The party’s lurch to the cultural left has hurt its standing with working-class Hispanics.
After George W. Bush won more than 40% of the Hispanic vote in 2004 on his way to securing a second presidential term, the Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg told me that his party had been caught unawares by the “extraordinarily sophisticated and competent” efforts of his Republican counterparts—such people as Karl Rove, Matthew Dowd and Ken Mehlman—to win over Latino voters.
Democrats “were taking the Hispanic vote for granted,” said Mr. Rosenberg, a veteran of Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign. “They thought it was a base vote. But obviously it became one of the most viable swing votes in American politics.” It still is, and the share of the Hispanic electorate continues to grow. Yet 20 years later Democrats are in danger of making the same mistake.
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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator. Follow him on Twitter here.
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