Latino Voters Have Options: That’s a Good Thing

The $2 billion dollar question has been answered. No, money and pop-star endorsements don’t win elections. Elections are won by making sure that your voter base gets to the polls.

Unfortunately, for Kamala Harris, Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement turned out in record numbers and gave him a title he had long cherished, winner of the popular vote. 

Because his voter turnout numbers in 2016 and 2020 were fairly consistent, Democratic strategists assumed that it would remain constant this election.

“All the MAGA voters already came out to vote, he hasn’t grown his base”.

Was an argument I heard time and time again from Democratic strategists. They were proven wrong. 

Donald Trump regresa a la Casa Blanca con un peligroso superpoder para gobernar

A new Latino voting narrative

To achieve this victory, Trump, and the Republican Party, made significant gains in voting groups that were not projected to support him. Most importantly, he made significant gains with Latino voters. 45% of Latino men and 40% of Latino women voted for him.

As indicated by MSNBC Columnist, Julio Varela, prior to the election, Latinos are the new swing state. Latinos are no longer a monolithic voting block.

New generations of Latinos born in the United States have a hard time identifying with the traditional narrative of the Latino experience in the United States. 

For far too long, mainstream, and even Latino media outlets like Univision and Telemundo, have defined the Latino experience as one of the hardworking immigrants who crossed the border (maybe illegally), worked hard in the agriculture fields or a service-oriented job, and achieved the American dream. That is true for some, but not for all.

Latinos are the largest growing demographic in the United States, and it is not because of immigration.

The majority of Latinos in the U.S. are born here, to a working-class family, are American citizens, and English is their native language. Young Latinos and Latinas have a hard time identifying with the narrative that the Democratic Party insists is representative of their experience. 

What made Latinos break from the Democratic Party? 

For Latinos, this election was always about the economy. Every poll since the 2022 midterm elections identified the economy as their number one issue.

Unfortunately, the Democratic Party’s plea to Latino voters continues to revolve around immigration. In this morning’s news, I heard a national news anchor express her shock that Latinos voted in such high numbers for Trump, “despite him threatening the community with mass deportations?”.

It is precisely that lack of understanding of the issues that are important to Latinos that cost Democrats a large percentage of their vote. We are more than just one issue.

We care about social mobility, we care about the prosperity of our community, we care about education, we care about public safety, and we are not defined by one issue.

Latino’s pocketbooks

The Latino community was the most impacted in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, and when inflation hit, their economic stability became their top priority.

Latinos, like most Americans, are tired of paying $6 for a carton of eggs, of paying $4.25 per gallon gas prices, $5 per pound of chicken legs. It’s just unsustainable. 

Latinos voted with their pocketbooks. The economy has long been identified as their top issue, and Harris’ economic message never resonated with them – or with the majority of Americans for that matter. Towards the end, her roll-out of economic plans for Latino and African American men, felt like pandering.

Why did you wait to roll the plans until the end? Why didn’t you make that a front and center issue since the beginning? Why didn’t you enact these policies when you were Vice President? All valid questions that neither she nor the Democratic Party were able to answer. 

Competition is good 

I believe that this voter swing is a good thing for Latinos. We are no longer a guaranteed vote for Democrats, and that’s a good thing. It’s good to be the hot commodity. 

If republicans can keep their promises, and that’s a big if, then it will only benefit the Latino community more broadly. If American capitalism has taught us something, it’s that competition is good.

5 antilecciones de Donald Trump: Lo que los líderes no deberían hacer

Not the candidate we wanted

Kamala Harris is the candidate Democrats had to get excited about, but behind closed doors, many will tell you that she was not the candidate they wanted.

Donald Trump is now 2 – 0 versus female candidates. But most importantly, he is 2 – 0 versus anointed candidates.

Democratic voters didn’t really have a choice to select any other candidate than Hillary Clinton in 2016. Yes, Bernie Sanders also ran in the primary, but the odds were stacked against him, democratic insiders were never going to let that happen.

Remember the incident where Donna Brazile gave Hillary Clinton the questions for a CNN interview in advance? It’s that kind of incident I’m talking about. So, were you voting for Hillary or Hillary?

It was the same thing this election cycle. When Biden dropped out of the race, Democrats didn’t have an option, there was no time for that. So, Harris was the anointed candidate, and we all had to fall in line. That’s not a recipe for success. 

When presented with the choice of other candidates, when Kamala Harris ran for president in 2020, she came in 3^rd in her home state. 

Ultimately, Democrats lost this election the night of the first presidential debate. Harris’ greatest obstacle was overcoming the fact that she was Biden’s Vice President.  

With the economy being the number one issue for voters, and the Democratic Party’s inability to effectively communicate an effective economic message, she was already in an uphill battle.  

Think about the future 

Democrats need new leadership. Joe Biden was always intended to be a transitional president, someone who could get Trump out of office, and who would then pass the torch to a new generation of Democrats. He did so, but not willingly, and what we got instead was a desperate scramble for a successor, and the return of Donald Trump. 

President Obama’s most trusted advisor, David Axelrod, explained last night what I believe to be the most accurate description of why the Democratic Party failed to connect with voters.

I’m paraphrasing his remarks: “the Democratic Party is not the party of the blue-collar folks anymore, it has become a party of elites and college educated people that look down on the working class, and their solution is to have them become like them. They failed to see that maybe that’s not the path for everyone, that there is pride in the blue-collar worker, and he deserves options. Donald Trump offered those options.” 

Overall, Latinos were an afterthought for the Democratic Party in this election. Looking back at the Democratic National Convention, there wasn’t a single Latino or Latina prime-time speaker.

There was no unveiling of the new generation of leaders, like Julián Castro and his convention speech in 2008 or Barack Obama’s speech in 2004. Yes, Latinos spoke at the convention, but none of them were prime-time. So, there’s that.

Democrats need a figurehead

The smartest thing that republicans did, was rallying around a figurehead, and not a politician. Trump is the undoubted leader of the Republican Party; he is the Republican Party. It is easy for his supporters to rally around him and his brand. 

Democrats don’t have a clear leader; Democrats don’t have a figurehead. Could someone like Mark Cuban decide that he’d like to give public service a shot? That would be interesting. 

Latinos are not to blame for Harris’ defeat

There’s a developing narrative that Latinos didn’t come through for Harris, and that it cost her the election. I disagree. 

There’s a documented history of the Democratic Party’s neglect of Latino voters since the 2022 election.

I hear anecdotes from people who were working on the ground, canvasing Latino neighborhoods in battleground states, that voters were never contacted, and by the time they did, they had already voted (for Trump).

Reaching out to Latino voters on the ground, was an afterthought. It was the Democratic Party’s own disinvestment in Latino voter outreach that’s to blame.

Latinos finally demonstrated their voting power, and while I disagree with Donald Trump’s policies, he and the Republican Party now have a responsibility to make Latino communities prosperous. Let’s see if they can deliver.