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My anecdotal experience is that Hispanics are following the same path as past waves of Catholic immigrants. I come from a large-ish family originating in those waves in the late 19th and early 20th century. In the last 10-12 years we have incorporated some Hispanic (mostly Salvadoran) limbs. The other families I know like mine are also experiencing this, with so and so's sister or brother or cousin marrying a 2nd generation Hispanic. Based on this trajectory I think in a couple decades thinking about Hispanics as an insular minority will be as outdated as the doing the same with Irish or Italians. Sure people will be proud of their heritage (which will be more and more mixed) and there will be a few cultural hand me downs but it won't be a major factor in how people vote.

And all of this is a good thing. It's the path from starting out in a Democratic machine when people arrive to becoming fully assimilated, individualistic Americans. Democratic strategy should be forward looking about this process, instead of doing the ethnic-identitarian pigeonholing.

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As a recovering addict myself, I feel confident in asserting that Dems continue to be addicted to the high of moral superiority that comes with feeling confident your political opponents are drowning in their own racism. This creates a major blind spot where the only reason for supporting an R policy/opposing a D one is due to one’s racism/white supremacy. Of course this leaves one shocked if one goes to the effort of learning why a Latino voter might be uneasy with talk of open borders. What’s fascinating is that, when you look by racial group, Pew shows each group considers their racial identity to be of hugely different importance to their sense of self. Black people, and by extent Black voters, center their own “blackness” in their self-perception to a greater extent than do Latinos their Latinoness and a MUCH greater extent than whites. (Whites of all political backgrounds tend to have a taboo against building a sense of identity in their whiteness, for excellent reasons!!). It is perfectly logical that the more you center your racial identity in your sense of self, the more you see the actions of others through that lens.

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It is frustrating to see local progressives assume that Indian, Korean, Chinese shopkeepers and professionals will be motivated to vote Democrat by appeals to protect undocumented immigrants from Central America and integrate public schools. Dividing the US into white and non-white doesn’t seem like an informative electoral strategy.

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What's made me saddest in the last decade or thereabouts when trying to discuss this with progressives...there's a strong desire not to give up the "demographic destiny dream", and that's very understandable. But it's been distressing to see cope of the specific variety "anyone who votes R was never progressive/D to begin with". A sort of misapplied internal-racism ideology which simply does not reflect actual election results, and stereotypes entire groups of diverse people. Turns out that democratic processes do not, in fact, inevitably deliver progressive victories - because the electorate isn't inevitably progressive. Feature Not Bug. If a persuaded bird in the hand is worth two mobilized birds in the bush, then that also applies to dis-persuaded ones...losing former voters is twice as bad. I think this is one of the strongest unearned R talking points, the whole your-vote-is-taken-for-granite thing which speaks to a certain kind of temperament. People just like feeling that they're actually listened to.

(It's been especially weird as "_________ people are not a monolith" has become an increasingly common soundbite.)

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Oct 27, 2022·edited Oct 27, 2022

Thank you for reminding us of one of the few very optimistic things about the politics of the moment : racial depolarization. The US is facing very grave challenges to its domestic politics in the short term, but if it meets them successfully this welcome trend means the future may be bright.

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I want to pre-register my opinions about why Abrams is struggling to get the same share of the black vote as in 2018.

There is a fairly bitter divide between black women and low status black men. Marriage rates are low and illegitimacy is high. Many lower status black men are “on” child support for children they rarely see. The system tries to extract a portion of their income that country club Republicans would revolt at. Child support for three children in Georgia is ~45% of one’s income plus health care costs and work related child care costs. A person who makes $2500 a month can easily be on the hook for $1500 in child support. Try working full time and living on a grand a month and see how angry you become.

The system also polices single fathers’ private lives. If they want to exercise visitation, they often have to pee in a cup to prove they don’t smoke pot. The social workers and probation officers staffing this edifice of social control are often black women.

Higher status black men have the same reason to vote Republican as high status white men: lower taxes and fewer regulations. It’s unsurprising that 15-20% of black men will chose Kemp over Abrams. I do expect her to hold strong with black women.

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Oct 27, 2022·edited Oct 27, 2022

I've written this before, but I find it fascinating that a political party dominated by rich, professional class, secular people wants millions of poor, working class, Catholics and Evangelicals to join their party, and assumes that these millions of people will vote for their same professional class, progressive priorities. Seems like the pinnacle of naivite.

Also, the 2008 and 2014 elections horribly scrambled the parties' brains. After 2008 both parties bought the "demographics is destiny" canard and after 2014 both parties bought the "Republicans can only win in low turnout elections" canard. So since then Democrats have been complacent, waiting for their ascension to eternal power, and Republicans have doing everything they can to keep turnout low. In reality 2008 was just a really bad year for incumbents (Republicans) because of the financial crisis and Democrats had an incredible politician that the media and Hollywood collectively orgasmed over, which gave Democrats large coattails. And in 2014, turnout was low, but it was also a really bad Senate map for Democrats. All those senators who were elected in the Obama blowout of 08 had to face re-election under much worse political conditions.

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I think you kind of hit the nail on the head that the emerging CW on this front is stuff that was obvious to anyone who has spent a significant amount of quality time (i.e., not interviewing them in a diner or whatever) with Latino folks here in the US.

I am a college-educated Caucasian guy in my late-30s, but the area I've lived since I was about 9 is heavily Latino, and mostly Mexican. It's basically been the entire social life for my siblings and I; most of my childhood was spent hanging out with first and second generation Mexican-Americans and their families, and nothing about that experience would lead a person to automatically assume that these voters are automatic "gimmes" for progressive candidates, and it was always weird to me when people in college acted like that would be the case.

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The biggest political divide is not skin color, it’s whether your ancestors came here voluntarily or in chains. Any voluntary immigrant would, tautologically, rather be subject to American institutions than those of their native land. If you thought the US were irredeemably anti-Latino, you would be very reluctant to come here.

Conversely, the black institutions that evolved during segregation incorporate a racialized world view. Black elites, be they politicians, lawyers, or ministers, draw their status from being near the top of a racialized hierarchy. This system won’t last forever. There are now quite a few black college grads who haven’t made it into the black elite and have the education and strength of mind to question how well their professional betters are serving the black community.

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When was the last time you read a whole article about Hispanics that didn’t use Latinx?

Refreshing.

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Obviously Republicans bear the moral blame for the growing Republican contempt for representative democracy, but I think a lot of it is driven by fear that the "emerging Democratic majority"; the flip side of Democratic complacency. If Republicans understand that Hispanic votes are up for grabs and demographics does not equal destiny, it may help cool some of the right's distaste for representative government. (here's hoping!)

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"But Abrams has the misfortunate of needing to run against a pretty strong opponent. . . "

It was not misfortune; it was a choice. Abrams could have run for Senate in 2020 (and many begged her to do so) but refused and instead chose to run against a fairly strong Republican incumbent for governor in a year where history screamed that Democrats would be at a disadvantage. So she will lose and will deservedly become a footnote in Democratic politics. She could have been a contender but refused to do so.

I like her; she's very smart; and from most accounts has done a great job with voter registration and mobilization. But the bottom line in politics is winning elections and there, for whatever reason, she dropped the ball.

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my half baked theory is that the talk about the "coalition of the ascendent" w.r.t. hispanic immigration and obama made immigration reform impossible for decades

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Oct 27, 2022·edited Oct 27, 2022

This piece gets in another way at something I have been thinking about since listening to Bad Takes yesterday. I tend to find Matt's argument about the need for candidates to distinguish themselves, move to the center, go for persuasion, etc. compelling. I tend to think he's right.

But you can't talk about the Obama years without reminding yourself that we DID have a group of Dems who prominently tried to tack to the center and distinguish themselves from the party, particularly on the highest profile issue of all: health care. And they uniformly got wiped out in the next election.

You can find a lot of versions of that story. Testor was a great candidate who really overperformed by tacking to the center. He lost. Seems likely that the same thing will happen in Ohio this year. As Matt often points out, Donald Trump moderated the GOP's positions on stuff like social spending in 2016. But Trump barely won in a squeaker against the most unpopular candidate in history, and then lost his next election. There are races that go the other way, but the overall story leads me to wonder if this is just the classic case where the road to winning is actually pretty narrow, and politics is difficult, and the moderation strategy is really not as good as advertised. Situationally useful, but just that.

Like I said, I'm not sure; I tend to find Matt's analysis compelling. But I remember feeling like the clear takeaway from several of the big fights in the Obama years was that the moderates in the Democratic both made the legislative politics ugly (drawn out fights, no public option, etc.), had nothing to show for it at the end, and might even--through the ugliness--have contributed to the public backlash and GOP gains. A lot of folks walked away with a "hang together or hang separately" analysis.

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Back when I was a communist and hung out with lots of radicals there was this view that anti-Black racism was distinctive and unique and much worse than racism against other groups in that Black culture was seen a thing to be wiped out and destroyed and 'good' Black people were the ones who were basically not culturally Black. I think that probably left the lefty conversation as generic anti-racist politics started its rise. I did not like this view at the time, but I have come around to it. Black voters have supported Democrats for so long not because of specific policy issues that benefit Black voters, nor because Black voters think Democrats aren't racist (many Black dems think white dems ARE racist), but because the Democrats have been allies of Black self-empowerment and institutional development. This relies on the variety of Black institutions you mention, which are now sadly weakening. The Democrats and Black institutions had a mutually beneficial relationship where the unique character of Black civil society was preserved and assimilation was *not* the objective. Anti-black racism required this strategy, because mainstream institutions could not be trusted.

When Dems tried to set up parallel political institutions to cater to Hispanic voters they just recreated white institutions that are built around the narrow values of affluent college-educated whites and handed a bunch of power to young Hispanic people who are the most similar to young white people. You could critique this and say well, they should have made more Catholic institutions or etc. But the reality is, the goal for Hispanic voters is (mostly, obviously this isn't monolithic) to gain representation and power within the white-dominated mainstream civil society, not to construct a parallel one, because they don't really need a parallel one.

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Great summary. If you go to little Texas towns, you will find roughly the same cultural markers in mostly Hispanic ones as you do with most white ones - lots full of deer blinds, gun shops, churches (though different denominations, to be sure) and really conspicuous references to law enforcement. I've been rolling my eyes somewhat at predictions of a blue Texas and I wish more people would truly explore the state. If you go to an HEB in, say, Lockhart you will find a mix of black, brown and white people and not as much cultural diversity among them than you might expect.

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