What Democrats got wrong about Hispanic voters

Nov 19, 2020

Ian Haney López, a legal scholar at UC Berkeley and author focused on racial politics, discusses the surprising rise in Latino support for Donald Trump. He unpacks how conventional beliefs about voting behavior misled Democrats, exposing a complex interplay of racial identities that inform voter choices. López highlights the evolving tactics of the GOP and stresses the importance of understanding coded language in political messaging. He advocates for a race-class fusion approach to unite diverse voters against elite interests, particularly as the 2024 election approaches.

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INSIGHT

Latino Vote Surprise

Many were shocked that Latinos didn't vote as a monolith against Trump's anti-Latino rhetoric.
A significant portion voted for him despite his policies and rhetoric.

INSIGHT

History of Dog Whistling

Liberals correctly identified Trump's racial strategy, a pattern established decades prior by Republicans.
This "dog whistling" began with Goldwater and Nixon, and was embraced by Reagan and both Bushes.

ANECDOTE

Bush's Shift in Rhetoric

George W. Bush attempted a broader appeal with "compassionate conservatism" but shifted after 9/11.
The "war on terror" rhetoric became the primary form of dog whistling during his presidency.

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Donald Trump has built his presidency on top of racial dog whistles, xenophobic rhetoric, and anti-immigrant policies. A core belief among liberals was that this strategy would help Trump with whites but almost certainly hurt him with Latinos, and people of color more broadly. Then the opposite happened: In 2020, Trump gained considerable support among voters of color, particularly Latinos, relative to the 2016 election.

What happened?

Ian Haney López is a legal scholar at UC Berkeley and the author of Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class. In 2017, he partnered with the leftist think tank Demos and various polling groups to better understand the effectiveness of racial dog whistles and how Democrats could combat them. The results were sobering, even to the experts who commissioned the polls. As Haney López documented in his 2019 book Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America, 60 percent of Latinos and 54 percent of African Americans have found Trumpian dog-whistle messages convincing, right in step with the 61 percent of whites who did.

This conversation is about the complicated reality of racial politics in America. It’s about the fact that the electorate isn’t divided into racists and non-racists — most voters, including Trump supporters, toggle back and forth between racially reactionary and racially egalitarian views — and a more robust theory of how race operates in American politics that follows. And it’s about the kinds of race- and class-conscious messages that Haney López’s research suggests work best with voters of all backgrounds.

Book recommendations:

Racial Realignment:The Transformation of American Liberalism, 1932–1965 by Eric Schickler

The Line Becomes a River by Francisco Cantú

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

Credits:

Producer/Audio engineer - Jeff Geld

Researcher - Roge Karma

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