Michael Barone writes,
It was assumed that Hispanics would remain an overwhelmingly Democratic voting bloc, as black people had since 1964, due to rampant racial discrimination and that out of something like racial solidarity, they would recoil against Republicans who called for immigration restrictions.
That hasn’t happened. In 2020, after five years of Trump’s rasping rhetoric, Hispanic voters, like noncollege white people four years before, trended toward Trump (and Republicans) all across the country. The trend has continued: The tide of illegal border crossings has apparently turned the 90-plus percent Hispanic Rio Grande Valley from Democratic to Republican. This suggests that the whole post-1970 enterprise of including Hispanics in racial quota programs was based on the false assumption that their experiences will mirror those of black people. It looks as if they come closer to resembling the experiences of Italian or Polish Americans.
Obama’s Midwestern strength in the region owed much to both Republican and Democratic voters whose political heritages made them inclined to think it would be good for America to elect a black president.
The fact is that both parties, with their skewed pictures of the electorate, are failing to maximize their appeal — Trump Republicans from their scorn for college-educated liberals, the anti-Trump Democrats from their contempt for those they consider beneath them. Two presidential elections decided by 77,000 and 42,000 votes, a hyper-narrowly divided Congress, and a low level of presidential effectiveness are the results.
Read more here: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/both-parties-ignorance-of-electoral-reality-have-led-to-our-present-political-discontents
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