Democrats seem to think railing against how illegal immigrants are treated is a winning issue with Latino voters — as if every Latino in America came here illegally.
It’s a pretty brazen assumption, and one the Left is not called out on.
It now appears as though the Left is just starting to learn that Latino voters care about other things — things all Americans care about: healthcare, the economy, and education. Who knew, right? Except everyone who doesn’t have an underlying assumption about a group of people based on the color of their skin.
On Thursday, four Democratic presidential candidates spoke at the League of United Latin American Citizens’ (LULAC) annual convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The group, America’s oldest Latino civil rights organization, sent members to march to Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-WI) local office to deliver dolls in cages. Immigration was treated as a significant issue.
But when attendees had the chance to question the Democrat candidates, they didn’t bring up immigration, according to Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty.
“Former housing and urban development secretary Julián Castro was quizzed about the high cost of college tuition. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) promised that if she were elected, mental illness would get the same coverage as other medical problems. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was challenged to explain how he would persuade a broad swath of the electorate to support his proposal to eliminate private health insurance,” she wrote. “And Beto O’Rourke was asked to explain how he would reinvigorate the middle class.”
O’Rourke — who is from El Paso, Texas — seemed to be the only candidate who understood what the audience was implying by its questions.
“Immigration is obviously not the only issue, nor should it be the defining issue,” O’Rourke said after the event. “I’ve learned that every single issue is important to the Latino community.”
What Tumulty didn’t expect, she admitted, was “an undercurrent of unease here that the Democratic Party, in its revulsion over Trump’s harsh policies and obnoxious rhetoric, is positioning itself too far to the left on immigration.”
She went on to explain that Hispanic Americans disproportionately lack health insurance, so when Democrats announced at their first debate they would provide coverage to illegal immigrants, legal citizens weren’t happy.
As The Daily Wire previously wrote, Democrats just assume Latinos will vote for them and that talking about illegal immigration with a legal immigrant population is a winning strategy. Trump’s support in the Hispanic community is increasing.
This doesn’t mean Latino voters will turn to Republicans. Democrat polling and analysis firms found that the Latino vote increased more than any other minority group in 2018, but they voted for Democrats by a 2-to-1 margin.
If Democrats don’t stop their leftward lurch, however, they could end up losing some of the Latino vote — possibly to Republicans, but possibly due to abstention. If Republicans were smart, they would find a way to capitalize on this in order to take their message of family and a strong economy to the Hispanic population.