant. Hispanics prefer the Martin Luther King understanding of race relations.
 |
| This |
 |
| Not this |
Joe Biden is not a leading-edge cultural warrior. Theoretically, centrist old-school Biden could soften the Democratic brand, but policy advocates on climate, race, women, gender, guns, and abortion consider these issues matters of fundamental principles with the highest of stakes. They enforce orthodoxy. They set the message.
Ruy Teixeira says Hispanic voters do not think the January 6 insurrection is the big issue. They think Democrats are unrealistic and out of touch, and that's the issue.
Further listening: Podcast, a conversation with Sarah Longwell, The Focus Group
Further reading: The Liberal Patriot
[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com and subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]
18 comments:
There are people in both parties who become ridiculously extreme, but currently it’s the right-wing extremists that pose a far greater threat to our republic and they now dominate the GOP. Nor does it take a college education to recognize that ignoring climate change is costing us far more than addressing it.
Let’s not forget, Democrats are also the party that believes in the Constitution and rule of law. That’s patriotism, not Trump humping the flag. If people who prefer a criminal autocrat to a respectable statesman leave the party, I would consider it no great loss.
On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “AC360,” CNN Political Commentator and former Obama adviser Van Jones stated that he is very worried about the level of enthusiasm among black voters for President Joe Biden and that “it’s starting to feel like, wow, the economy isn’t that good and our issues didn’t get taken seriously and what are we supposed to do?” You’ve also got people who are having a problem filling up their gas tank and they’ve got other stuff that they’re concerned about.
Arguably many if not most Latinos are naturally Republican** in orientation, for the reasons laid out in this post. Moreover, the most prominent and influential Latino ever (before Justice Sotomayor?), Cesar Chavez, while otherwise a thorough leftist of the old school, was nonetheless staunchly opposed to illegal immigration as unfair and harmful to the American worker.
**Not Trumpite, though he smacks of the Latin American strongman stereotype.
I don't have time to explain all the problems with this post.
But one big problem is lumping all Hispanic people/voters into one group.
And by the way, Democrats did not lose with Barack Obama (two terms) OR Joe Biden, who was elected in 2020 and who won the popular vote by 7 Million votes. Also, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million votes.
I get the impression that you don't know what you are talking about and/or this is just another tabloid, Chicken Little post for clicks and attention. You probably can do much better if you do more homework and start over.
Ruy Teixeira (spelling) is a fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, a right wing think tank in Washington D.C.
Peter, I recall this is exactly what I said to you a couple of years ago. I told you that I happened to be in a room full of Mexican and Central American immigrants (legal) all watching the debate. When Hillary Clinton adamantly affirmed her support for abortion, I watched an entire room of voters turn off to her. You are absolutely correct that campaigns/politicians are not “reading the room”. This is a mistake everyone makes when lumping people together by color, or any other artificial criteria, and mistakenly assuming their concerns.. I also told you about the coworker I had: a PhD, immigrant-citizen, who also was a Trump supporter because she believed he was the candidate to support legal immigration She was very opposed to illegal immigration because of the hoops she had to go through to be, work, and vote in this country. When I explained to her he would set women’s rights back many years (and I knew she was a feminist), her response was “you have to choose your most important issues”.
-Carolyn
What defines a party are the values it represents and the degree to which it puts them into practice. Republican values are loyalty to Trump even if convicted, a pretense of believing his blatant lies and a willingness to disregard election results they don’t like. They’ve been putting them into practice for years now. Those who find that acceptable should definitely leave the Democratic Party.
When the Soviet Union fell, communism/socialism died, and many on the left lost what was previously an organizing principle in their lives. But people need organizing principles, so they found others emanating from cultural elites, such as race, gender, and decolonization. The Democratic Party has been profoundly influenced by this. As Peter said in his post today, these new principles are profoundly alienating to working class voters.
On the other side, the rise in income equality, and the destruction of industrial America by financial elites, has profoundly alienated working class voters, who have seen their fortunes catastrophically affected. But the Republicans have maintained their connection to those financial elites.
As a result, we have a rising populism in American politics that doesn’t like what it sees in either of the two major political parties. Thanks to Donald Trump, the Republican Party seems to be in the process of jettisoning the financial elites. Perhaps the Republican Party will become a new version of itself as a populist party.
But the Democratic Party shows very little sign of being willing to jettison its cultural elites. As a result, it will continue to lose populist-leaning working class voters of all races.
There is definitely going to be a populist party, whether it turns out to be the Republicans or some new party. The cultural elites and the financial elites are losing propositions, electorally speaking. Trump is forcing the issue for the Republicans; it remains to be seen whether Democrats will be capable of rising to the challenge.
Very subtle, anon. Suavé, even. And rather stereotypical yourself.
Well said, Malcolm !
‘The Democratic Party has had its greatest success when it sought to represent the common man and woman against the rich and powerful, the people against the elite and the plebeians against the patricians.'
“If the Democratic Party doesn’t focus on what it can deliver to more Americans, it won’t have to wonder anymore where all the Democrats went.”
Because it will be: ‘party over.’
Anonymous @ 2:33. You're right on point. Somewhere along the way, Democrats got sidetracked into changing the message of being the Working man's Party, into one almost exclusively focused on Identity Politics, i.e. color, gender, etc.
And that shift is driving too many people away. I sincerely doubt that the Black Voters if South Carolina are going to be inclined to pull the Presidents chestnuts out of the fire next Spring, like they did in the last cycle.
Those who fault the Democratic Party for indulging in identity politics conveniently ignore the Republican Party's descent into White Christian Nationalism. If that isn't identity politics, nothing is.
Exactly right. They try the same maneuver when they accuse some folks of wanting to make money off climate change, as if plenty of people were not making gobs of money off fossil fuels.
In 2000, Al Gore also won the popular vote. The Electoral College is undemocratic; it is a huge problem. Have you blogged about that?
Mike, some on the Keft do precisely what you are saying, but I think most, if not all those who engage in that kind of hypocrisy are on the far left fringe, and certainly do nothing to move Progressive Ideals forward
So the right wing pundit thinks the Democratic Party should give in to religious nuttery.
Good to know.
Post a Comment