BaltimoreTwilightMarauder
Superstar
This shyt is getting depressing. Republicans need to be wiped out of we want ANY progress. Unfortunately, this is the most power democrats are gonna have for years to come and we STILL can't do shyt with it.
2022 Midterm Elections: NO RED WAVE! - GOP Takes U.S. House; Dems Keep U.S. Senate
- Thread starter FAH1223
- Start date
PoorAndDangerous
Superstar
That’s because our entire system is broken, rotten to the core.
Armchair Militant
Stay woke
kingjones29
All Star
Doug ducey is a moderate like McCain. It won’t be an easy match for her.
Corny Batman
Caped Crusader
"The parliamentarian said so!"Marcus SNAPPED on this thread 
Democratic Report Raises 2022 Alarms on Messaging and Voter Outreach
Democratic Report Raises 2022 Alarms on Messaging and Voter Outreach
A new report, in perhaps the most thorough soul-searching done by either party this year, points to an urgent need for the party to present a positive economic agenda and rebut Republican misinformation.
June 6, 2021Updated 12:29 p.m. ET
President Biden and Jill Biden at the White House on Friday. Despite Mr. Biden’s success last year, Democrats had hoped to achieve far more robust control of both chambers of Congress.Erin Scott for The New York Times
Democrats defeated President Donald J. Trump and captured the Senate last year with a racially diverse coalition that delivered victories by tiny margins in key states like Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin.
In the next election, they cannot count on repeating that feat, a new report warns.
A review of the 2020 election, conducted by several prominent Democratic advocacy groups, has concluded that the party is at risk of losing ground with Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters unless it does a better job presenting an economic agenda and countering Republican efforts to spread misinformation and tie all Democratic candidates to the far left.
The 73-page report, obtained by The New York Times, was assembled at the behest of three major Democratic interest groups: Third Way, a centrist think tank, and the Collective PAC and the Latino Victory Fund, which promote Black and Hispanic candidates. It appears to be the most thorough act of self-criticism carried out by Democrats or Republicans after the last campaign.
The document is all the more striking because it is addressed to a victorious party: Despite their successes, Democrats had hoped to achieve more robust control of both chambers of Congress, rather than the ultra-precarious margins they enjoy.
In part, the study found, Democrats fell short of their aspirations because many House and Senate candidates failed to match Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s support with voters of color who loathed Mr. Trump but distrusted the Democratic Party as a whole. Those constituencies included Hispanic voters in Florida and Texas, Vietnamese American and Filipino American voters in California, and Black voters in North Carolina.
Overall, the report warns, Democrats in 2020 lacked a core argument about the economy and recovering from the coronavirus pandemic — one that might have helped candidates repel Republican claims that they wanted to “keep the economy shut down,” or worse. The party “leaned too heavily on ‘anti-Trump’ rhetoric,” the report concludes.
“Win or lose, self-described progressive or moderate, Democrats consistently raised a lack of strong Democratic Party brand as a significant concern in 2020,” the report states. “In the absence of strong party branding, the opposition latched on to G.O.P. talking points, suggesting our candidates would ‘burn down your house and take away the police.’”
Former Representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Democrat who lost re-electionin South Florida in November, said in an interview that she had spoken with the authors of the report and raised concerns about Democratic outreach to Hispanic voters and the party’s failure to rebut misinformation in Spanish-language media.
“Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has in some ways lost touch with our electorate,” Ms. Mucarsel-Powell said. “There is this assumption that of course people of color, or the working class, are going to vote for Democrats. We can never assume anything.”
The report, chiefly written by a pair of veteran Democratic operatives, Marlon Marshall and Lynda Tran, is among the most significant salvos yet in the Democratic Party’s internal debate about how it should approach the 2022 elections. It may stir skepticism from some quarters because of the involvement of Third Way, which much of the left regards with hostility.
A fourth group that initially backed the study, the campaign finance reform group End Citizens United, backed away this spring. Tiffany Muller, the head of the group, said it had to abandon its involvement to focus instead on passing the For the People Act, a sweeping good-government bill that is stuck in the Senate.
Former Representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Democrat, lost re-election in South Florida last year. She remains worried about her party’s outreach to Hispanic voters.Saul Martinez for The New York Times
Mr. Marshall and Ms. Tran, as well as the groups sponsoring the review, have begun to share its conclusions with Democratic lawmakers and party officials in recent days, including Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
The study spanned nearly six months of research and data analysis that scrutinized about three dozen races for the House and the Senate, and involved interviews with 143 people, including lawmakers, candidates and pollsters, people involved in assembling the report said. Among the campaigns reviewed were the Senate elections in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, as well as House races in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Dallas, and in rural New Mexico and Maine.
The study follows an internal review conducted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that was unveiled last month. Both projects found that Democratic candidates had been hobbled by flawed polling and pandemic-imposed limitations on campaigning.
In the D.C.C.C. report, the committee attributed setbacks at the congressional level to a surge in turnout by Trump supporters and an inadequate Democratic response to attacks calling them police-hating socialists.
Some lawmakers on the left have complained that criticism of left-wing messaging amounts to scapegoating activists for the party’s failures.
Yet the review by Third Way, the Collective PAC and the Latino Victory Fund goes further in diagnosing the party’s messaging as deficient in ways that may have cost Democrats more than a dozen seats in the House. Its report offers a blunt assessment that in 2020, Republicans succeeded in misleading voters about the Democratic Party’s agenda and that Democrats had erred by speaking to voters of color as though they are a monolithic, left-leaning group.
Representative Tony Cárdenas of California, who last year helmed the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s political action committee, embraced that critique of Democratic messaging and said the party should discard the assumption “that voters of color are inherently more progressive.”
“That’s been a ridiculous idea and that’s never been true,” Mr. Cárdenas said, lamenting that Republicans had succeeded in “trying to confuse Latino voters with the socialism message, things of that nature, ‘defund the police.’”
Quentin James, the president of the Collective PAC, said it was clear that “some of the rhetoric we see from coastal Democrats” had been problematic. Mr. James pointed to the activist demand to “defund” the police as especially harmful, even with supporters of policing overhauls.
“We did a poll that showed Black voters, by and large, vastly support reforming the police and reallocating their budgets,” Mr. James said. “That terminology — ‘defund’ — was not popular in the Black community.”
A report by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee attributed the party’s setbacks to a surge in turnout by Trump supporters and an inadequate Democratic response to Republican attacks.Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times
Kara Eastman, a progressive Democrat who lost her bid for a House seat based in Omaha, said Republicans had succeeded in delivering a “barrage of messages” that tarred her and her party as being outside the mainstream. Ms. Eastman said she had told the authors of the 2020 review that she believed those labels were particularly damaging to women.
Matt Bennett, a Third Way strategist, said the party needed to be far better prepared to mount a defense in the midterm campaign.
“We have got to take very seriously these attacks on Democrats as radicals and stipulate that they land,” Mr. Bennett said. “A lot of this just didn’t land on Joe Biden.”
Democrats maintained a large advantage with voters of color in the 2020 elections, but the report identified telling areas of weakness. Mr. Biden and other Democrats lost ground with Latino voters relative to the party’s performance in 2016, “especially among working-class and non-college voters in these communities,” the report found.
The report found that a surge in Asian American turnout appeared to have secured Mr. Biden’s victory in Georgia but that Democratic House candidates ran behind Mr. Biden with Asian American voters in contested California and Texas races. In some important states, Democrats did not mobilize Black voters at the same rate that Republicans did conservative white voters.
“A substantial boost in turnout netted Democrats more raw votes from Black voters than in 2016, but the explosive growth among white voters in most races outpaced these gains,” the report warns.
There has been no comparable self-review on the Republican side after the party’s severe setbacks last year, mainly because G.O.P. leaders have no appetite for a debate about Mr. Trump’s impact.
Republicans will continue to have structural advantages in Washington because of congressional gerrymandering and the disproportionate representation of rural white voters in the Senate and the Electoral College. Erin Scott for The New York Times
The Republican Party faces serious political obstacles, arising from Mr. Trump’s unpopularity, the growing liberalism of young voters and the country’s growing diversity. Many of the party’s policies are unpopular, including cutting social-welfare and retirement-security programs and keeping taxes low for the wealthy and big corporations.
Yet the structure of the American electoral system has tilted national campaigns toward the G.O.P., because of congressional gerrymandering and the disproportionate representation of rural white voters in the Senate and the Electoral College.
Democratic hopes for the midterm elections have so far hinged on the prospect of a strong recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and on voters’ regarding Republicans as a party unsuited to governing.
Representative Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, a moderate Democrat who was briefed on the findings of the report, called it proof that the party needed a strong central message about the economy in 2022.
“We need to continue to show the American people what we’ve done, and then talk incessantly across the country, in every town, about how Democrats are governing,” Ms. Sherrill said.
Largely unaddressed in the report is the immense deficit Democrats face among lower-income white voters. In its conclusion, however, Mr. Marshall and Ms. Tran write that Democrats need to deliver a message that includes working-class whites and matches the G.O.P.’s clear “collective gospel” about low taxes and military strength.
“Our gospel should be about championing all working people — including but not limited to white working people — and lifting up our values of opportunity, equity, inclusion,” they write.
Democratic Report Raises 2022 Alarms on Messaging and Voter Outreach
A new report, in perhaps the most thorough soul-searching done by either party this year, points to an urgent need for the party to present a positive economic agenda and rebut Republican misinformation.
June 6, 2021Updated 12:29 p.m. ET
President Biden and Jill Biden at the White House on Friday. Despite Mr. Biden’s success last year, Democrats had hoped to achieve far more robust control of both chambers of Congress.Erin Scott for The New York Times
Democrats defeated President Donald J. Trump and captured the Senate last year with a racially diverse coalition that delivered victories by tiny margins in key states like Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin.
In the next election, they cannot count on repeating that feat, a new report warns.
A review of the 2020 election, conducted by several prominent Democratic advocacy groups, has concluded that the party is at risk of losing ground with Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters unless it does a better job presenting an economic agenda and countering Republican efforts to spread misinformation and tie all Democratic candidates to the far left.
The 73-page report, obtained by The New York Times, was assembled at the behest of three major Democratic interest groups: Third Way, a centrist think tank, and the Collective PAC and the Latino Victory Fund, which promote Black and Hispanic candidates. It appears to be the most thorough act of self-criticism carried out by Democrats or Republicans after the last campaign.
The document is all the more striking because it is addressed to a victorious party: Despite their successes, Democrats had hoped to achieve more robust control of both chambers of Congress, rather than the ultra-precarious margins they enjoy.
In part, the study found, Democrats fell short of their aspirations because many House and Senate candidates failed to match Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s support with voters of color who loathed Mr. Trump but distrusted the Democratic Party as a whole. Those constituencies included Hispanic voters in Florida and Texas, Vietnamese American and Filipino American voters in California, and Black voters in North Carolina.
Overall, the report warns, Democrats in 2020 lacked a core argument about the economy and recovering from the coronavirus pandemic — one that might have helped candidates repel Republican claims that they wanted to “keep the economy shut down,” or worse. The party “leaned too heavily on ‘anti-Trump’ rhetoric,” the report concludes.
“Win or lose, self-described progressive or moderate, Democrats consistently raised a lack of strong Democratic Party brand as a significant concern in 2020,” the report states. “In the absence of strong party branding, the opposition latched on to G.O.P. talking points, suggesting our candidates would ‘burn down your house and take away the police.’”
Former Representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Democrat who lost re-electionin South Florida in November, said in an interview that she had spoken with the authors of the report and raised concerns about Democratic outreach to Hispanic voters and the party’s failure to rebut misinformation in Spanish-language media.
“Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has in some ways lost touch with our electorate,” Ms. Mucarsel-Powell said. “There is this assumption that of course people of color, or the working class, are going to vote for Democrats. We can never assume anything.”
The report, chiefly written by a pair of veteran Democratic operatives, Marlon Marshall and Lynda Tran, is among the most significant salvos yet in the Democratic Party’s internal debate about how it should approach the 2022 elections. It may stir skepticism from some quarters because of the involvement of Third Way, which much of the left regards with hostility.
A fourth group that initially backed the study, the campaign finance reform group End Citizens United, backed away this spring. Tiffany Muller, the head of the group, said it had to abandon its involvement to focus instead on passing the For the People Act, a sweeping good-government bill that is stuck in the Senate.
Former Representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Democrat, lost re-election in South Florida last year. She remains worried about her party’s outreach to Hispanic voters.Saul Martinez for The New York Times
Mr. Marshall and Ms. Tran, as well as the groups sponsoring the review, have begun to share its conclusions with Democratic lawmakers and party officials in recent days, including Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
The study spanned nearly six months of research and data analysis that scrutinized about three dozen races for the House and the Senate, and involved interviews with 143 people, including lawmakers, candidates and pollsters, people involved in assembling the report said. Among the campaigns reviewed were the Senate elections in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, as well as House races in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Dallas, and in rural New Mexico and Maine.
The study follows an internal review conducted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that was unveiled last month. Both projects found that Democratic candidates had been hobbled by flawed polling and pandemic-imposed limitations on campaigning.
In the D.C.C.C. report, the committee attributed setbacks at the congressional level to a surge in turnout by Trump supporters and an inadequate Democratic response to attacks calling them police-hating socialists.
Some lawmakers on the left have complained that criticism of left-wing messaging amounts to scapegoating activists for the party’s failures.
Yet the review by Third Way, the Collective PAC and the Latino Victory Fund goes further in diagnosing the party’s messaging as deficient in ways that may have cost Democrats more than a dozen seats in the House. Its report offers a blunt assessment that in 2020, Republicans succeeded in misleading voters about the Democratic Party’s agenda and that Democrats had erred by speaking to voters of color as though they are a monolithic, left-leaning group.
Representative Tony Cárdenas of California, who last year helmed the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s political action committee, embraced that critique of Democratic messaging and said the party should discard the assumption “that voters of color are inherently more progressive.”
“That’s been a ridiculous idea and that’s never been true,” Mr. Cárdenas said, lamenting that Republicans had succeeded in “trying to confuse Latino voters with the socialism message, things of that nature, ‘defund the police.’”
Quentin James, the president of the Collective PAC, said it was clear that “some of the rhetoric we see from coastal Democrats” had been problematic. Mr. James pointed to the activist demand to “defund” the police as especially harmful, even with supporters of policing overhauls.
“We did a poll that showed Black voters, by and large, vastly support reforming the police and reallocating their budgets,” Mr. James said. “That terminology — ‘defund’ — was not popular in the Black community.”
A report by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee attributed the party’s setbacks to a surge in turnout by Trump supporters and an inadequate Democratic response to Republican attacks.Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times
Kara Eastman, a progressive Democrat who lost her bid for a House seat based in Omaha, said Republicans had succeeded in delivering a “barrage of messages” that tarred her and her party as being outside the mainstream. Ms. Eastman said she had told the authors of the 2020 review that she believed those labels were particularly damaging to women.
Matt Bennett, a Third Way strategist, said the party needed to be far better prepared to mount a defense in the midterm campaign.
“We have got to take very seriously these attacks on Democrats as radicals and stipulate that they land,” Mr. Bennett said. “A lot of this just didn’t land on Joe Biden.”
Democrats maintained a large advantage with voters of color in the 2020 elections, but the report identified telling areas of weakness. Mr. Biden and other Democrats lost ground with Latino voters relative to the party’s performance in 2016, “especially among working-class and non-college voters in these communities,” the report found.
The report found that a surge in Asian American turnout appeared to have secured Mr. Biden’s victory in Georgia but that Democratic House candidates ran behind Mr. Biden with Asian American voters in contested California and Texas races. In some important states, Democrats did not mobilize Black voters at the same rate that Republicans did conservative white voters.
“A substantial boost in turnout netted Democrats more raw votes from Black voters than in 2016, but the explosive growth among white voters in most races outpaced these gains,” the report warns.
There has been no comparable self-review on the Republican side after the party’s severe setbacks last year, mainly because G.O.P. leaders have no appetite for a debate about Mr. Trump’s impact.
Republicans will continue to have structural advantages in Washington because of congressional gerrymandering and the disproportionate representation of rural white voters in the Senate and the Electoral College. Erin Scott for The New York Times
The Republican Party faces serious political obstacles, arising from Mr. Trump’s unpopularity, the growing liberalism of young voters and the country’s growing diversity. Many of the party’s policies are unpopular, including cutting social-welfare and retirement-security programs and keeping taxes low for the wealthy and big corporations.
Yet the structure of the American electoral system has tilted national campaigns toward the G.O.P., because of congressional gerrymandering and the disproportionate representation of rural white voters in the Senate and the Electoral College.
Democratic hopes for the midterm elections have so far hinged on the prospect of a strong recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and on voters’ regarding Republicans as a party unsuited to governing.
Representative Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, a moderate Democrat who was briefed on the findings of the report, called it proof that the party needed a strong central message about the economy in 2022.
“We need to continue to show the American people what we’ve done, and then talk incessantly across the country, in every town, about how Democrats are governing,” Ms. Sherrill said.
Largely unaddressed in the report is the immense deficit Democrats face among lower-income white voters. In its conclusion, however, Mr. Marshall and Ms. Tran write that Democrats need to deliver a message that includes working-class whites and matches the G.O.P.’s clear “collective gospel” about low taxes and military strength.
“Our gospel should be about championing all working people — including but not limited to white working people — and lifting up our values of opportunity, equity, inclusion,” they write.
wsj.com
Opinion | More Latinos Bid ‘Adios’ to Democrats
William McGurn
6-7 minutes
For decades some conservatives, yours truly among them, have argued that Latino Americans, with their ethic of faith and family and work, ought to be natural Republicans. On Saturday in a South Texas city on the Mexican border, Javier Villalobos gave America a glimpse of what this future might look like when he became the first Republican elected mayor of McAllen—the 85% Latino seat of Hidalgo County.
“Villalobos’ election should surprise absolutely no one who followed how counties in the Rio Grande Valley swung heavily toward Trump in the last election,” says Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and author of “The Plot to Change America: How Identity Politics Is Dividing the Land of the Free.”
As Mr. Gonzalez notes, the auguries were there for anyone who cared to look. In 2016 Hillary Clinton carried Hidalgo County by 41 points. But in 2020, Joe Biden won by only 17 points. Meanwhile Zapata County—what the Washington Post calls “the bluest of blue counties along the river”—flipped for Donald Trump in 2020, the first victory for a GOP presidential candidate there since Warren G. Harding a century ago.
These developments have Democrats sounding the alarm. A May postelection analysis by a trio of left-leaning organizations noted that while Latino turnout in 2020 grew “dramatically” over 2016, Democrats saw a “significant dip in support in places with high concentrations of Latino and Hispanic voters.” Nor were Republicans simply sitting on the sidelines all the while. When asked by Texas Monthly what was attractive to Latinos about the Republican Party, Chuck Rocha, an adviser to the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, answered this way:
“At the Republican National Convention, the party had one Latino speaker after another telling their immigration story and how they lived the American dream. And if you just sit back and watch that or read the coverage, you might think, ‘Hey, these Republicans are all right. They like immigrants. They want to build entrepreneurship. They want us to all be rich like Donald Trump.’ ”
Read More Main Street
A new National Republican Senatorial Committee survey of Latino likely voters in battleground states offers some striking insights here, especially on values and priorities. At a time when even some conservatives are attacking the GOP commitment to free markets, for example, the NRSC result is striking.
The survey asked Latinos to choose between two statements. The first was unadulterated Milton Friedman : “Some people say free-market capitalism is the best form of government because it gives people the freedom to work and achieve.”
The second was what we might call the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez option: “Other people say that socialism is the best form of government because it is more fair and equitable to working class people.”
Almost two-thirds (63%) of respondents opted for the Friedman position, against only 17% for the AOC line. Hardly surprising, given that so many Latinos came to the U.S. in the first place to escape socialism. But capitalism is just the beginning of the surprises:
• 67% are “very concerned” their kids “won’t have the same opportunities me and my family came here to find.”
• 58% said too many people in America are happy not to work and “just live off government assistance.”
• 80% percent agree that “public schools are failing.”
• 67% agree that too many Americans “are losing our traditional values centered on faith, family and freedom.”
• 57% “oppose Democrat efforts to pack the Supreme Court with liberal judges.”
• 72% agree “we should do what is necessary to control our southern border.”
• 65% oppose the Democrats’ “bill that would make voter ID illegal.”
• 50% agree that “many of the policies that Democrats say help all minorities actually end up hurting Hispanic families.”
The NRSC’s conclusion? The political future isn’t California—it’s Florida. Florida’s electorate, the report notes, is substantially less white than it was in 2000, yet it is also more Republican than it was 20 years ago.
Still, if more Latinos are willing to pull the GOP lever these days, it probably owes as much to the Democratic Party’s lurch leftward than any brilliant Republican outreach. Last year’s riots certainly didn’t help among people who value law and order. In addition, Mr. Gonzalez argues that critical race theory, so popular with the political left, will end up having the opposite effect on minorities than progressives think.
“Critical race theory insists that Americans who are not WASPs must see themselves as aggrieved victims who want to transform America,” he says. “But people don’t fit into these neat categories cooked up in the faculty lounges. It’s turning off Americans of Latin background.”
The Democratic postmortem seems to confirm Mr. Gonzalez’s read. The GOP, it concedes, successfully cast Democrats in 2020 as the party of economic shutdowns, defunding the police, keeping schools closed, and socialism. “Republican attempts to brand Democrats as ‘radical’ worked,” it says.
The really bad news for Democrats? This was all back when Joe Biden was still selling himself to Americans as a moderate.
Write to mcgurn@wsj.com.
Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Opinion | More Latinos Bid ‘Adios’ to Democrats
William McGurn
6-7 minutes
For decades some conservatives, yours truly among them, have argued that Latino Americans, with their ethic of faith and family and work, ought to be natural Republicans. On Saturday in a South Texas city on the Mexican border, Javier Villalobos gave America a glimpse of what this future might look like when he became the first Republican elected mayor of McAllen—the 85% Latino seat of Hidalgo County.
“Villalobos’ election should surprise absolutely no one who followed how counties in the Rio Grande Valley swung heavily toward Trump in the last election,” says Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and author of “The Plot to Change America: How Identity Politics Is Dividing the Land of the Free.”
As Mr. Gonzalez notes, the auguries were there for anyone who cared to look. In 2016 Hillary Clinton carried Hidalgo County by 41 points. But in 2020, Joe Biden won by only 17 points. Meanwhile Zapata County—what the Washington Post calls “the bluest of blue counties along the river”—flipped for Donald Trump in 2020, the first victory for a GOP presidential candidate there since Warren G. Harding a century ago.
These developments have Democrats sounding the alarm. A May postelection analysis by a trio of left-leaning organizations noted that while Latino turnout in 2020 grew “dramatically” over 2016, Democrats saw a “significant dip in support in places with high concentrations of Latino and Hispanic voters.” Nor were Republicans simply sitting on the sidelines all the while. When asked by Texas Monthly what was attractive to Latinos about the Republican Party, Chuck Rocha, an adviser to the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, answered this way:
“At the Republican National Convention, the party had one Latino speaker after another telling their immigration story and how they lived the American dream. And if you just sit back and watch that or read the coverage, you might think, ‘Hey, these Republicans are all right. They like immigrants. They want to build entrepreneurship. They want us to all be rich like Donald Trump.’ ”
Read More Main Street
A new National Republican Senatorial Committee survey of Latino likely voters in battleground states offers some striking insights here, especially on values and priorities. At a time when even some conservatives are attacking the GOP commitment to free markets, for example, the NRSC result is striking.
The survey asked Latinos to choose between two statements. The first was unadulterated Milton Friedman : “Some people say free-market capitalism is the best form of government because it gives people the freedom to work and achieve.”
The second was what we might call the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez option: “Other people say that socialism is the best form of government because it is more fair and equitable to working class people.”
Almost two-thirds (63%) of respondents opted for the Friedman position, against only 17% for the AOC line. Hardly surprising, given that so many Latinos came to the U.S. in the first place to escape socialism. But capitalism is just the beginning of the surprises:
• 67% are “very concerned” their kids “won’t have the same opportunities me and my family came here to find.”
• 58% said too many people in America are happy not to work and “just live off government assistance.”
• 80% percent agree that “public schools are failing.”
• 67% agree that too many Americans “are losing our traditional values centered on faith, family and freedom.”
• 57% “oppose Democrat efforts to pack the Supreme Court with liberal judges.”
• 72% agree “we should do what is necessary to control our southern border.”
• 65% oppose the Democrats’ “bill that would make voter ID illegal.”
• 50% agree that “many of the policies that Democrats say help all minorities actually end up hurting Hispanic families.”
The NRSC’s conclusion? The political future isn’t California—it’s Florida. Florida’s electorate, the report notes, is substantially less white than it was in 2000, yet it is also more Republican than it was 20 years ago.
Still, if more Latinos are willing to pull the GOP lever these days, it probably owes as much to the Democratic Party’s lurch leftward than any brilliant Republican outreach. Last year’s riots certainly didn’t help among people who value law and order. In addition, Mr. Gonzalez argues that critical race theory, so popular with the political left, will end up having the opposite effect on minorities than progressives think.
“Critical race theory insists that Americans who are not WASPs must see themselves as aggrieved victims who want to transform America,” he says. “But people don’t fit into these neat categories cooked up in the faculty lounges. It’s turning off Americans of Latin background.”
The Democratic postmortem seems to confirm Mr. Gonzalez’s read. The GOP, it concedes, successfully cast Democrats in 2020 as the party of economic shutdowns, defunding the police, keeping schools closed, and socialism. “Republican attempts to brand Democrats as ‘radical’ worked,” it says.
The really bad news for Democrats? This was all back when Joe Biden was still selling himself to Americans as a moderate.
Write to mcgurn@wsj.com.
Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
AquaCityBoy
Veteran
wrong thread.