Univision’s weekly political affairs show Al Punto recently featured a familiar guest, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Pérez, as well as the rollout of some familiar tropes - just in time for the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
Watch as host Jorge Ramos and Pérez try to rekindle some of that old 2016 magic:
JORGE RAMOS, SENIOR NEWS ANCHOR, UNIVISION: Do you believe we can say that again in 2020, that no one can make it to the White House, no one can become President, without the Latino vote?
TOM PEREZ, CHAIR, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE: Exactly. Look the, the blue wall in the West: Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona with Senator Sinema, Nevada, California. We have opportunities in Texas. And then here in Florida, North Carolina. Almost 10% of the population of North Carolina are Latinos. Look, the Latino vote will be the difference.
The first of these tropes was, of course, the whole “no one can win the White House without the Latino vote”, which Ramos hammered over and over in 2015 and 2016, only to watch Donald Trump triumph with less than 30% of the nationwide Latino vote. Such a statement seeks desperately to cast Hispanics as a monolithic single-interest voting bloc, and dismisses any possibility of ideological diversity. It is amazing that Ramos has still learned nothing, and has still not absorbed the lessons of the nation's last presidential election cycle.
Pérez then chimes in with talk of an ostensibly Latino “Blue Wall” in the West, which speaks to a Southwestern strategy for 2020. Here again, there is an assumed monolith. No mention is made of the fact that, for example, Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO) is on the ballot in 2020. Gardner horrified national Spanish-language media by winning 49% of the Hispanic vote en route to his election to the U.S. Senate in 2014. You wouldn't know that from watching national Spanish-language media, as we can't recall ever seeing him booked on any such program. This, plus assumptions about Texas, suggest that any talk of a Hispanic Blue Wall is based upon deeply flawed predicates.
Tellingly, Ramos doesn’t discuss the elephant in the room. Beyond the difficulty that Pérez acknowledges with the Cuban-American vote, there is the persistent and now growing issue of Democrat alienation of Evangelicals, Catholics, and other people of faith. In the past, both Ramos and Pérez have acknowledged this to be true in their own ways, and yet they failed to mention it here. Also note that there is no mention whatsoever of Florida’s burgeoning Puerto Rican community, upon which many Democrat hopes crashed in 2018. Republicans won the races for Governor and the U.S. Senate with significant portions of the Puerto Rican vote, despite efforts to turn Florida into the apex of the Blue Tsunami.
These issues won’t go away just because Ramos and Pérez attempt to sweep them under the rug for Univision’s viewers.
Below is a fuller transcript of the aforementioned segment as aired on Univision’s Al Punto on Sunday, February 3, 2019.
JORGE RAMOS, SENIOR NEWS ANCHOR, UNIVISION: Do you believe we can say that again in 2020, that no one can make it to the White House, no one can become President, without the Latino vote?
TOM PEREZ, CHAIR, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE: Exactly. Look the, the blue wall in the West: Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona with Senator Sinema, Nevada, California. We have opportunities in Texas. And then here in Florida, North Carolina. Almost 10% of the population of North Carolina are Latinos. Look, the Latino vote will be the difference.
RAMOS: Tom, how do you explain that one out of three Latinos voted for President Donald Trump, and that polls suggests that Republicans are gaining an even greater share of the Latino vote?
PEREZ: I’m not sure that it’s one out of three Latinos,
RAMOS: No?
PEREZ: Matt Barreto of Latino Decisions, after ‘28 (sic), for example, the Latino vote belonged to Democrats. Here in Florida, we have challenges with the Cuban vote and we have to organize within that community. But in Nevada, in Colorado, in New Mexico,.in Arizona, the Latino vote…
RAMOS: So it’s not a third. You don’t think that Trump has one out of three (Latino) voters.
PEREZ: Exactly. I think it’s less than that. But what we have to do is understand that we have to build relationships with the community. We have to clearly communicate that the Democratic Party will fight to improve the lives of our community.
