Democrats Are Delusional About Why They’re Losing Hispanic Voters

November is approaching fast, and Democrats have a problem: In key states like Texas, they are losing Hispanic voters.

But rather than being honest about it, leaders within the party are dabbling in delusion about what the problem is. It’s a lack of “investment,” they say. Indeed, that is one factor, but plenty of evidence suggests President Joe Biden’s results combined with Democrats’ ideology have become a problem with a group of voters that tons of progressives and conservatives never expected to see shift red, or even become GOP-curious.

In June, a Mexican-born Republican Hispanic woman, Mayra Flores, won a special election to replace a Democrat who retired early. That followed a 2020 election that saw surprisingly high Hispanic support nationwide for former President Donald Trump—despite strings of comments that read as casually racist, and an immigration policy that expanded holding kids in cages and separating kids from parents as a supposed deterrent.

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That support did not come just from stereotypically more conservative Cuban Americans, either. The former president made big inroads in South Texas in 2020 (barely losing to Biden in three Rio Grande Valley districts).

The result also follows congressional Democrats capturing lower percentages of the vote relative to prior years in these same three districts in 2020—so it wasn’t just Biden.

In 2020, Rep. Henry Cuellar bagged 58 percent, Rep. Vicente González won 50.5 percent, and former Rep. Filemon Vega about 55.5 percent. But in 2018, those numbers were respectively 84 percent for Cuellar, and about 60 percent in the other two districts. In 2016, they were 66 percent, 57 percent, and 62 percent for those Democrats, respectively. And in 2014, a big year for Republicans, they were 82 percent, 54 percent (for González’ predecessor, Rubén Hinojosa), and about 60 percent again for Vela. And let’s not forget that in 2020, several Republicans won back Hispanic-dominant districts the party had lost in 2018.

It’s true that in last week’s special election, Democrats didn’t invest a ton, while Republicans got out their checkbooks. However, when very progressive Hispanic Rep. Chuy García (representing parts of the Chicago area) dismissed the loss by saying, “I think our historic disinvestment caught up to us…We’re on our heels, and we need to invest heavily,” he’s missing that in races where his fellow travelers on the left wing of the Democratic Party have put in real time and effort in places like the Rio Grande Valley, they still have not prevailed.

That means this isn’t just about money, it’s about policy—and what’s happening in real life.

Rep. Cuellar—a pro-life, pro-gun moderate Democrat who has ruffled feathers by critiquing President Biden’s handling of the border—was endorsed in 2006 by the conservative Club for Growth, and opposes initiatives like Garcia’s proposed 36 percent APR interest rate cap on short-term small-dollar loans. He is utterly unappealing—indeed hated—by base Democrats, while his challenger, Jessica Cisneros, has the Elizabeth Warren-Bernie Sanders profile those progressive voters love.

To boot, on the eve of his primary, Cuellar was also rumored to be on the cusp of engulfment in a major political scandal. In aggregate, he should have been a dead man walking into Election Day. But he wasn’t. And his triumph over Cisneros wasn’t about the money, either—no matter what García may say about Democrats and “investment” in the race to replace González.

There simply was no lack of investment by Garcia’s ideological ally Cisneros in her primary to oust the heretical Henry Cuellar.

As of May 4, we know both candidates raised over $3 million (Cisneros actually raised closer to $4.5 million by that point), and both had spent $3 million or more (it’s hard to believe Cisneros didn’t spend it all). Cisneros was much-lauded for the energy and time she devoted to the campaign, as well as for her message discipline—she was not a “lazy” or “reckless” candidate like, say, the soon-to-be outgoing Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn. But barring some massive trove of as yet undiscovered runoff ballots appearing, the fact is, Cisneros lost, and policy and voters’ daily realities mattered.

Democrats continue to ignore the fact that for many people who have familial or personal histories with countries where socialism hasn’t played out well, having a self-described democratic socialist congresswoman (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) be nearly as nationally visible as the party’s actual leader (that would be President Biden) is a dog that just doesn’t hunt.

Other proverbial non-working canines include: the seeming chaos due to what looks to “regular people” as Democrats’ ideologically-driven mismanagement in our literal backyard (the way the Biden administration’s handling of immigration from Central America seems to be perceived in Texas border districts); a stance so favorable to abortion rights that not even pro-choice Republican senators could back it when put before them in legislative form; and out-of-control inflation that the president seems to pooh-pooh as a problem because of wage gains that may or may not keep up.

Hispanic Americans aren’t as rich as their white counterparts (although Hispanic poverty rates declined under Trump)—so when inflation bites, it’s reasonable to expect them to be more pissed off about it. It’s also not surprising that Texans might not be thrilled with the less-than-enthusiastic attitude the Biden administration seems to have taken to the oil industry.

In the aftermath of last week’s result, Rep. González opined that Democrats had “just forgotten about the brown people on the border,” saying he hoped the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) would learn its lesson, but that the party was “taking Latinos in South Texas for granted.” Cuellar agreed, insisting that “the DCCC needs to sit down and look at South Texas seriously… You can’t take Hispanics for granted, which they always do.”

As they say on Twitter, that tracks.

Democrats have traditionally appealed to Hispanic voters by tagging Republicans as racist and pledging to deliver immigration reform if put in power (and of note, the two messages are interrelated). But when Democrats controlled Congress and the White House during the first two years of the Obama presidency, they did not deliver immigration reform—despite having 58 votes in the Senate (and the presences of several moderate Republicans who would have backed immigration reform, at least back when they were still in office).

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Democrats have had all the time in the world since noon on January 20, 2021, to act on immigration, and yet they’ve passed nothing.

Ironically, the most recent instances where comprehensive immigration reform almost came to pass were when Republicans were leading on the issue. The first was during President George W. Bush’s administration, where he championed the cause, and the next was in 2013, when a bill actually passed the Senate–with the filibuster intact—though the Republican former Rep. Bob Goodlatte, whom many DC insiders regard as the now-abdicated king of committee chair inaction, predictably failed to do anything to move it forward in the House.

It’s starting to look as though many Democrats want to run on the issue, but not execute the solution, where immigration is concerned (and not just to cynical pro-immigration Republicans like me, either). Of course, it’s also true that Democrats are losing ground with working class voters, overall. Hispanic attrition is, to a degree, part and parcel of that—but also something driving the trend, and being driven by it as it barrels forward.

Democrats need to drop their delusions about Hispanic voters and do it now. If they fail to do so, 2022 will be even more brutal for them. As a bonus, we really might see an honest-to-God longer-term political realignment in America—one that few Democratic presidential candidates will actually relish.

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