In “Immigration is no longer the key to securing America’s millions of Latino voters. What is?,” Laurie Carillo writes at USC Annenberg Media that, ” According to the Pew Research Center, U.S. births are the main drivers of the growth of the Latino population, not new immigrant arrivals. Getting further and further away from the immigration experience, there isn’t much holding this diverse community together….“The more Americanized the Latino voter is, the more right-wing they become, the more Trump-supporting they become,” Madrid said. “The closer Latino men are to the country of origin, the more they have supported Black and female candidates.”….The Latino population is largely working class. One in five Latino men work in construction. For some Latinos, labor, not immigration, drives their votes….Although the Republican Party has never been known for supporting unions, labor leader Sean O’Brien of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters appeared at the Republican National Convention in July, demonstrating weakening political cohesion among working-class voters….For millions, the prospect of an improved economy was enough to cast a vote for Trump, despite his platform of mass deportation. If a Latino voter is a citizen, and no one in their family is undocumented, a plan like Trump’s might even sound like a good thing.” Marcelino Quiñonez, a former member of the Arizona House of Representatives, said “I’ve heard from folks who are on the ground and working to get out the vote that men would say, ‘Well, I don’t believe everything that Trump is saying, but at least he’s talking about the things that I want to hear about,’” Quiñonez said. “From a campaigning standpoint, people want to feel like, ‘Oh, if I vote for this person, my life is going to change….“We’re often playing the defense, responding to what’s being said about us, and I think what we need to do is really focus on the things that we’re good at,” Quiñonez said. “We need to go back to some of the bread and butter issues.’”

When a politician loses a U.S. Senate race, he or she frequently fades into obscurity, rarely to be heard much from again. In the case of Rep. Tim Ryan, who lost his senate race to J. D. Vance in 2022 and in 2020 mounted a failed presidential campaign, that would be a shame, because Democrats have few leaders who have as solid an understanding of working-class voters as does Ryan. So, when Ryan argues  that “‘Our brand is toxic’: Former US Democratic lawmaker calls for ‘complete reset’ of party after Harris loss to Trump,” as reported at msn.com, Democrats should listen. Ryan may have indeed lost his seat as part of the trend punishing individual Democrats for their party’s sins against working-class voters. “You start with a complete reset. We need a rebrand. I think you and I have been talking about this since 2016, like, our brand is toxic in so many places and it is like, you are a Democrat? That’s the stuff we get like in Ohio. So it needs — we need a complete reboot. We need a complete reboot with the DNC. We need a complete rebranding,” Ryan said, as reported by Fox News. He believed the party hadn’t offered enough to voters in the political middle ground who were reluctant to vote for Trump….Ryan suggested the Democrats should focus on policies that resonate with working-class voters, like reindustrialization and American competitiveness. He questioned the party’s stance against the crypto industry and called for a return to “bread and butter policies.” He contrasted his view with a focus solely on redistribution….“We are going to tax the bad guys who are rich, which we want people to aspire to make money in America. We will tax them because they’re really bad people and we’re going to give you money. No, it is about growing the pie,” he added.” Can Ryan bounce back after losing high-profile elections to win the presidency? Stranger things have happened in America.

We’ve probably seen most of the post-mortems about the presidential election. Now, get ready for the flood of post-mortems regarding President Joe Biden’s term in the White House. Here’s a handy poster meme from demcastusa.com:

“On paper, the 2026 midterms should be a good year for House Democrats,” Emily Singer writes at Daily Kos, explaining “How House Democrats are plotting their comeback. “They need to flip just three seats in order to win back control of the House—something they came painfully close to doing in 2024. Democrats fell short this year in the three districts that determined the majority by a combined total of just 7,309 votes….And given that the party in the White House almost always loses seats in the first midterm election, that puts Democrats in prime position to oust Johnson from the speaker’s office….Democrats will have the added advantage in 2026 of being able to run against what is sure to be Republican dysfunction in Congress, as the GOP will struggle to pass its agenda with a historically small majority and fractious caucus of members who love to vote against legislation and refuse to make the compromises necessary to pass bills….”It has become increasingly apparent that many of my House Republican colleagues want to jam big tax cuts for the wealthy, the well-off and the well-connected down the throats of the American people and try to pay for those tax cuts, which will not benefit everyday Americans, by cutting Social Security and Medicare,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said at a Dec. 11 news conference on Capitol Hill….“This is not a hypothetical. It’s not hype. It’s not hyperbole. It’s happening before our very eyes because extreme MAGA Republicans in the House are telling us, publicly and repeatedly, that’s exactly what they plan to do to the American people,” Jeffries warned. “House Democrats are clear we will oppose any effort to end Social Security and Medicare as we know it.”…. Expect to hear that message a lot over the next two years.”