The Liberal Patriot Substack newsletter can often be an informative read. Instead of woke culture wars, these Democrats promote classical liberal values like pluralism, freedom, and pragmatism.
One editor is Ruy Teixeira, who in 2004 wrote The Emerging Democratic Majority, which argued that demographic changes point to perpetual victories for his party.
But 17 years ago, Democrats were not a cult of lunatics — wake up, David Brooks — claiming men can give birth, socialist spending programs reduce inflation, the current comptroller should believe in “ending banking as we know it,” and Latinos should be referred to as “Latinx.”
Teixeira, who’s warned the left before, is alarmed that his party’s attacks on our history are pushing millions of Latino voters to the right.
He points out that Latinos give President Joe Biden a porous 25% approval score on the economy and barely 40% overall, that they are evenly split between supporting Democrats and Republicans in the 2022 midterms, and that Terry McAuliffe actually lost the Latino vote in the recent Virginia gubernatorial election.
He also warns, “Democrats have seriously erred by lumping Hispanics in with ‘people of color,’” presuming they enjoy the radical racial activism that dominated the political arena during 2020.
This is true. For one thing, most Hispanics like America and abhor the woke agenda. More than two-thirds oppose the insane idea of reparations to black descendants of slaves.
By nearly a 4-to-1 margin, Hispanics say they would rather be a United States citizen than a citizen of any other country, and by 35 points said they were proud of how American democracy works. These findings about Hispanic patriotism contrasted with the anti-American views of (upper-middle class, usually white) progressive activists.
Latinos shifted toward Trump last November and, more importantly, that shift was dispersed geographically: Florida (28 points), Wisconsin (20), Texas (18), Nevada (18), Pennsylvania (12), Arizona (10), and Georgia (8).
Related: Vulnerable Democrats Decide to Focus on Policy over Trump
“Clearly, this constituency does not harbor particularly radical views on the nature of American society and its supposed intrinsic racism and white supremacy,” Teixeira added. “They are instead a patriotic, upwardly mobile, working class group with quite practical and down to earth concerns. Democrats will either learn to focus on that or they will continue to lose ground among this vital group of voters.”
Meanwhile, like all Americans, Hispanics are concerned with the soaring price of consumer goods.
Obama and Clinton economist Larry Summers: Prices will be "higher in 2022 and 2023 with [Biden's] Build Back Better.” pic.twitter.com/golNm5m7ls
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) December 11, 2021
Liberal-leaning journalist Mark Halperin acknowledged this on Saturday, writing in his newsletter “that inflation is really bad and not ending anytime soon – or the reality that the Dominant Media’s agreement with Mitch McConnell on these issues is not ending anytime soon.”
He cited the secular left’s bible, the New York Times, explaining, “White House officials say they have no plans to shift Mr. Biden’s messaging on economic issues, even as poll after poll shows his approval ratings in decline and voter worry over inflation swamping all other views of the economy.”
Maybe Team Biden should listen to Teixeira instead of delusional Chief of Staff Ron Klain.
