The Hill’s Top Opinions: Latino voters are shifting right: Here's how Democrats can bring them back

View Online  Opinion Monday, September 26 ©  AP Good Monday evening. This is Daniel Allott with The Hill's Top Opinions.   One of the surprising takeaways from the 2020 presidential election was Donald Trump's performance with Hispanic voters. Despite the media's constant depiction of Trump's immigration policies as xenophobic and cruel, and of Trump himself as a white supremacist, Trump, according to one estimate, gained 8 percentage points among Hispanic voters between 2016 and 2020.   That may not seem like much, but with Hispanics constituting a growing share of the electorate (they're the largest ethnic minority in America), even a small change can have large effects. This shift helped Trump easily win Florida and Texas, and the GOP win crucial House seats in those and other states.   And now, with the midterm elections six weeks away, write DOUGLAS SCHOEN and ZOE YOUNG, "the Democratic Party is contending with a daunting truth: the erosion of support for the party among Latino voters in 2020 was not an anomaly."   Schoen and Young, Democratic consultants, analyze the polling numbers in key Senate races and conclude that the situation is looking quite dire for Democrats.   Democrats can't expect to win over Hispanics by focusing on social issues and climate change, the authors contend. All the polling shows that Hispanic voters care most about the economy and public safety (crime, policing and, yes, border security).   But that's not what Democratic messaging has focused on. This misplaced focused, the authors write, "has played a major role in alienating this group as a whole since 2016."   Of course, there's a reason Democratic messaging hasn't focused on the economy and public safety. Voters, including Hispanic voters, generally line up with Republicans on these issues.   Schoen and Young aren't very optimistic that the Democratic Party will moderate its liberal economic message – pushing high taxes, government handouts and wealth redistribution – before Election Day. Which means, according to the authors, that Hispanics' shift toward the GOP "now threatens to upend Democrats' ability to build winning coalitions in 2022, 2024 and beyond."   READ SCHOEN AND YOUNG'S OP-ED HERE.   Not subscribed to The Hill's Top Opinions? Sign up here. MORE TOP OPINIONS Democrats' 'Trump is evil' mantra won't work this November By DOUGLAS MACKINNON, Republican consultant Every single senior Republican I have spoken with in recent days is hoping against hope that the liberal "sound machine" continues to play only its one-hit wonder — "Trump is Evil." For if it does, these Republicans (and a growing number of Democrats) believe the GOP will sweep back into power in Congress in November. Read the op-ed here How to arm Ukraine: The case for tanks, air and missile defense By MICHAEL O'HANLON, Philip H. Knight Chair in Defense and Strategy at the Brookings Institution Western leaders must now decide on next steps for arming and otherwise helping Ukrainian military forces. Whether one thinks in military terms about battlefield balances and dynamics, or in strategic terms about pressuring Putin into a peace process where he will acknowledge and restore full Ukrainian sovereignty, three lines of effort are essential.   Read the op-ed here   Unit morale and cohesion: Russia's weakness and Ukraine's strength By DOV ZAKHEIM, former undersecretary of Defense Russia's newly drafted but reluctant soldiers will only further undermine the dwindling morale of those already fighting in Ukraine. Even a few individuals who are unwilling to fight can undermine an entire unit, and a reluctant unit can lead to large-scale retreat. In fact, that has happened already, with Russian soldiers leaving their equipment behind and literally running for their lives. Read the op-ed here The government is not only spending trillions — it's losing trillions By PAUL KUPIEC, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and ALEX J. POLLOCK, senior fellow at the Mises Institute The government spends trillions of taxpayer dollars here and loses trillions more there, but it hardly seems to make the news. Congress has passed so many new giant spending bills in the past three years, much of it financed on the Fed's balance sheet, that the public has become desensitized to the magnitude of the taxpayer dollars involved.  Read the op-ed here QUICK TAKES How Democrats can avoid another historic misfire If this is what the end of the pandemic looks like, that's bad   Was overturning Roe v. Wade a 'blessing'? Only if Democrats can avoid the details of the right to abortion   Even Putin's 'arsenals of evil' can't really help him now Stay Engaged The Hill's Top Opinions is written by Daniel Allott, an opinion editor at The Hill and the author of "On the Road in Trump's America: A Journey Into the Heart of a Divided Nation."   Views expressed by contributors are theirs and not the opinion of The Hill.   Check out The Hill's Opinion section online for the latest. Interested in submitting an op-ed? Click here. If you find this newsletter useful, please consider recommending it to others: thehill.com/opinion.  Privacy Policy  |  Manage Subscriptions  |  Unsubscribe  Sign Up for Other Newsletters 1625 K Street NW, 9th Floor, Washington, DC 20006 © 1998 - 2022 Nexstar Media Inc. | All Rights Reserved.

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