If today were Election Day, Democrats would likely be in a state of stunned disbelief after watching their most prized constituencies abandon them in droves. Put plainly, if the left is not laser-focused – and successful – over these next months in drawing black and Hispanic voters back into the fold in numbers they perpetually take for granted, a landslide and long-term realignment of the country could be in the offing.
Liberty Nation has been reporting on the changing allegiances of minority voters for some time, but the latest metrics are frankly shocking. A trend has turned from noteworthy to startling. The results of the latest New York Times poll (meaning they must be accurate, right?) are nothing less than head-spinning. And you don’t need many of the numbers to understand the bottom line.
While Biden crushed Trump by 50 points among non-white Americans in 2020, he is now leading by just 12. For those of you not mathematically inclined, that is a 38% swing – and Democrats’ lowest advantage among black, Hispanic, and Asian voters since 1960 – 64 years ago. And don’t forget it was black voters who almost single-handedly revived Biden’s failing campaign in 2020, which makes this turnaround that much more momentous. No president in modern history has lost so much support from crucial constituencies in such a short time.
How remarkable is it that the man who most famously descended that golden escalator and spoke in such harsh terms about illegal immigrants would now enjoy majority support from Hispanic voters? If that is not a sign of transformation, nothing is. Democrats will pour tens of millions of dollars into minority outreach in the run-up to Election Day. The extent to which they succeed hinges on the hope that these voters will have short memories. But crucially, the mere fact they need to spend so much time and treasure to secure a base it has always taken for granted is by itself an ominous sign for any campaign.
But looked at from another perspective, why the heck should minority voters differ significantly from the majority? Biden’s perceived weakness suggests that the president may struggle to earn the support of those outside of deeply partisan voters. That is especially true when you consider that these minority voting blocs are hit the hardest by Biden’s failures. Rising prices for the essentials of life, the out-of-control border, and inner-city crime most affect those with the least financial capacity and security. And now, to make it even worse, blacks in many cities feel edged out by an unmanageable wave of illegals – as many as ten million by some counts. The result is growing tension not so much between blacks and Hispanics, but between Americans and aliens (not a racist slur, but the official government designation for foreigners).
Black and Hispanic voters know, like everyone else, that the upheaval at the southern border was not only the most avoidable catastrophe of modern times but, worst of all, a crisis of choice by Joe Biden in reflexively reversing Donald Trump’s effective border policies. Joe Biden’s cowardly instincts led him to surrender to open-border white progressives at the expense of everyone else. How could he not have known that this would come back to haunt him? Did he not think through the most predictable consequences of proclaiming America open to almost anyone willing to show up at the border? And now, migrants from all over the world – South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia – have joined the bandwagon marching across the US-Mexico border to take the taxpayer-funded gift offered by this president.
Racial Realignment: A Huge Opportunity for the GOP
For years, Republicans have been urging black and Hispanic voters to finally acknowledge the repeated failures of inner-city Democratic leaders and join the GOP fold. In fairness, though, Republicans have done little to expand their presence in minority communities. But with black and Hispanic support now suddenly up for grabs in a nation gripped by progressivism, this schism on the left dovetails with Trump’s outsized efforts to attract minority support over the course of more than eight years.
Not since the 20th century, when “bleeding heart conservative” Jack Kemp advocated for enterprise zones in fallen inner-city neighborhoods had the GOP organized a serious campaign to attract black voters. His efforts did not meet with success, and Republicans since then had all but ignored black voters, conceding 13% of the population to the Democrats, and settling for about one-third of Hispanics.
But then came Trump, who broke the mold with aggressive efforts to attract minorities in 2016 (remember “what the hell have you got to lose?”) and particularly in 2020, when the lone bright spot in his unsuccessful campaign was the rise in his non-white support. He aggressively courted a long-uncourted constituency, creating an active “Black Voices for Trump” organization in 2020. That is now less a project than part of a viable strategy. Minority voters have felt the pinch of Bidenomics more than anyone, and are now understanding the full consequences of a surrender to progressives.
To this day, it is hard to understand the calculation made by Joe Biden. In abandoning his traditional moderate liberalism (by today’s standards) at the exact time the country needed it, he turned his pledge to make unity the defining characteristic of his presidency into its farcical opposite. Given that Trump’s liabilities had multiplied after January 6 and that he had supposedly disqualified himself from another run at the White House after the post-election ugliness of 2020, Biden might have been well positioned to secure a second term if he had just done what he promised by returning a pandemic- and riot-torn country to a state of normalcy.
If Donald Trump, of all people, can roll up a big slice of minorities, more conventional Republicans (and who isn’t conventional compared to Trump?) going forward will be able to consolidate a hold on a meaningful slice of black and brown voters. For while these voters have traditionally leaned heavily Democratic, they are at the same time largely culturally conservative, a factor which had never been decisive until left-wing BLM-style radicals became the face of social justice. But as the respected Financial Times put it, “[t]he migration we’re seeing today is not so much natural Democrats becoming disillusioned but natural Republicans realizing they’ve been voting for the wrong party.”
Indeed, minority abandonment of the Democratic Party is not due just to the weakness of Joe Biden, but the increasingly radical left-wing agenda of the Democratic Party – white progressives purporting to speak for minorities – since the rise of Donald Trump. And it looks for all the world like these longtime Democrats are finally fed up.
