Dan Pfeiffer: There Is No Path To Victory for Democrats If They Keep Losing Latino Voters at This Very Fast Rate

FAVREAU: “Anything else jump out at you from the report?”
PFEIFFER: “I mean, there are two things. One — I mean, the main story of this is that Democrats are in a huge bit of trouble. Like, this — it just — there’s no way to look at this without recognizing the massive scale of our problems. And you can kind of tell yourself that things might be kind of okay by looking at just the shift from ‘20 to ‘24, but if you really want to assess where we are as a party, you have to look at the shift from 2016 to 2024. And this is particularly true with Latino voters. Okay. In 20 — “
FAVREAU: “Or 2012. 2012 — “
PFEIFFER: “Even with Latino voters, actually, is the one group where Hillary Clinton did better than than Obama. She — two points better. But so, in 2016, Hillary Clinton won 70% of Latino vote. Kamala Harris won 54%. It’s a 16-point drop. And then we — you would like to think that gender, you know, that this is all about men. It’s not all about men. Latinas moved 17 points in eight years. Latino men went 14 points in eight years. There is no path to the — Latinos are the fastest-growing population in the country. They are particularly politically powerful because of how their — how the population is distributed in in electoral-rich Sunbelt states like Texas, Florida, Arizona, Nevada, etc., and so they’re becoming more of the electorate and we are losing more of them at a very fast rate. Like, if that trend continues, there is no path to Democrats winning elections. And so we have to take that — like, everyone was telling themselves stories about that maybe 2020 was an aberration, because Trump made gains there, because of Covid. Like, there was big talk about Covid. This is something bigger than that and we have to address that. The second thing in here is that Democrats lost new voters for the first time. Obama got 58% of new voters in 2012. Biden and Clinton got 55%. Kamala Harris only got 49.5% of new voters, which it speaks to the gains that Trump made with the — with young — with younger people and particularly young people of color who are coming into the electorate. And if that trend continues, we’re in huge trouble. And so the message I take from this is, anyone who thinks that we can get away with just tinkering around the edges, just hoping that Donald Trump becomes unpopular or they nominate some yahoo in 2028 or we’re going to ride the wave of tariffs and inflation to a narrow House victory is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Like, we have to be willing to ask very hard questions. We have to be willing to evaluate every premise, look at how we govern, campaign, message across the board, because right now — and this is where the Obama coalition/the Trump coalition point matters, is we are on the wrong side of political history right now. We are the party that is hoping for lower turnout. That the fewer people that vote, we have a better chance of winning. That we are losing ground with the fastest-growing parts of the population, younger voters and Latinos. And that is — that is a party that can win an election every once in a while, if the stars align correctly, but that is a party that will look a lot like the Democratic Party from the 60s until the 90s. We maybe can win when Nixon gets impeached and — when Nixon resigns and we win that election, and then we lose the next — for the next 12 years. Like, there has to be a fundamental change in approach, change in the — in — just in all — we just have to really look at it because there is no easy answer here to what’s happening.”