{"id":13399,"date":"2023-08-08T16:03:55","date_gmt":"2023-08-08T16:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13399"},"modified":"2023-08-08T16:03:56","modified_gmt":"2023-08-08T16:03:56","slug":"how-democrats-can-win-the-latino-vote-in-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13399","title":{"rendered":"How Democrats Can Win the Latino Vote in 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Democratic candidates need to stop making excuses and avoid Obama\u2019s mistakes. The Hispanic population is much more than an electoral fad. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

by Jorge Ramos <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I am dreading the 2020 presidential race,\n which I think will be the most brutal Americans have ever witnessed. \nIrrespective of who the Democratic nominee is, President Trump will use \nall the power and dirty tricks at his disposal to remain in power for \nanother four years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As was the case in\n 2016, if Democrats want to have any chance of defeating Mr. Trump they \nwill need the strong support of Latino voters. This time, however, they \nwill have to work extra hard to get it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The truth is that no candidate will be able to win the White House without Latino votes. Not even Mr. Trump, who got 29 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2016<\/a>.\n A higher Latino turnout in states like Florida and Arizona could have \nproduced a completely different outcome that year. Mr. Trump would never\n have won the presidency without Florida\u2019s 29 electoral votes and \nArizona\u2019s 11.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The number of eligible voters of Hispanic background who did not cast a ballot in 2016 was heartbreakingly high. Over half of the 27 million<\/a> eligible Hispanic voters stayed home. Why? Although many of them didn\u2019t want to vote for Mr. Trump, in part because he had made racist remarks about Mexican immigrants, they weren\u2019t at all enthusiastic about Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year, for \nthe first time in history, Hispanics will be the largest minority group \nof potential voters in the United States. According to the Pew Research \nCenter, 32 million Latinos will be eligible to vote<\/a> in 2020, compared with 30 million African-Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If\n Hispanics shake off their apathy and turn out in record-high numbers in\n crucial states, a Democrat may well defeat President Trump. But for \nthis to happen, the Democrats must be honest with the Latino community: \nThey must vow not to fall into the same traps they have in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\n fact that Juli\u00e1n Castro \u2014 the only Latino to run for the Democratic \nnomination \u2014 dropped out of the race should not be used as an excuse to \nstop discussing the issues most relevant to the Hispanic population<\/a>:\n education, good jobs and health insurance. For Hispanics, it all comes \ndown to economic opportunity, the fight against discrimination and the \nright to be treated as American citizens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is, however, another subject that remains painful for Latinos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\n Latino people hold a grudge against Democrats in general \u2014 and former \nPresident Barack Obama in particular \u2014 for two reasons: More than three million<\/a>\n undocumented immigrants were deported during the Obama administration \nand Mr. Obama didn\u2019t get through Congress an immigration reform bill \nthat would have allowed millions of undocumented immigrants to remain \nlegally in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can guarantee that we will have, in the first year, an immigration bill that I strongly support,\u201d Mr. Obama, still running for president, told me during an interview in May 2008. \u201cThe first year?\u201d I insisted. \u201cThe first year,\u201d he replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Obama didn\u2019t keep his promise, even though Democrats controlled Congress for most of 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Janet\n Murgu\u00eda, president of UnidosUS (formerly the National Council of La \nRaza), called Mr. Obama the \u201cdeporter in chief,\u201d a moniker that always \nmade him uncomfortable. The reality, however, is that the millions of \ndeportations that took place under his watch broke Hispanic families \napart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the Obama \nadministration\u2019s failures with regard to the Hispanic community, many \n2020 Democratic nominees, as well as the party itself, find it difficult\n to criticize the former president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the Sept. 12 presidential debate in Houston, I asked former Vice President Joe Biden<\/a>\n if he and Mr. Obama made a mistake in deporting so many undocumented \nimmigrants. \u201cThe president did the best thing that was able to be done,\u201d\n he answered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow about you?\u201d I \nresponded. \u201cI\u2019m the vice president of the United States,\u201d Mr. Biden \nreplied, failing to acknowledge that the administration had made any \nmistakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Biden highlighted the \nfact that Mr. Obama created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals \nprogram, which has benefited over 800,000 undocumented young people \nknown as Dreamers. The former vice president also thought it was \noutrageous to compare the Obama and Trump presidencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, the deportation issue isn\u2019t going away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During a Nov. 21 campaign event in Greenwood, S.C., Carlos Rojas of the Cosecha Movement<\/a> asked Mr. Biden to say that he\u2019d \u201cstop all deportations from Day 1\u201d by signing an executive order. Mr. Biden refused to do that. \u201cI will not stop all deportations if you commit a crime that\u2019s a felony,\u201d he told Mr. Rojas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other Democratic candidates, such as \nBernie Sanders, have taken a different stance. When I asked Senator \nSanders in November, at a forum in Long Beach, Calif., if Mr. Obama had \nmade a mistake in deporting three million undocumented immigrants, he \nanswered without hesitation. \u201cYes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr.\n Sanders vowed to submit an immigration reform bill during his first 100\n days in office. \u201cThis is a promise I make, and I usually don\u2019t make \npromises,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The differing \npositions among Democratic candidates on important topics like \ndeportations and the separation of immigrant families is causing fear \namong Hispanic voters and driving them away from the party. If Democrats\n really want to win Hispanic votes in the Nov. 3 election, they must \nstop making excuses and promise to avoid President Obama\u2019s mistakes. If \nthey fail to do this, they risk alienating Latino voters and losing the \nelection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is the burden of the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Latino voters will decide the 2020 election. It\u2019s as simple as that. If Democrats want to sway them their way, saying a few words in Spanish or posting a picture of themselves on Instagram eating tacos won\u2019t do the trick. Democrats have to explain how they plan to make Hispanics a real part of that social experiment called America. The Hispanic population is much more than an electoral fad. As the iconic Hispanic labor leader C\u00e9sar Ch\u00e1vez said, \u201cWe have seen the future, and the future is ours.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jorge Ramos is an anchor for the Univision network, a contributing opinion writer and the author of, most recently, \u201cStranger: The Challenge of a Latino Immigrant in the Trump Era.\u201d <\/em>@jorgeramosnews<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Democratic candidates need to stop making excuses and avoid Obama’s mistakes. The Hispanic population is much more than an electoral fad. by Jorge Ramos I am dreading the 2020 presidential race, which I think […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13400,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[81],"class_list":{"0":"post-13399","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-latino-vote"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13399"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13401,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13399\/revisions\/13401"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}