In electoral politics, the ability to bring people together to form a coalition is an effective tool for victory.
Democrats have always been the superior party when it comes to weaving people in different groups, with different and often conflicting interests, into a single coalition. But new data suggest that their coalition is fraying, which would spell electoral disaster for them in 2024.
The coalition that sustains the Democratic Party consists of groups which, if we can be honest, are unlikely to hang out together at barbecues. Between the various sexual orientations and gender identities, the racial and ethnic groups, the union workers and the wealthy suburbanites, there are too many culture-clashes, too many conflicting interests and desires.
Their coalition is united not by common interests or a common vision, but by fear — fear specifically of Republicans; baseless fear that the Democratic Party spends every possible moment and its entire messaging budget to spread wherever it can.
This explains not only the Democrats’ coalition of incompatible interests, but also their unbroken, generational electoral successes in cities whose problems they never manage to solve. No matter how bad things get in Chicago, Baltimore and Philadelphia — and they have been bad for a very long time — Democrats always coast to victory every election. Few Republicans have even sniffed power in these Democratic strongholds in five or six decades, but no one ever thinks to blame the guys in charge.
If only out of frustration, one would expect the voters to try something different. In New York City, they did. They voted in Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani and then Republican (later Independent) Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who served a combined five terms. The city, once written off as ungovernable, improved by every metric over its 20 years without a Democratic mayor. It has deteriorated ever since the accession of Bill DeBlasio (D).
Democrats have and remain confident of their lock on urban voters — especially on Black and Hispanic residents of large cities overrun by crime and economic depression. These voters have been, in fact, key to Democrats’ electoral victories in various states where urban population concentrations overwhelm the rest of the state’s population. Democrats wholly depend on their lopsided support to deliver statewide victories and votes in the Electoral College.
But now, something might be changing. A rift is developing in the coalition between those voters affected by Democratic leaders’ policy decisions, and the ones insulated from those policies.
You see it on illegal immigration. In Chicago, residents now overwhelmingly view the left’s commitment to sanctuary policies for illegal immigrants as diverting resources from citizens. A new poll of city residents recently found that “70 percent of those who responded said the city’s focus on housing new migrants is negatively affecting current Chicago residents who may be in need.”
This negative view is “shared by 67 percent of Democrats, 74 percent of women, 79 percent of Black and 71 percent of Hispanic voters.” More half of those polled said that the city’s embrace of migrants “made Chicago less safe” — and given recent history, that takes some effort.
But the real issue is the extreme disconnect between liberal whites in Chicago and everyone else.
According to the poll, only 31 percent of Black respondents and 38 percent of Hispanics support keeping Chicago’s sanctuary city designation, versus a 49 percent plurality of white voters.
White Chicagoans are the least likely to live in areas where the illegal immigrants are housed and brought into the schools, so the issue affects them the least. On Chicago’s South Side — the rough area where Barack Obama once worked as a community organizer — only 30 percent want Chicago to remain a sanctuary city.
The open border and resulting crush of humanity flooding America’s cities, burdening its schools and consuming scarce resources, are no accident. They are the results of Joe Biden’s 2020 election promises. His reelection will only make matters worse. His designed border crisis is harming all Americans, but it is disproportionately harmful to those who usually vote Democrat most overwhelmingly.
Does this mean lifelong Democrats will suddenly change their partisan voting habits? Not necessarily. But it should give Republicans a reason to reach out to voters they usually make the mistake of writing off.
Remember, Republicans don’t actually have to carry the Black or Hispanic vote. They only have to make a dent in the margins by which Democrats carry them. If they do that, there just aren’t enough suburban, chardonnay-swilling, white progressive female voters with savior complexes who can drag their candidates across the finish line.
Of course, this is all predicated on Republicans actually doing the hard work of reaching out, appealing to and listening to this pool of possibly winnable minority voters. After decades of exile followed by not trying, this is outside their comfort zone. But the longer they avoid showing their faces in these communities, the easier it will be for people there to keep fearing them. And that’s just what the Democrats need.
Derek Hunter is host of the Derek Hunter Podcast and a former staffer for the late Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.).