MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki put a spotlight on Hispanic voters fleeing the Democratic Party Monday and a guest on the progressive network said modern Democrats are too "socially liberal" for working-class Latinos.
"One of the major stories to emerge from the 2020 election was the shift we saw in the Hispanic vote," Kornacki told MSNBC viewers before noting Democratic presidential candidates lost 17% of their margin in the Hispanic vote from 2016 to 2020.
"You know what? The trend seems to be continuing in 2022, what you’re looking at here, this is the average of every poll we’ve got out there that’s been taken over the last three months that looks at the Hispanic vote," Kornacki continued as an on-screen monitor revealed Democrats now hold only a 13-point edge with Hispanics.
"What’s going on here?" Kornacki asked.
MSNBC then introduced Ruy Teixeira, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who wrote in 2002 that Hispanic support could make the Democrats the "party of the 21st century." He has changed his tune over the past 20 years because he feels working-class and Hispanic voters are losing interest in liberal ideology.
"There is something happening that is sending them away from the Democrats… One is that I think Democrats assume that Hispanics because they’re ‘people of color’ are sort of all in on this racial reckoning that we had in the summer of 2020 around George Floyd, and generally they can be treated as a group that is very, very sensitive to these issues of race, very sensitive to the kinds of dialogue around that," Teixeira said.
"Very sensitive on the issue of immigration, for example, which was something that Democrats always thought they had a big advantage on, and I think in the process, Democrats have lost track," Teixeira continued. "Hispanic voters are normy voters. They’re voters who are concerned with upward mobility, with jobs, healthcare, their communities, their kids, effective schools, public safety. These are voters who thought the Democrats could be relied upon to do a good job in those respects… all of that got lost I think in the transition from 2016 to 2020."
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Teixeira said Democrats have become "far more socially liberal" which doesn’t always play with Hispanic voters.
Teixeira’s comments echoed what Giancarlo Sopo, who ran the Hispanic advertising and rapid response effort for former President Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, recently told Fox News Digital.
He called what’s occurring a "once in a generation type of political realignment," saying working-class Hispanic voters simply don’t have anything in common with the modern "woke" Democrat. He added it’s critical to consider the Hispanic poverty rate has declined significantly in recent years, as members of the community create new small businesses in droves.
"We're aspirational people. We want to work hard. We came to this country to succeed. Also, I think during that same time, it would be fair to say that the Democratic Party's overly educated or miseducated, depending how you look at it, you know, elites have taken over the party, and it's difficult to find groups that are more different than a woke White Democrat and your average Hispanic," Sopo told Fox News Digital.
"They're economically different. The social and cultural values are very different. Your average Hispanic tends to be far more religious and traditional in their cultural views than your average Democrat. So, I think if you understand the cultural transformation that we've seen on the Democrats, where they've become a lot more radicalized, and at the same time Hispanics… don’t just believe in the American dream. We personify it," Sopo continued. "Hispanics are really succeeding in America, the Democratic message just does not appeal to Hispanics."
