After Nov. 5, the Democratic Party was quick to point fingers at who lost them the election, with their targets ranging from vice-presidential pick Tim Walz to current President Joe Biden, to racist and sexist Americans. While the Democrats continue their endless blame game, it has become apparent to the rest of America that citizens are tired of Democratic governance.
Across the board, Vice President Kamala Harris lost support among minority voters. Examining exit polling from CNN, Harris did worse with every minority group compared to 2016, when Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump. In 2016, Clinton won 89% of Black voters, 66% of Latino voters and 65% of Asian voters. In comparison, Harris only won these groups by 86%, 51% and 55%, respectively. That is a staggering 15% and 11% drop among Latinos and Asians, along with a modest 3% fall among Black voters. The only group Harris managed to outperform Clinton with was white voters, winning 4 percentage points more of the votes.
Despite this terrible showing among minority voters, some Democratic commentators still feel comfortable blaming “racist” Latinos and “sexist” Blacks for Harris’ poor performance. Though Democrats have long felt entitled to minority votes due to their action on civil rights in the 1960s, it is about time to wake up from that delusion. The Civil Rights Act was passed 60 years ago and a new wave of minority voters no longer feel beholden to the Democratic Party for anything.
For many years, the Democratic Party has painted a mono-picture of minority groups as oppressed and needing rescue from politicians. Democrats are often puzzled by the large proportion of Latino support for Trump, despite his anti-immigrant stances and racist language. However, what Democrats don’t consider is that the Latino community is not a monolith. A white migrant from Argentina with a visa is going to have different priorities than a Mexican-American whose family has been here for generations. It is a fact that a majority of Latinos think the large number of migrants entering across the southern border is a major issue or a crisis. However, Latinos also think that there should be more opportunities for people to enter the country legally. Latinos are not racist or xenophobic, they simply want law and order among their communities, particularly along the southern border.
It is a similar situation with Asian Americans. A Japanese American is vastly different from a Bhutanese American. Yet, the prevailing practice is to group them together under the umbrella term of Asian Americans, or even worse, BIPOC. This label only muddles the individual needs of each community while ignoring their shared problems. One poignant issue that is shared among Asian American voters, who make up around 6% of the voting public, is migration. Many legal Asian American migrants have waited years, if not decades, for their green cards or to become U.S. citizens. From my personal experience, these groups are now becoming disinterested in Democratic messaging on migration. They see the more than 1,000 illegal border crossings every day at the southern border as effectively cutting the entry line, creating an unfair system disadvantaging Asian Americans.
Studies have long shown that conservative minority voters often still vote Democrat despite their own conservatism on policy issues. That is now beginning to change. Just because minorities support the Democratic Party over the dumpster fire that is currently the Republican Party doesn’t mean they support all of its extreme progressivism. Most Latinos don’t want to use “Latinx” and most Black Americans don’t want affirmative action, yet Democrats continue to run on both issues as if they have a broad consensus.
In addition to the complete ignorance by the Democratic leadership on the needs of minority communities, they have also created an atmosphere of complete condescension. It is not surprising that white liberals are the group most likely to dumb down their language when talking to Black Americans. The continued virtue signaling on the issue of race is no longer an acceptable playbook by the Democratic Party. How can they ask minority groups to continue to vote for a party that has repeatedly been unable to deliver on the American dream? Every time Democrats call for an open border or the decriminalization of illegal crossings at the southern border, more Black, Brown, and Asian American voters slide towards political apathy. Let this election be a wake-up call for the Democratic leadership — assume no longer that minority groups are a solid base of support. It is about time that votes are earned and not taken for granted.
