One of the things we Democrats use to rock ourselves to sleep at night in these politically perilous times is the hope that demographic trends are working in our favor. And the central source of that hope is the belief that the Latino population of the United States is growing so rapidly that the future shape of the electorate is morphing rapidly in a more progressive direction.Totally aside from the fact that Democrats would be foolish to assume our current performance among Latinos can be counted on in the future, there’s the troubling fact that the total Latino vote is a relatively small segment of the electorate, and will remain so for a while. That’s the important and sobering message provided by Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center, in today’s Washington Post.Suro nicely summarizes his argument in one sentence: “Because of a combination of lack of citizenship, a big youth population, and voter apathy, only one-fifth of Hispanics went to the polls in 2004. In other words, it took five Latino residents to produce one voter.” Of those three factors depressing the Latino vote, only the third is one we can theoretically do something about in the near term. So why all the excitement about percentage increases in the Latino vote?Here, too, Suro offers an important distinction in commenting on the “record turnout among Latinos” recently generated by Los Angeles mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa: “[G]iven the low baseline, it wasn’t hard. When it comes to counting people in almost any category, Latinos break their own records every day.” But as my friend Mark Gersh, the number-crunching wizard of the National Committee for an Effective Congress, always points out, percentages don’t win elections; votes do. And small percentage increases from large groups generate more votes than large percentage increases from small groups. That’s why the little-recognized but central story of the 2004 presidential election was that a smaller percentage increase in ballots from non-Latino white voters more than exceeded the votes produced by near-record turnout among minority voters as a whole. This does not–let me repeat this–does not mean that Democrats should stop worrying about, or working among, minority voters. It specifically does not mean that Democrats should stop obsessing about now to reach Latino voters. Even if the Latino vote is growing less rapidly, in absolute terms, than some Democrats seem to assume, maintaining the current Democratic advantage is well worth every effort, and moreover, the Latino voting boom will definitely arrive in the relatively near future. What Democrats cannot do, however, is to comfort ourselves with the illusion that Latino voter growth will offset our ever-increasing weakness among white middle-class voters generally, or white married voters with kids specifically. (In fact, the upwardly mobile Latinos most likely to vote largely share the values and aspirations of middle-class non-Latino white voters). We need a strategy, a message, and an agenda that will make inroads into Republican majorities in those groups while continuing to attract and energize minority voters as well. We can’t simply wait for demography to save us.
TDS Strategy Memos
Latest Research from:
Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
-
July 18: At Root of Epstein Crisis Is MAGA Thirst For Democratic Blood
Any Democrats who are chortling and popping popcorn at the intra-MAGA blowup over the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein should be aware that what MAGA really wants is a witch-hunt against Democrats that Trump may well give them, as I explained at New York:
Observers seeking to understand the intense furor that has swept the right in the wake of Donald Trump’s efforts to dismiss the “Epstein files” are now wondering if millions of people really do believe Epstein was at the center of a global cabal of pedophile elitists and that the “files” the federal government collected about him were a sort of Rosetta Stone for understanding a host of political and cultural evils.
But in MAGA-world, you don’t have to be a full-on rabbit-hole dweller who buys into the more cosmic interpretations of Epstein’s significance to be bitterly disappointed by Trump’s “nothing to see here” dismissal of a long-awaited moment when the veil hiding the many crimes of the opposition would begin to lift. Perhaps for many, the files were just an appetizer for the revelations that would bring the heavy hand of justice down on the many devils of the MAGA imagination.
The underlying reality is that for all of Trump’s audacious actions since taking office, he has failed, so far, to fully undertake the campaign of retribution he promised his supporters again and again and again on the campaign trail. The Bidens are at liberty. So are the Obamas and the Clintons. So are the members of the January 6 committee. So are the prosecutors in New York and Washington and Atlanta that persecuted Trump personally. Not a single “enemy of the people” journalist has been jailed (though some have been silenced by their employers or intimidated by Trump and his lawyers).
Now, perhaps those who go too far in taking Trump “seriously but not literally” figured all these threats were just political theater. But his most avid supporters heard them many times, as Politico’s Ankush Khardori observed at the height of the 2024 campaign:
“In the most volatile presidential campaign of the last 50 years, one thing has remained remarkably constant: Donald Trump’s stated intention to prosecute a wide swath of his opponents if he wins the White House.
“The list of targets has been growing for years. It includes an array of Trump’s political and legal antagonists — real or perceived — ranging from President Joe Biden and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to Anthony Fauci, the members of the Jan. 6 committee and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Just a few weeks ago, Trump put hundreds — maybe thousands — more of his political opponents in his prosecutorial crosshairs by threatening unnamed Democratic lawyers, political operatives, donors, voters and election officials.
“Trump has talked about his plan for a prosecutorial revenge tour in public speeches, press interviews and a litany of social media posts. It is subtly embedded in the official Republican Party platform, which proposes to ‘hold accountable those who have misused the power of Government to unjustly prosecute their Political Opponents.'”
And it’s not just a matter of Trump holding grudges against those who allegedly “weaponized government” against him. Throughout his political career, but most intensively during his last campaign, Trump has not just promised to “make American great again.” He’s promised to punish those who ruined the country before he came on the scene to redeem it. So naturally, MAGA folk are dissatisfied at his accomplishments so far. Yes, it’s wonderful to see the federal government undertake the mass deportation of immigrants. But in a conspiracy theory fully and formally embraced by Trump, his campaign, and increasingly his party, they were told repeatedly that the people running and supporting the Biden administration had deliberately and with criminal intent “opened the borders” in order to enroll millions of aliens as illegal voters to perpetuate their disastrous regime. Are these traitors to escape any reckoning for their crimes?
This may be the fear underlying the angst over Epstein. Trump had given them every reason to believe the “files” might be a Pandora’s box that could begin the “retribution tour” with a bang. Now the claim they are a nothing-burger must feel to many MAGA activists like conquering the enemy castle only to find that the evil king’s treasure chest is empty.
That’s why the most likely way out of the political trap Trump has laid for himself is to scratch the itch that underlies the Epstein furor. Yes, he needs a distraction to change the subject. But for his base, the best distraction would be some investigations, arrests, perp walks, show trials, and consequences for the terrible villains who wrecked the country for so long. If you’ve ever been on a Trump “enemies list,” it would be a good time to hunker down and lawyer up. Trump needs some heads on pikes, some trophies for his base. And he needs them now.