Interesting article. I particularly liked this bit:
"Democratic base voters hate “defunding the police.” Choose your group, but they each respond negatively to the words, in a ratio of 2-to-3 to 4-to-1. About half of Hispanics, AAPI, millennials/Gen Z voters, and unmarried women give the highest possible negative (over 75 on a 100-degree scale). If you are defunding the police, you are not concerned with crime and not using the only instrument people know to achieve public safety.
That is why a public safety message that prioritizes addressing crime, while funding the police with accountability and reform—precisely the message Joe Biden used in the State of the Union—has a big impact, doubling the Democratic margin among those who hear it. Working-class voters, whether they supported Biden or Trump, are surprised by it because they think defunding the police is a “woke” Democratic position.
My surveys had also shown that “Black Lives Matter” and “defund the police” were particularly unpopular among Hispanic voters. We didn’t ask what explained it, and we should. Hispanics may have thought Black Americans and their issues were higher on the priority list for Biden and the Democrats. They didn’t see Joe Biden campaign for their vote, the way Hillary Clinton did.
Let me posit an additional explanation that will need a lot of further discussion. Democrats putting addressing America’s very real “systematic racism” at the top of their campaign agenda doesn’t align with the priorities of those communities, as we saw above.
But it also doesn’t align with the vision of America as an immigrant country where all ultimately make progress. You may have faced extreme poverty, all forms of unfree labor and political repression, but you are blessed to live in a country where hard work allows each generation to do better than the last. That Democrats are losing to Republicans now on who can help you realize the “American dream” is prima facie support for my concerns.
In the Hispanic community, pollster Carlos Odio found that the new Hispanic migrants feel blessed to be in America and away from their home countries where life was unbearable and unfree. Republicans more than Democrats have been speaking to that strong immigrant consciousness.
Black voters in my focus groups have an astute sense of history and worry that past work to secure their family and their parents’ battle for civil rights will be reversed. They think the Black community will be the first to pay the price if progressive forces lose out to conservatives. Despite the fraught history, they want to be part of an American story where their community continues to make progress.
In my survey conducted for Biden’s State of the Union, I found a pretty stunning 69 percent of the respondents reacted warmly to the assertion “America is still the country with the best history of advancing civil rights.” Do you realize 63 percent of Blacks said that? So did 62 percent of Hispanics and 67 percent of Asian Americans. Less than a third of voters across our diverse base rejected that."
Hmm. Now where have I heard stuff like this before?
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