basquebromance
Diamond Member
- Nov 26, 2015
- 109,396
- 27,066
- 2,220
- Banned
- #1
ok, so he admits the Dems suck, now what?
excerpts:
For years, those leaders have warned that the party needs to invest earlier in outreach, hire more Latinos for decision-making positions and talk to Latino voters about more issues than just immigration.
While Biden captured the majority of the Latino vote in 2020, Trump improved his margins in 78 of the nation’s 100 majority-Hispanic counties.
Since then, a spate of reports, analyses and polls have made it clear that the party has reason to worry if it doesn’t change its current approach. A recent report by Democratic research firm Equis found that a majority of Latinos believe that Democrats take them for granted. It also found that Trump’s policies on the coronavirus pandemic and economy were popular among Latinos and that GOP attacks claiming Democrats embrace socialism have been effective.
Kumar points to Florida — where Trump saw some of his largest gains with Latinos, both among conservative-leaning Cuban Americans and voters from other Latin American countries, such as Colombia, Venezuela and Nicaragua — as an example of Democrats having “a deficit in communications and connection.”
“Trump and the Republican Party never left Florida. They kept cultivating and communicating with the Latino community,” Kumar said. “Sure, a lot of it was disinformation and messaging that Biden is a communist and a socialist, but they kept doing it — and it was effective.”
One Democratic super PAC found that the party’s English-language ad spending dwarfed Spanish-language ads in numerous Latino-heavy House districts that Republicans flipped in 2020.
According to a spreadsheet shared with POLITICO — assembled out of frustration by the super PAC, which favored more Spanish-language ads — Democratic groups combined to spend almost $5 million in English-language ads in California’s 39th Congressional District, and not a cent on Spanish-language ads.
In that district, which is more than 30 percent Latino, Democratic incumbent Gil Cisneros lost to now-GOP Rep. Young Kim by just over 4,000 votes.
In the nearby 48th, which is about 20 percent Latino, Democrats spent just $33,000 in Spanish-language ads, compared to more than $12 million spent in English-language ads. Democratic incumbent Harley Rouda lost narrowly there to Republican Michelle Steel.
“It should be a wake-up call to Democrats. When there are no people of color at the decision-making level of a campaign, our constituency becomes an afterthought and you underperform because you’re not reaching out to them with the same priority as white suburban ‘persuadable’ voters,” said Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist and former senior adviser to Bernie's presidential campaign
One reason why Democrats fail to change their game plan with Latinos, Rocha said, is because campaigns don’t hire Latinos for top jobs and keep hiring the same consultants that have lost races in Latino-heavy districts. In many of the 2020 races, all the Spanish-language ads by Democrats were done in the last 30 days before the election, he said, signaling that Latinos were not a priority. The ads also came after many Latinos already had hardened opinions about the candidates, making it too late to persuade voters, he added.
Meanwhile, he said, Republicans saw success in 2020 as they “started spending real resources in bilingual communications to a broad target” and connected on Facebook, YouTube and via mail with a “whole bunch of Latinos who have never heard a compelling argument from Democrats about why they should vote for them.”
“When we as Democrats allow Republicans like Donald Trump to steal our economic populist message, we should be knocked up around the head,” Rocha said. “We allow them to have that narrative when we’re talking about whatever social issue of the day is a hot button instead of digging into populist economic issues that say, ‘We are here to work for you.’”
“The irony here is Democrats have been really responsive to the economy, but nobody knows about it and that’s a problem,” Ramos said. “To the degree with which Democrats can talk about the fact that they’ve created a lot of jobs unambiguously and are helping workers and families, that’s a great message in English and Spanish.”
“Now, am I confident they will tell that story?” Ramos paused. “I hope they do. They need to.”
Latino Dems warn about midterm fall-off
"The first step is admitting there’s a problem, and there’s a lot of people in my movement and my party that don’t," said one strategist.
www.politico.com
excerpts:
For years, those leaders have warned that the party needs to invest earlier in outreach, hire more Latinos for decision-making positions and talk to Latino voters about more issues than just immigration.
While Biden captured the majority of the Latino vote in 2020, Trump improved his margins in 78 of the nation’s 100 majority-Hispanic counties.
Since then, a spate of reports, analyses and polls have made it clear that the party has reason to worry if it doesn’t change its current approach. A recent report by Democratic research firm Equis found that a majority of Latinos believe that Democrats take them for granted. It also found that Trump’s policies on the coronavirus pandemic and economy were popular among Latinos and that GOP attacks claiming Democrats embrace socialism have been effective.
Kumar points to Florida — where Trump saw some of his largest gains with Latinos, both among conservative-leaning Cuban Americans and voters from other Latin American countries, such as Colombia, Venezuela and Nicaragua — as an example of Democrats having “a deficit in communications and connection.”
“Trump and the Republican Party never left Florida. They kept cultivating and communicating with the Latino community,” Kumar said. “Sure, a lot of it was disinformation and messaging that Biden is a communist and a socialist, but they kept doing it — and it was effective.”
One Democratic super PAC found that the party’s English-language ad spending dwarfed Spanish-language ads in numerous Latino-heavy House districts that Republicans flipped in 2020.
According to a spreadsheet shared with POLITICO — assembled out of frustration by the super PAC, which favored more Spanish-language ads — Democratic groups combined to spend almost $5 million in English-language ads in California’s 39th Congressional District, and not a cent on Spanish-language ads.
In that district, which is more than 30 percent Latino, Democratic incumbent Gil Cisneros lost to now-GOP Rep. Young Kim by just over 4,000 votes.
In the nearby 48th, which is about 20 percent Latino, Democrats spent just $33,000 in Spanish-language ads, compared to more than $12 million spent in English-language ads. Democratic incumbent Harley Rouda lost narrowly there to Republican Michelle Steel.
“It should be a wake-up call to Democrats. When there are no people of color at the decision-making level of a campaign, our constituency becomes an afterthought and you underperform because you’re not reaching out to them with the same priority as white suburban ‘persuadable’ voters,” said Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist and former senior adviser to Bernie's presidential campaign
One reason why Democrats fail to change their game plan with Latinos, Rocha said, is because campaigns don’t hire Latinos for top jobs and keep hiring the same consultants that have lost races in Latino-heavy districts. In many of the 2020 races, all the Spanish-language ads by Democrats were done in the last 30 days before the election, he said, signaling that Latinos were not a priority. The ads also came after many Latinos already had hardened opinions about the candidates, making it too late to persuade voters, he added.
Meanwhile, he said, Republicans saw success in 2020 as they “started spending real resources in bilingual communications to a broad target” and connected on Facebook, YouTube and via mail with a “whole bunch of Latinos who have never heard a compelling argument from Democrats about why they should vote for them.”
“When we as Democrats allow Republicans like Donald Trump to steal our economic populist message, we should be knocked up around the head,” Rocha said. “We allow them to have that narrative when we’re talking about whatever social issue of the day is a hot button instead of digging into populist economic issues that say, ‘We are here to work for you.’”
“The irony here is Democrats have been really responsive to the economy, but nobody knows about it and that’s a problem,” Ramos said. “To the degree with which Democrats can talk about the fact that they’ve created a lot of jobs unambiguously and are helping workers and families, that’s a great message in English and Spanish.”
“Now, am I confident they will tell that story?” Ramos paused. “I hope they do. They need to.”
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