Washington Post (Plum Line)
By Greg Sargent
July 7, 2015
Is
the overwhelming advantage that Democrats appear to be building among
Latinos durable? Or could it prove far more ephemeral than it appears?
Put
another way, can Democrats count on the 2016 GOP presidential ticket
re-running Mitt Romney’s historically bad performance among Latino
voters? Or could a Jeb Bush
(or, less likely in my view, Marco Rubio) general election candidacy
whittle away at the Dem edge among those voters and reverse gains that
had seemed to be hardening? Folks with long memories will recall that
George W. Bush successfully pulled that reversal
off in 2000. Couldn’t that happen again?
This
is one of the big questions of 2016, and its answer could be key to the
campaign’s outcome. Right now, there are plenty of reasons for
Democrats to be optimistic
about it. But it’s worth entertaining the alternate scenario.
The
case for Dem optimism has been fortified by Donald Trump, who in recent
days has been spraying inflammatory quotes about immigrants around like
a garden sprinkler.
It’s true that a number of GOP candidates have condemned his remarks.
But as Michael Gerson details, Republicans still appear locked in a
debate over the fundamental underlying question of whether their route
to the White House lies in pumping up the white
vote in the Rust Belt (a strategy perhaps foreshadowed by Scott
Walker’s move to the right on immigration) or in broadening their appeal
beyond their demographic comfort zone (a strategy that Jeb Bush has
urged on the party).
An
additional reason for Dem optimism: Some Republicans are reportedly
skeptical that the party should bother focusing its energy on nominating
a candidate who might appeal
to Latinos, on the grounds that those voters agree with Democrats on
many issues, so being pro-immigration reform (as Jeb is) won’t be enough
anyway.
But
some Democrats think their party should devote more time to worrying
about the possibility that someone like Bush could win over enough
Latino voters to make a decisive
difference.
Simon
Rosenberg, the president of the NDN think tank, floats the possibility
of a GOP ticket that includes Bush and Nevada governor Brian Sandoval as
vice president. Sandoval
won a third of the Latino vote in his 2010 race, despite striking a
hard-ish line on immigration, from which he has since backed off.
Sandoval is relatively young. A Bush-Sandoval ticket would be led by a
man with a Mexican wife and Latino-American children,
and backed up by a man of Mexican descent — representing a bet that the
GOP can contest Florida and western states with large Latino
populations by improving its cultural appeal among those voters.
Remember, Republicans only need to marginally reduce their
historically large 2012 deficit among Latinos to improve their chances
in such states.
So
Rosenberg thinks Dems should invest more now in using the Trump
outbursts to do more damage to the GOP brand among Latinos, as a kind of
insurance policy against outcomes
such as a Bush-Sandoval ticket. Rosenberg emails me:
“While
the Democratic advantage today is significant, what we don’t know is
what happens with an historically Hispanic and Spanish friendly GOP
ticket of, let’s say, Bush
and Sandoval. One Bush already used a smart Hispanic strategy to get to
the White House. Given that, Democrats should be anything but confident
and complacent right now. They need to be doing more, now, to make it
harder for any GOP ticket to dig out of the
hole Trump and others have dug for the GOP.”
To
be sure, there are big differences between the current moment and the
run-up to the 2000 election. Dems are far more united behind immigration
reform today than in
the late 1990s, reflecting a changing Democratic Party increasingly
reliant on Latinos. Buzzfeed reports that the Hillary Clinton campaign
is developing a very comprehensive and aggressive plan for national
Latino outreach. She has already pledged to go farther
than Obama did on his executive actions on deportations. And today she
renewed her support for comprehensive reform and attacked the GOP as
backward on the issue. All of these things are signs of Clinton’s
commitment to the party’s new demographic realities.
Meanwhile,
House Republicans have steadily moved rightward on immigration, passing
on a historic chance to act on the Senate reform bill and voting
repeatedly to roll
back Obama’s deportation actions. That has many Dems confident — to a
point.
“The
damage may be too great to the GOP brand,” one senior aide to a
prominent Latino House Democrat says. “It may take more than
Bush-Sandoval to rehabilitate this huge
mistake Republicans have been making. But we don’t know that.
Personality, charisma, language, and the individual candidates mean a
lot.”
So,
yes, perhaps Republicans have moved so far to the right on immigration
that the party can’t conceivably re-run the 2000 Bush immigration
strategy, or perhaps even
reconstituting that strategy wouldn’t be enough to reverse GOP losses
among Latinos at this point. But Democrats can’t count on those
outcomes.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
No comments:
Post a Comment