Democrats: Court This Minority

When I first heard that the Democrats would be "soul-searching" after the election, I was hoping this meant that they'd be rethinking their agenda. Instead, the title for a Star Parker column hits the nail on the head: "Dean, Dems frozen in time warp." Think circa 1970, when "soul" was synonymous with "black." Yes. The Dems are still mired in the notion that they are the party of the many small constituencies arrayed for battle against the honky "establishment".

Two stories leapt out at me today that indicate that the Democrats on the whole remain out of touch, condescending elitists. First, we have Howard Dean. You know the one. He's about to live as an expatriate in "Red America" so he can learn the mindset over there, not to see whether they might have valid concerns that the Democrats might better address than the Republicans, but so he can learn their "language" well-enough to try to fool 'em in '08. I hear he has book advances lined up already for his tale of roughing it. He'll open with a list of necessities he bought, then spend the rest of the book hoping his readers have forgotten that he's not truly "living off the land." It's got an idyllic setting near a lake. He's writing it under a pseudonym with a French-sounding last name as an "olive branch" to John Kerry. It is thought that this highly original and insightful book may put forth a wholly new philosophy of reverence towards nature. Its title will, "Recycle the letter W," according to Joe Biden, who is thought by some to be Dean's ghost-writer. However, despite his solicitous attitudes towards "Red (Neck) America," it seems that Dean's not too worried about anyone who might already be on the planta- -- I mean, be in his camp. As Star Parker puts it:

It didn't take long for Howard Dean, the new Democratic National Committee chairman, to show his credentials as a graduate of the Trent Lott school of racial sensitivity training.

His remarks, at a meeting with the uniformly Democratic Congressional Black Caucus, that Republicans would need the "hotel staff" if they wanted to fill a room with blacks, tell us a lot about the man. They also tell us a lot about the Democratic Party that has chosen him to lead it out of its abyss.

We can chalk this up as a gaffe, and by one man. But might Dean have accidentally revealed the prevalent mindset of his party? This is a valid concern since he was elected to head the DNC. Consider this story by Democratic consultant Mark Mellman. It seems that the Democrats are bemused that they've been drawing less and less of "the Hispanic vote" in recent elections. The article has lots of number crunching to that effect, but the fact that Democratic support among Hispanics is falling is far less important than the angst among the Democrats about it or how they plan to approach the problem.

Shortly after the election, I wrote here that for too long Democrats had considered Latinos part of the base, [emphasis mine] failing to acknowledge changes and contradictions in their political views. For example, we found in 2002 that while Latinos identified as Democrats, unlike other partisans, they bore relatively little ill will toward Republicans — a dangerous situation for us.

Mellman is right that Hispanics aren't part of the Democratic base, but he sees this only on the banal level of the polling data. He and his fellow Democrats really should ask himself this: What, intrinsically, makes Hispanics part of any political base, much less the property of the Democrats? And the fact that they fail to ask this question causes them to fail to understand that the "why" of the shift should be telling them something.

Consultants who specialize in Latino politics have long been directing Democrats’ attention to Spanish-dominant recent immigrants. Those are the easiest voters to poll, but, important as those voters are, they are not where the problem seems to be.

Latinos who voted for Kerry in very large numbers tended to be poorer, Spanish-speaking and living in Latino neighborhoods. Those less likely to have voted for Kerry include better-off, English-dominant and bilingual folks who live mainly in more diverse neighborhoods [italics mine].

According to the Annenberg polling, the decline in Democratic support among Latinos came almost entirely in English-language interviews. Kerry did just one point worse than Gore had among Spanish-dominant voters.

In other words, Hispanics who have, dare I say, assimilated tend to vote more like members of a certain even larger demographic that the Dems tend to ignore, except maybe to call them "Anglos" or think of them as "Rednecks" from time to time. (Note the parallel with "African-Americans" and "hotel staffers" here.) What is going on here? Why have they sold out? Why aren't these "Latinos" being the "Democrat ballot-box stuffers" they're supposed to be? Think I'm being silly? Try this.

Recapturing the enthusiasm of the Hispanic community is a central task for Democrats. To be successful, we must first admit we have a problem and locate it with precision. Only then will we be able to develop the strategies and tactics to stanch the losses.

Screw "the enthusiasm of the Hispanic community." Why not try appealing to everyone equally? Here's the problem, Blue Party: you've forgotten to think of people as individuals. Hispanics often arrive here as poor immigrants who barely know English, if they do at all. Government benefits may seem tempting to them then, before they've had a chance to get on their feet and prosper as America lets them do. They become prosperous, learn English, and realize that it's on their productive backs that the benefits your party offers will ride. When this happens -- when they realize the American Dream -- your party is toast. In other words, they get up to speed on the same things that most whites have known since the days of Jimmah Carter. There is no fundamental difference between my needs as a white man, or the needs of a black man, or of a Hispanic man. (And this is what the assimilated Hispanic data ought to be telling you.) It's time to stop confusing wealth redistribution programs that set up artificial conflicts with "needs." The Republicans seem to be slowly becoming confused in this way. The Democrats have a big opportunity to seize the mantle of economic freedom here. Some Democrats get this, Terry Michael, for one. To quote him: Here's rough cut: 'Government: Assure liberty by staying as far away as possible from our bank accounts, our bedrooms and our bodies.'"

What's so much better about this formula than the one Dean et al. refuse to abandon? It appeals to everyone because it protects the ability of everyone to live as he sees fit. And note that along with the mass appeal that the term "everyone" suggests, the word is a compound of "every" and "one." As Ayn Rand once said, "The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities." When the Democrats figure out which minority they should reach out to, they will no longer become the party of special interests, but will be able to claim rightly to be the party to whom all Americans are the natural constituents. But this requires that the Democrats stop classifying us like barnyard animals to be yoked to a political machine (or milked, as the case may be), and seeing us as individuals whose freedom must be defended.

-- CAV