Democrats are losing minority support, and I have a modest proposal for Republicans: Educate minority voters and immigrants on what Democrats actually believe.
Writing in The New York Times, Ross Douthat wonders why Joe Biden is so unpopular.
Well, let me count the ways. . .
Douthat’s list of reasons isn’t all-inclusive, as blogger Ann Althouse notes: “Not one word about the Hunter Biden scandal.”
But I think Douthat is on to something with this statement: “Across multiple polls, Biden seems to be losing support from minority voters, continuing a Trump-era trend. This raises the possibility that there’s a social-issues undertow for Democrats, in which even when wokeness isn’t front and center, the fact that the party’s activist core is so far left gradually pushes culturally conservative African Americans and Hispanics toward the G.O.P. — much as culturally conservative white Democrats drifted slowly into the Republican coalition between the 1960s and the 2000s.”
That’s exactly right.
In the late 1960s, Democrats went from the party of lunch-pail issues, attracting and holding support from blue-collar whites for nearly half a century that way, to the party of social issues that appeal to upper-class educated white people.
(“Acid, Amnesty and Abortion.”)
This created the Reagan Democrat phenomenon as working-class whites switched parties, which led to a national political realignment and three terms of Republican presidents.
(And the only reason it wasn’t four terms is the 1992 election featured a three-way competition on lunch-pail issues from Bill “The era of big government is over” Clinton, Ross “giant sucking sound” Perot and George H.W. Bush, whose two middle initials help illustrate why he wasn’t as effective with blue-collar voters as his opposition.)
Now it’s Joseph Robinette Biden’s turn not to connect.
While American households — especially working-class households — face skyrocketing costs for food, gas and housing, the Democrats’ policy priorities seem to involve gender transitions for teens and easy entry for illegal immigrants (who compete with working-class blacks and Hispanics for jobs).
Biden’s Justice Department is even “investigating” a Florida state college trustee for “misgendering” a diversity-equity-and-inclusion official at the school.
Misgendering, using a trans person’s birth pronouns, isn’t a crime — it’s not even a civil-rights violation — but it is a Team Biden priority.
You can see why, say, a black man who works at a tire shop in Erie, Pa., might not feel this administration has his interests at heart.
So the Democrats are starting to bleed minority voters who see it’s the GOP that’s a coalition representing the working class of all races, while the Democrats are the party of gender-studies majors, along with billionaires and their flunkies.
Democratic cities, meanwhile, are in turmoil: Officials worry about the surge of migrants because they burden social services and anger local working-class minorities by competing for jobs and housing.
But I have an idea.
What if they also worried about the immigrants’ politics?
Everyone knows Democrats are encouraging illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America because they expect them to vote Democratic.
But will they, if they know what Democrats stand for?
I propose that Republicans, or GOP-aligned groups, start an education and outreach program aimed at those immigrants, explaining to them what Democrats actually support.
It should include pictures of teenage girls whose breasts have been removed as they transition to being male, with their mothers standing proudly by them (these pictures are already out there on social media, circulated by the pro-transition crowd).
It should include Democratic officials’ own words about removing police from urban neighborhoods and letting social workers deal with violent crime.
And it should include environmentalists’ vows to get rid of air conditioning, automobiles, cheap electricity and inexpensive housing — you know, the kinds of things immigrants come to America to get.
Every immigrant bused up north — or even in camps in Texas, New Mexico or wherever — ought to receive this literature, which should warn them: “Beware of Democrats, the enemy of the working people.”
Do it right, and when Democrats attack this stuff and say they don’t actually favor teenage transitions or a ban on gas stoves, their own constituencies will go ballistic.
Make it painful.
It’ll probably work.
And it will definitely be fun to watch.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.
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