Politics

A longstanding belief in Democratic circles has completely collapsed

Published

2 years ago

November 13, 2024

A longstanding belief in Democratic circles has completely collapsed

Crucial to President-elect Donald Trump’s first victory in the popular vote were his gains with nonwhite voters. According to exit polls, Trump received 45% of the Latino vote — including a majority of Latino men — in what was a record high for a Republican presidential candidate. He doubled the share of young Black men he got in 2020. He made a 5-point gain with Asian Americans. In the heavily Arab American city of Dearborn, Michigan, where Democrats usually dominate, Trump easily won.

Exit poll numbers don’t tell the full story, and the details could change as more sophisticated voter data comes out in the coming months. But combined with pre-election polling and trends from earlier electionsthe emerging picture is clear: Trump’s coalition is becoming more racially diverse even as he leans into bigoted hateful rhetoric more than ever before.

Many liberals forget that those groups are never a monolith, and their members also have other identities that shape how they view the world.

Trump’s victory is shattering a common slogan and guiding principle in Democratic circles that “demographics is destiny.” There has long been a belief in the party that Democrats were destined to hold a long-term majority in the country as the nation became more diverse. That belief was predicated on the idea that the party won ethnic minorities because it presented itself as the multicultural and socially inclusive party, and because it treated minorities as interest groups to cater to based on priorities specific to their ethnicity. That belief has always been problematic, and now it is collapsing.

Trump’s playbook has thrown a grenade into the Democratic worldview, and the fallout among the left hasn’t been pretty. Where I expected to see introspection and sadness there have instead been expressions of spite. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania told Semafor“Dearborn delivered for Trump? OK, congratulations. You’re going to love the next Muslim ban.” Some progressive commentators have pitted ethnic minorities against each other and described the ones who appeared “loyal” to the party more favorably. “Black people did their job. Trump’s gains with Latinos were real. Trump is their guy,” declared one liberal commentator. There were even cruel viral jokes circulating on social media about how liberals now considered themselves indifferent to Trump’s promised “bloody” deportation operation because they felt betrayed by the Latino swing to the GOP.

This anger is reductive and retrograde — and it helps illuminate why the Democratic Party is in this predicament. Yes, people from the same ethnic group do often share common experiences and exhibit trends in their values and priorities. But many liberals forget that those groups are never a monolith, and their members also have other identities that shape how they view the world, including class, gender, age and the countless subcultures they choose to associate with. New York Times’ political correspondent Astead Herndon, who has long flagged Black men voters’ changing political attitudes, has rightly called it a “racist assumption” that people from racial minorities will automatically support the Democratic Party.

Setting aside the finger-pointing, I do understand why it is shocking for some that Trump could win over racial minorities even while saying or implying bigoted things about them. Some wonder how could Trump win over huge swaths of Latinos even as he demonizes Latino migrants with degrading, fascist language? How could Trump win over Muslim voters even after promising to re-institute a ban on migration from Muslim majority countries?

There are a lot of explanatory factors. First, people who are part of racial minorities are strategic voters just like white voters. Given the choice between only two options in an election, a voter of color can simultaneously object to Trump’s language, but still prefer the GOP’s right-wing policy positions on issues such as abortion. The economy is a particularly big example. Thomas Wood, a political scientist at Ohio State University, told The Atlantic that the breadth of the swing to the right across countless demographic groups since 2020 suggested a “really simple story … that secular dissatisfaction with Biden’s economic stewardship affected most demographic groups in a fairly homogeneous way.” The Austin American Statesman found a number of undocumented immigrants — arguably the most vulnerable demographic group in the country now — were “optimistic” about Trump’s victory because they thought it would be good for business and worth the increased risk of deportation.

In the case of the Dearborn switch, one big reason is obvious: Many Arab Americans switched sides out of disgust at the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s military operation in Gaza. These voters made a (misguided, in my opinion) bet that there is some chance that Trump will take a different course of action.

Of course, racial minorities can also share Trump’s worldview about race. People of color can and regularly do hold bigoted attitudes toward other minorities. What’s to say that conservative voters of color don’t just tune out or laugh off Trump’s remarks when they’re trained on their specific community, but nod along as he calls out every other marginalized group under the sun? Or what’s to say they don’t endorse his offensive language but agree with the policy outcomes they help support, such as being “tough” on immigration, crime, or China?

Democrats cling to their old “demographics are destiny” worldview at their own peril. Not only is anti-bigoted messaging inadequate to hold onto voters of color, it can sometimes put them at odds with their lived experience. A good example of this is how Democrats have controversially incorporated the term “Latinx” into some of their messaging to Latino voters, in an attempt to be gender inclusive. A recent study by scholars from Harvard University and Georgetown University found that the term actually drives Latino voters away. While that backlash effect is driven by conservative attitudes, according to the study, the broader takeaway is that Democrats should not assume maximizing the vocabulary of inclusivity is always in the party’s interest.

This is not an argument that the Democrats ought to mimic the GOP’s right-wing nationalism or discard its commitment to multiculturalism. Rather, the point is Democrats ought not to take racial minorities for granted as meek loyalists who have to choose them because the alternative is assumed to be worse, or see them as an interest group that can be pandered to based on a race-specific lens. They ought to treat voters of color the way they would white voters — as complicated, ideologically flexible people who care about kitchen table issues. And they need to excite them the same way too — by making a compelling case for the future.

So far, Trump’s dark vision for that future is winning. But there is one obvious way to keep anti-bigotry at the center of the Democratic Party — and the broader left — while staying laser focused on economic liberation: hammering home that prejudice and culture wars are used to divide us us distract us from the class war at the heart of American unfreedom.

Zeeshan Aleem

Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for BLN Daily. Previously, he worked at Vox, HuffPost and Blue Light News, and he has also been published in, among other places, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, and The Intercept. You can sign up for his free politics newsletter here.

Politics

Gavin Newsom’s first 2028 test: This fall, in Nevada

Published

24 hours ago

September 7, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

LAS VEGAS — If California Gov. Gavin Newsom runs for president in 2028, next-door Nevada will be a crucial test. This fall’s governor’s race is offering a preview.

As GOP Gov. Joe Lombardo runs for reelection, he’s trying to pin high Nevada fuel prices — a majority of which is imported from California — on “Gavin Newsom’s energy policies.” He lambasts California as too expensive and too regulated. And he’s hammering his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Aaron Ford, for accepting Newsom’s endorsement, betting that it will turn off Nevada swing voters.

“The contrast is simple: I’m fighting Gavin Newsom’s agenda and Aaron Ford is trying to import it into Nevada,” Lombardo said in a statement to Blue Light News.

This could be a test run for 2028, when Newsom may call upon Nevadans — one-fifth of whom were born in California — to deliver him a primary victory in the early-voting state, and possibly a presidential victory.

“They understand California costs more,” Donna West, chair of the Nevada Democratic Party’s senior caucus, said of Nevada’s California expats. “They also understand that California is the fourth-largest economy in the entire world, and that Gavin Newsom ran that as effectively as he possibly can.”

Newsom’s office declined to comment. A person close to the governor, granted anonymity to discuss the sentiment in his orbit, said they are “thrilled” Republicans are spending money to “plaster Newsom’s name across a key early state.”

“Republicans seem awfully concerned about an endorsement from someone who leads the 2028 Democratic field in Nevada by nearly 2-to-1,” the person said, pointing to a November 2025 Emerson poll of a hypothetical 2028 Democratic primary field.

Ford, for his part, shrugs off the attacks.

“Lombardo tries to cast blame elsewhere, but everyone knows that when the war started in February, that we saw our gas prices increase almost immediately,” Ford told Blue Light News after a recent town hall in Las Vegas. “People believe their own eyes, and they remember their experiences.”

The demonization of California is nothing new in Nevada politics: For years, Republicans have blasted their western neighbor as too expensive and too woke.

But the stakes are higher, and the connection more palpable, this year, as Newsom explores a presidential bid. He would likely need to perform very well in Nevada, now second on the Democratic calendar, to build early momentum toward the party nomination. And come November 2028, he’d need to fare well in Nevada again, this time among the state’s general electorate, a plurality of which are independents.

Newsom has stumped for Democrats across the country this cycle, and he blitzed through the South this week, including a swing through South Carolina, whose Democrats will vote first, right before Nevada, in 2028.

But Republicans are looking to weaponize Newsom’s Silver State swing in July, where Ford introduced him at a new Las Vegas field office as “the governor of the great state of California.”

“Our next president!” an audience member shouted, eliciting cheers.

The Lombardo-aligned Better Nevada PAC shared polling with Blue Light News in July showing Newsom’s favorability 20 points underwater in Nevada and losing a hypothetical 2028 head-to-head with Vice President JD Vance. Shortly thereafter, the PAC began an ad blitz tying Ford to the California governor.

Billboards touting Newsom’s endorsement of Ford, paid for by the PAC, now line highways across Nevada, and digital and streaming ads have run consistently since the visit. “Newsom and Ford: Shared vision. Shared values,” one ad says.

A person familiar with the PAC’s internal polling, granted anonymity to discuss private data, said it shows Newsom’s endorsement is now the second-most-known datapoint about the attorney general.

“Gavin Newsom is the singular most unpopular elected official in Nevada,” said Jeremy Hughes, a longtime Nevada GOP strategist running the Lombardo-aligned PAC. “Aaron Ford brought him into the state. … There’s no better way to help him out than to put up these signs and run ads, letting people know that he’s excited about being endorsed by Gavin Newsom.”

Republicans in the state have long blamed Californian expats for housing shortages and rising prices and connect their opponents to California liberals. A surge of ex-Californians leaving the state during the Covid-19 pandemic, some fleeing high taxes and cost of living, accelerated the trend.

Sam Brown, the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in 2022, blasted the “energy policies of Gavin Newsom”; in 2018, GOP governor nominee Adam Laxalt lamented the “Californization” of Nevada, even as Californians bankrolled his campaign. During Lombardo’s first run for governor in 2022, he slammed incumbent Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak for taking his cues from Newsom: “Don’t let Steve Sisolak turn Nevada into California,” one post said. Republicans tied their opponents to Nancy Pelosi for decades.

Lombardo’s argument this time around is more focused. He notes that the vast majority of Nevada’s gasoline comes from California, and argues that California’s efforts to cut carbon emissions have caused fuel prices to soar. A gallon of gas in Nevada costs nearly $5, according to AAA, one of the highest prices in the nation.

“The policies coming from Gavin Newsom and California Democrats … don’t stop at their state line,” Lombardo said in a statement. “Nevada and other states import a significant portion of our fuel from California, so when Governor Newsom shuts down refineries and imposes regulations that reduce supply and increase costs, Nevada families feel the consequences at the pump.”

It’s a strategy that allows Lombardo — running in a difficult national environment for incumbent Republicans — to acknowledge voters’ economic pain without blaming President Donald Trump or his own party. Indeed, Lombardo shared an April column in the Nevada Independent that placed blame at the feet of both Newsom and Trump. (Lombardo, in his post, blamed only Newsom.)

Democrats don’t think voters will buy it. ‘“As far as gas prices, it’s so obviously increased since the war,” Rep. Dina Titus said. “People in Nevada aren’t stupid.”

Ford has his own millstone to saddle Lombardo with: the president. At a recent town hall in Las Vegas, he repeatedly blasted the “Lombardo-Trump economy” that is “making everything too expensive.”

“Voters absolutely tie the handling of the economy to Trump,” said Mike Noble, an independent Phoenix-based pollster who works in Nevada regularly. “Instead of blaming Trump, why not tie it to the boogeyman next door and blame California?”

Politics

‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing

Published

2 days ago

September 6, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing

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Politics

Trump wants the Postal Service to radically overhaul mail voting. But ballots are already going out.

Published

4 days ago

September 4, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump’s controversial demands for the Postal Service to overhaul and monitor millions of mail ballots hit another snag on Friday, when North Carolina became the first state in the nation to start sending out ballots for the November election.

In March, Trump signed the initial executive order, which aimed to crack down on mail-in voting — which he regularly alleges without evidence is a vector for widespread voter fraud — and assert an unprecedented amount of federal control over the upcoming elections.

Under this order and the subsequent rule drafted by the U.S. Postal Service, the USPS would refuse to deliver ballots to states that failed to provide lists of eligible mail voters or did not adhere to an approved envelope design style.

Since then, the order has faced legal challenges, and it remains paused by a federal judge’s orders. But the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow the new rule to proceed — something current and former election officials from both parties say would be both a legal nightmare that oversteps the federal government’s traditional role in elections and a logistical one that is happening far too close to the November election to implement even if they agreed with it.

“Why the hell are you rocking the boat this late in the game?” said Stephen Richer, a former Republican recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has clashed with Trump allies for defending the security of the 2020 election.

Still, election officials are trying to project a sense of normalcy for voters, particularly in North Carolina, which serves as a test of whether established local election systems can operate normally amid intensifying federal scrutiny.

“I want to emphasize this point because there has been a lot of outside noise: Our county workers are ready,” Sam Hayes, a longtime Republican lawyer in the state and now executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in a Thursday afternoon press conference.

He added, “All we can do is what we’re doing. … It is business as usual as far as I’m concerned.”

Despite the legal challenges, the Trump administration has continued to press the courts to let it proceed. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift an order from a Massachusetts judge which temporarily prevents the USPS from enforcing their rule. It is the second time the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to step in, after winning an earlier victory in which the high court dismissed an earlier hold on the rule as premature.

“The uncertainty is coming from a single activist judge who continues to try and obstruct President Trump from implementing commonsense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans vote in American elections,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement. “These safeguards for mail ballots were proposed months ago giving election officials ample time to prepare for the 2026 election.”

The USPS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Election officials said that if the rule goes into effect this close to November, it would cause chaos and place added strain on the USPS and election officials. And an anonymous federal whistleblower said in a report circulated earlier this week by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that the USPS was moving forward in a “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process” to try to implement the new system ahead of the midterms.

In the coming weeks, states across the country will follow North Carolina’s lead. Nine other states will begin mailing ballots in the next two weeks, according to a tracker from the National Conference of State Legislatures — with the biggest day for mailing coming 45 days before the election in mid-September.

“It would be so outrageous to try to let this go into effect. It’s hard to even imagine,” said Ben Hovland, a senior fellow for democracy at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress and former Democratic commissioner with the Election Assistance Commission who was fired by Trump in July.

He added, “It would be a break-glass moment for our democracy.”

The rule would require meticulous changes to ballot handling and tracking practices that Hovland said are impossible to implement before Election Day in about two months, effectively disenfranchising millions of voters.

“Ballots are printed. Envelopes are printed. You can go on and on with all the practical reasons that show that implementing something like this at this time is not feasible,” he said.

Richer said he doubted the new rules would bring about more security. Even if the USPS received lists from the states, according to the postal service’s final rule, it would not do any additional vetting of the list, Richer said.

“It’s just that the mail ballots have to be on that list, and I don’t see what added value for election integrity that does,” he said.

He added, “It creates a lot of administrative burden, and I think it creates a lot more opportunity for error.”

While a decision looms in the courts, election officials and experts cast doubt on the likelihood of the rules going into effect before November. A more pressing issue, they said, is the confusion and uncertainty surrounding mail-in ballots, which could subvert and change the behaviors of voters.

“It makes things seem messy or difficult, and it can dissuade people from participating or coming out to vote,” Hovland said. “It certainly also helps establish a pretext to make bad faith claims about election results.”

Hovland said that while none of these claims of voter fraud are backed up with facts, they could cause Americans to lose faith in the voting process.

Still, some current officials contended they were well-prepared for whatever happens — and that they’d be able to communicate effectively with voters who have become increasingly buffeted by dramatic rhetoric about the once-unmentioned nuts and bolts of actually running an election.

“There’s always a lot of noise around elections, that’s not going to change, and it can be hard to differentiate that from what’s actually going on on the ground,” said Jason Tyson, director of external affairs for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.

As Election Day approaches, Tyson and election officials said they urge voters to check their registration status and make a plan to vote.

He added, “I think we’ve got a really well-trained, solid staff who are ready, and who have gone through all of the checks and balances and points of contact that we need to do to get to where we are.”