Hispanic Working Class Voters to Democrats: What Do You Mean "We"?

Democrats' emerging problems with Hispanic working class voters are, in my opinion, both poorly understood and vastly underestimated in Democratic circles. That's the subject of my latest at The Liberal Patriot:

"Hispanic working class (noncollege) voters are emerging as an Achilles heel for the Democrats. Here are some facts about Hispanic working class voters that help bring this challenge for Democrats into focus.

1. In the 2020 election, Hispanic voters moved sharply away from the Democrats. Both Catalist and States of Change (forthcoming) data agree that it was around a 16 point pro-GOP margin shift (two party vote). States of Change data indicate this shift was heavily driven by Hispanic working class voters, whose support for the Democrats declined by 18 points. This pattern could be seen all over the country, not just in states like Florida (working class Hispanic support down 18 margin points) where they fell short but also in states they narrowly won (Arizona down 22 points; Nevada down 15 points)....

10. Along these lines, consider these data from Catalist. Between the 2012 and 2020 elections—which Democrats won by similar popular vote margins—Democrats’ advantage among nonwhite working class voters was trimmed by 18 margin points. Over the same period, Democrats’ performance among white college-educated voters improved by 16 margin points. For a party that has already sustained drastic losses among white working class voters and has been clinging to its dominance of nonwhite working class voters as proof that it is still a working class party, these are very uncomfortable facts.

But facts they are. Here’s another fact: Hispanic working class voters are overwhelmingly upwardly mobile, patriotic, culturally moderate to conservative citizens with practical and down to earth concerns focused on jobs, the economy, health care, effective schools and public safety. Democrats will either learn to hit that target or they will continue to lose ground with this vital group of voters—and in the process invalidate their increasingly tenuous claim to represent the American working class."

Read the whole thing at The Liberal Patriot. And subscribe!

THELIBERALPATRIOT.SUBSTACK.COM

What’s Going on With Hispanic Working Class Voters?

And Why Are They Leaving the Democrats?

Welcome to the Endless Fight

At The Liberal Patriot, John Halpin surveys the landscape after the repeal of Roe v. Wade. Not good.

"So, the Republican path for a national ban on abortion is not difficult to sketch out—as soon as the next presidential election. Americans won’t like this at all but Republicans don’t seem to care about national opinion or concern themselves with blowback given feckless opposition and advantages in the Senate and Electoral College.

On the other side, the Democratic left is about to implode completely on this issue. They can’t think straight about any issue these days and will probably move away from a sensible Roe-like defense of abortion rights to a more extreme position of abortion at-all-times with no restrictions. Since most Americans don’t like this position, and prefer the Roe status quo to alternatives, it won’t go far outside of the confines of deep-blue states and leftist Twitter circles. Likewise, the threat of pro-abortion militancy in response to the ruling is very real and will further repel voters from the cultural positions of the far left."

Read the whole thing at The Liberal Patriot!

THELIBERALPATRIOT.SUBSTACK.COM

The Political Battle Over Abortion Will Never End

The fight for national legislation is just beginning.

With Friends Like These, Democrats Hardly Need Enemies

Democrats have a lot of problems and their supposed allies in progressive organizations are one of the biggest ones. I explain in my latest at The Liberal Patriot:

"The secret is out. Progressive organizations—nonprofits and advocacy groups—which form a vital part of the Democrats’ supportive ecosystem have become massively dysfunctional due to internal meltdowns, mission creep and maximalist goal-setting. For those close to this world, this has been apparent for some time though there has been reluctance to call it out for fear of helping the right (the Fox News Fallacy) and/or being ostracized by their own side. But with the publication of Ryan Grim’s exposé on The Intercept and Zack Colman’s Politico piece focusing on green organizations, the rot is out there for all to see.

There are three key aspects to this rot:

1. Internal Dysfunction. The new generation of activists coming into these organizations tends to see internal hierarchies as reflecting their radical critique of society as a whole as a system that oppresses all “marginalized” groups: black, Hispanic, anybody nonwhite, female, gay, trans, indigenous, colonized, etc. Therefore, these internal hierarchies are by definition unjust and must be struggled against with little regard to what function these hierarchies might actually serve.

Needless to say, this plays havoc with an organization’s ability to run a merit- and efficiency-based internal system, since so many “diversity” boxes have to be checked to do practically anything. And the need to placate staff demands and smooth over the endless conflicts this produces leads to a stunning misallocation of time and internal resources. The resulting inefficiencies can virtually paralyze an organization. Said one former executive director of a progressive organization quoted by Grim: “My last nine months, I was spending 90 to 95 percent of my time on internal strife”. Said another current executive director: “I’m now at a point where the first thing I wonder about a job applicant is, ‘How likely is this person to blow up my organization from the inside?”

Read the whole thing at The Liberal Patriot!

THELIBERALPATRIOT.SUBSTACK.COM

The Democrats’ Progressive Organization Problem

They’re an Albatross Around the Party’s Neck

Will Higher Turnout Fix the Democrats' Problems?

Nope, not this election. And not future ones either. I explain in my latest at The Liberal Patriot:

"Turnout myths die hard. In fact they don’t seem to die at all.

That is particularly the case in Democratic circles. You don’t have to talk to a typical Democrat for any length of time before they evince their touching faith in the wonder-working powers of high voter turnout. Interrogate them a little further and it turns out what they really mean is that the stark choices presented to the electorate by Democrats’ progressive policies and Republicans’ reactionary ones will, if presented forcefully enough, produce massive turnout by Democratic-leaning constituencies (nonwhites, young voters, etc) that will neutralize Republican advantages.

We can see the latest example of this in how many Democrats are approaching the 2022 elections. The giant hole the Democrats are now in is hard to deny. Biden’s approval rating, a key indicator of midterm outcomes, is now below 40 percent in the 538 rolling average and below where Trump’s was at this point in the 2018 cycle. Republicans are comfortably ahead on the generic Congressional ballot, which typically underestimates their chances and augurs a big election for them. Gallup just released a comprehensive historical review of midterm indicators (Presidential and Congressional approval, satisfaction with the direction of the country, views on economic conditions) which shows the Democrats’ current situation to be exceptionally grim.

Democrats’ approach to digging out of this hole relies heavily on turnout. Either implicitly or explicitly, Democrats think of issues like abortion, guns, “MAGA Republicans” and, of course, January 6th mostly as ways of motivating their base to turn out at higher levels in the current dismal political environment....

There are, however, a number of reasons why this turnout fix is highly unlikely to work and, in fact, borders on the delusional.

1. Some Simple Math. Start with this: when Democrats persuade a voter to switch sides, that nets two votes for the Democrats (one less for the Republicans, one more for the Democrats). When Democrats turn out one more voter to vote Democratic that is, of course, a net of only one vote for them.

But it’s really worse than that. Typically, Democrats think of increased base turnout in terms of turning out more voters from various pro-Democratic demographic groups—young voters, black voters, Hispanic voters, college-educated whites, whatever. But not all the voters in these groups favor the Democrats so mobilization of more voters from a given group may well net less than one vote per additional voter. For example, looking at current Congressional ballot preferences, Democrats might net only a third of a vote for every additional Hispanic or young voter, six-tenths of a vote from every additional black voter and just a sixth of a vote from every additional college-educated white voter."

Read the whole thing at The Liberal Patriot!

THELIBERALPATRIOT.SUBSTACK.COM

Turnout Myths Are Like Catnip for Democrats

Anything To Avoid Having To Actually Persuade Voters

Even Vox Is Starting to Realize This!

Perhaps it's time to take another look at my piece on the disutility of climate catastrophism.

Kelsey Piper at Vox:

"As I’ve written about before, climate change is going to be bad, and it will hold back humanity from thriving as much as we should this century. It will likely cause mass migration and displacement and extinctions of many species.

What it won’t do, however, is make the Earth unlivable, or even mean that our children live in a world poorer than the one we grew up in. As many climate scientists have been telling us, the world is a better place to live in — especially for people in lower-income countries — than it has ever been, and climate change isn’t going to make it as bad as it was even in 1950."

https://www.vox.com/.../climate-change-tell-kids-wont...

https://theliberalpatriot.substack.com/.../climate...

THELIBERALPATRIOT.SUBSTACK.COM

Climate Catastrophism Is a Loser

It’s Time for Democrats to Face the Facts

Maybe Not a Sister Souljah Moment

But a Chesa Boudin Moment might just do the trick! My latest at The Liberal Patriot.

"The crushing recall of San Francisco’s stridently progressive District Attorney, Chesa Boudin, crystallizes just how much trouble Democrats are in on the crime issue. When voters in San Francisco—San Francisco!—throw a progressive Democrat out of office for failing to provide public safety, you know Democrats have an urgent need to assure voters that they are in fact determined to crack down on crime and to dissociate the party from approaches that fail to do so.

This is a wave that has been building for some time. In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder and the nationwide movement sparked by it, the climate for police reform was highly favorable. But Democrats blew the opportunity by allowing the party to be associated with unpopular movement slogans like “defund the police” that did not appear to take public safety concerns very seriously.

At the same time, Democrats became associated with a wave of progressive public prosecutors who seemed quite hesitant about keeping criminals off the street, even as a spike in violent crimes like murders and carjacking sweeps the nation. This was twinned to a climate of tolerance and non-prosecution for lesser crimes that degraded the quality of life in many cities under Democratic control. San Francisco became practically a poster child for the latter problem under Chesa Boudin’s “leadership”.

So the voters kicked him out by a wide 60 percent to 40 percent margin. According to one analysis, about 40 percent of the votes for recall came from majority white areas of the city while 60 percent came from majority nonwhite areas. Based on the neighborhood pattern of voting and pre-election polling data, it seems clear that Asian voter support for the recall was particularly strong."

Read the rest, as always, at The Liberal Patriot.

THELIBERALPATRIOT.SUBSTACK.COM

Time for the Democrats’ Chesa Boudin Moment!

If Not Now, When? If Not Him, Who?

In Search of the Center

At The Liberal Patriot, John Halpin has fresh data on how the public is searching for the political center.....and not finding it.

After the Democratic primaries in 2020, Joe Biden’s comeback victory over more left-leaning opponents was hailed as a triumph for his traditional brand of pragmatic centrism and bipartisan cooperation that later enabled him to win a decisive popular vote majority over Donald Trump in the general election. Biden swooped into office promising to “end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal.”

A year and half later, this center ground appears all but abandoned and out of reach—for both President Biden and former President Trump."

THELIBERALPATRIOT.SUBSTACK.COM

The Center Lane is Wide Open

New polling shows that Americans are unique in viewing their political