The Daily - 'The Run-Up': The Autopsy

Episode Date: September 17, 2022

It’s March 2013. The G.O.P., in tatters, issues a scathing report blaming its electoral failures on an out-of-touch leadership that ignores minorities at its own peril. Just three years later, Donald Trump proves his party dead wrong. Today, how certain assumptions took hold of both parties — and what they’re still getting wrong — heading into the midterm elections.

Hey there, it's Michael. Last week, we kicked off our midterms coverage on The Daily with a conversation with our colleague, political correspondent Astead Herndon. He's covering this election season on his new show, The Run-Up, which explores the how and the why of this fraught moment in American politics. Today, episode two. of this fraught moment in American politics today. Episode 2. The political homelessness, that's exactly how I feel.

So the more I've tried to understand how we got here. Feeling homeless in politics is... Why people are feeling such profound levels of political disconnect. There isn't a place for anybody to be. You know, it's like the land of no more moderates. The more I felt like a lot of it has to do with some really flawed assumptions. Assumptions political leaders have served up about this country. About who we are. And where we're going.

And that have turned out to be dead wrong. Good morning and welcome to the National Press Club. So to really tell that story, we got to start in 2013, just a few months after Barack Obama won his second term in office. It's tough to be a political party chairman, especially one on the losing end of a 2012 campaign for the White House and full congressional control. The Republicans were trying to understand where they had gone wrong. Please help me give a warm welcome.

And the person in charge of that was Reince Priebus. Well, I appreciate that introduction. Thank you, everybody. Good morning. At the time, Priebus was the head of the Republican National Committee. And in the wake of his party's second big consecutive loss, he ordered up what came to be known as the GOP autopsy. We needed the most public and most comprehensive post-election review in the history of any national party.

We wanted an assessment that was frank, thorough, and transparent. And on this day, at the National Press Club, there's no one reason we lost. Pribis lays out the findings to the public. But the report notes that the way we communicate our principles isn't resonating widely enough. Focus groups described our party as narrow-minded, out of touch, and, quote, stuffy old men. He says that public perception of the party is at record lows.

That young people are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the party represents. The report also highlights the real urgency of connecting with minority communities. And that many minorities are not responding to the Republican message. By the year 2050, we'll be a majority-minority country. And that with the country becoming more diverse. And in both 2008 and 2012, President Obama won a combined 80 percent of the votes of all minority groups. The Republican Party is facing an existential crisis and is going to have to make changes. So here are some actions that we're going to take. Fundamental ones.

The autopsy calls for better outreach to all minority groups, but especially Latino voters, the fastest growing sector of the electorate. Establish swearing-in citizenship teams to introduce new citizens to the GOP after naturalization ceremonies, first impressions count. It said Republicans needed to speak more to their concerns by doing things like embracing immigration reform and recruiting more candidates from minority communities. To those who have left the party, let me say this. We want to earn your trust again. To those who have yet to join us, we welcome you with open arms. There's more that unites us than you know. And my job is to try and make that clear. And that's the purpose of the plans that I've announced today. of the plans that I've announced today. Digging into that Republican autopsy, it's clear that it was really centered around key assumptions. One, with the demographic shifts in the country,

the percentage of white voters was shrinking, and with that, their electoral power. And two, that the increasingly new and diverse voters, they would overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party. The autopsy basically suggests that if Republicans didn't embrace a more inclusive message on race and immigration, they were going to get killed at the ballot box for years to come. Good evening and welcome to election night 2016. What a crazy campaign this has been. Obviously. Election day turns into election night. Something happened last night that will forever shake up the coalitions.

That's not how it went. White men without a four-year college degree came out for Donald Trump in historic numbers. Donald Trump called Mexicans rapists, promised to build a wall and deport undocumented immigrants. And yet 29% of Hispanics nationally voted for Trump. Today. We are continuing our look at how Latinos will impact the 2020 election. How those assumptions came to take hold of both parties. A new report underscores Democrats messaging shortfalls with Latino voters in the 2020 election.

This Latino thing is an issue here for the Democrats. And you know what? The trend seems to be continuing in 2022. And what they're still missing heading into the midterm election. New data shows more Hispanic voters are supporting Republicans. It's an alarming shift for Democrats who have long relied on their backing. From the New York Times, I'm Astead Herndon. This is The Run-Up. So the autopsy is this kind of dramatic moment where we see these bad assumptions plainly laid out

in public view and by the Republicans themselves. But the Democrats had reached a similar conclusion a few years earlier. Hello, Chicago! When Barack Obama was first elected. It's been a long time coming. But tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.

Are we all recording? We're all safe? And so I called my colleague Adam Nagourney. Adam, you are the first guest on the run-up. Adam's been one of the Times' leading political reporters for decades. In your scale of career accomplishments, does this come before or after writing the front page story about Barack Obama's election?

It's pretty close instead. And he saw this all unfold in real time. What did the Democratic Party take from the 2008 election? When you were writing that story, what was the political takeaway for the parties? So the political takeaway was that the country was moving demographically in the direction of Democrats.

This was not a fluke or sort of a singular event involving Barack Obama, but also that the Democratic Party was going to get bigger and bigger because the country was changing demographically. There's this whole idea that demography is destiny and that as the country becomes less white, as there are more people of color who are becoming part of the electorate and voting, that therefore automatically they're going to be voting Democratic. So in 2008, when this election happens, it is taken by the Democratic Party as more than just an individual sign of Barack Obama

being historic and unique, but actually a larger takeaway the party had about the country. The takeaway seems to be that the country itself had changed. That is absolutely right. I don't want to use the word realignment because in the world of politics, it's a bit of a cliche, but that there was a realignment. I just did it. And I remember, I think it was about a year later. We Democrats have been given an incredible opportunity. 2009 at a fundraising dinner. To see Barack Obama be president, to me, not just the first African-American president,

but a president who represents our future because he lived in Indonesia, his father was African, his mother was Canton. That's really where America's going. It's never going to be biracial or just two religions. And Bill Clinton came in and sort of made this speech to sort of stop me in my seat. We have won the great cultural war that has divided America for 40 years.

In which he talked about how the Democratic Party is about to enter this period of long-term electoral dominance because of the way the country was changing demographically. And I was really struck by it because it was, at that point, a pretty new analysis. And, you know, whatever people might think of Bill Clinton now, he always... This was at the height of Bill Clinton's, you know, he had gravitas saying that. That's right. So when he comes along with a political analysis like that, I'm sitting in my chair in a ballroom with my computer on my lap, no doubt, and I just look up, right?

I'm like, he's saying this, this is really interesting. And that really sort of influenced the way, at least I was thinking about where the country is heading. Yeah. I mean, I've been fascinated by this conventional wisdom of 2008 and the Obama era. And I looked back at some of the headlines from that time and they're really striking. I mean, one says the end of white America, quote, the election of Barack Obama is just the most startling manifestation of a larger trend, the gradual erosion of whiteness as the touchstone of what it means to be American. Here's another one from 2009. James Carville, a very famous Democratic voice, the title of his

new book was 40 More Years, How Democrats Will Rule the next generation. I mean, this is a level of chest-thumping that is unique for political parties. Absolutely right. So those assumptions, particularly about the racial groups coming in and that the white share of the population would decrease, are really undergirding that Democratic confidence. But that's 2008 and 2009, the years immediately following the initial Obama election. It's not long before those assumptions

are challenged by the rise of the Tea Party. That's right. That's right. From the Republican Party, the same Republican Party that was supposed to be now dead for the next 40 years, you have the Tea Party arising. And they came to life

in response to the two of the major initiatives of President Obama's first two years. The bank bailouts after the 2008 economic collapse and to Obamacare. Political aftershocks echoed in Washington. Then boom. Campaign 2010 proved to be an historic election for the Republican Party. That really just sort of energized all these voters. First, let's get a sense of the scope, the drama of the Republican victories here. By the time the dust settled

early today, Republicans had scored the largest party turnover in 70 years. Now, I'm not recommending for every future president that they take a shellacking like they, like I did last night. The Democratic Party gets shellacked in the 2010 congressional election. It was a really, really big setback. Goes to show you how fast things can change in the political world of the United States. And not only did they lose after all that chest thumping, but they lose specifically in a way that seems to indict the very thing that Clinton was talking about, that Democrats had won the culture war in America. Because I think we should say that that Tea Party moment has a lot of racial undertones, or in some cases, we should say overtones that are infused with it. It wasn't just bank bailouts

or Obamacare, but it was also birtherism and the belief that Obama wasn't born in America. How did Democrats think about that piece in relationship to the idea that the country was moving in their cultural direction? I don't think the Democratic Party understood well enough how much that was a rebuttal of the idea that the world is changing and that, you know, people of color could not be elected president. I don't want to generalize here, but I think many of them sort of dismissed that as extremism or just the fringes of a party. Is part of the reason they dismissed 2010 just that Democrats feel better about their presidential coalition than their midterm

coalition, right? It seems like in some ways they're just dismissing midterm. Yes. Democratic voters, you know, historically just don't turn out in midterm congressional elections the way they do in presidential elections. So coming into 2012, the White House was reasonably confident. I would say more than reasonably confident that Obama was going to win a second term because the presidential coalition was different. And just because they were still confident that the country is moving inexorably in this direction that Bill Clinton talked about just a couple of years before. Right, and Obama winning re-election

would seem to validate that. And so when the Republican Party is putting out this autopsy in the wake of his second victory, they're essentially agreeing with the assumptions that the Democratic Party had already made. Yeah, we have a consensus here about what's going on in the Republican Party. The Republican Party and the Democratic Party at this point, or at least the establishment,

agrees as to what the problems with the Republican Party is. It's quite remarkable. Again, I was reading coverage from that time. And let me just read you a couple lines that speak to this point you're saying. I mean, they really jumped out to me. In one case, quote, it looked possible that Barack Obama's election four years ago heralded a new era of democratic dominance. Now it looks almost certain the face of America has changed and only one party has changed with it. There was another one that I read that said, welcome to liberal America. Barack Obama, focus on climate change, weed and gay marriage. This is the country and the

Republican party has to adapt. I mean, that's really strong media language. I think it speaks to your point. That's only possible from a media perspective if that is the agreed view of both parties. It seems as everyone was in agreement at that time that that was the mood of the country. Just promise me that I did not write that. I hope not. I promise you no Adam McGurdy byline. It's a big oops. Yeah, look, you know, we can look back at it and go, duh. But, you know, the fact of the matter is that it was all part of what a lot of very, very smart people were thinking at the time and writing at the time and saying at the time. The examples you used might have gone a little bit

further than perhaps you should go, but that was the ethos right there. You just captured it. I mean, this helps me understand why Trump's campaign as we get to 2016 was dismissed from the second he came down the escalator. It seems from what you're saying that it was more than just because people thought Trump the person couldn't win or that Trump the campaign was unconventional, but that there was a generally accepted conventional wisdom of how you had to become president in this new America. And certainly Donald Trump couldn't fit that bill.

One thing to keep in mind is that Trump was sort of trashing this report from almost the day it came out. I found a tweet he wrote where he said, RNC report was written by the ruling class of consultants who blew the election. Short on ideas, just giving excuses to donors. Now, you know, in 2016, Trump was running against what the Republican Party was saying, had been saying, was necessary to win a national election. He was running against the punditry. He was running against what the Democratic Party was saying about how the country was changing. And by the way, I said, I'm not sure in the long term we might look back on this and say,

that stuff's all right. But it wasn't right in 2016, and it wasn't right with a candidate named Donald Trump. So, one of the best people to talk to in order to get inside what the Trump campaign understood Hello. Hello, hello. Can you hear me? what the Trump campaign understood. Hello.

Hello, hello. Can you hear me? It's the person who, along with Trump, criticized the autopsy when it came out. Hi, it's Kellyanne. I don't know what's wrong with my computer, but I could not unmute. I'm on my phone.

Kellyanne Conway. How are you? Very well, thank you. And I was apologizing earlier for the delay. I'm so sorry that I ran late. We'll be right back. Our show is partly a look at how we got here. Whatever you think of Kellyanne Conway. She helped build a winning presidential campaign.

I wanted to start kind of in 2012. By running against the assumptions in the Republican autopsy. I'm curious, do you remember that autopsy and its prescriptions? And then personally, kind of how did you see where Republicans were going into the 2016 race? into the 2016 race. I do recall the autopsy and an autopsy presumes that you are working on a corpse, a dead object or person. And so that was the first problem with having an autopsy. It presumed that the Republican party was on the decline, was more abundant. And in some ways, I believe it was sclerotic and non-responsive to everyday Americans' concerns. Mitt Romney's team- Did you feel that at the time? You felt that at the time? Oh, yeah. I said it very publicly. I think I was the only Republican pollster to publicly say that

President Obama would be reelected. It isn't what I wanted. It isn't how I voted, but it's what I saw. I don't know a billion things about a billion things, but I know voters and I know consumers. things about a billion things, but I know voters and I know consumers. And he was a more compelling, persuasive messenger. I said at the time, said many times since, that they really missed, you know, they're political pollsters and not cultural anthropologists. They miss the significance and the consequence to many Americans of the first African-American president. Darn right, they were going to go give him a second term. It's as if these African-American president, darn right they were going to go give him a second term. It's as if these African-American men were going to say, you know, I think the first African-American president,

I think four years for him is plenty. Let's just go get the white guy in the belted khakis who runs the capital. I mean, it was silly on its face. So there are many miscues, but I think mostly it was just a lack of connection with the American people and what voters, the angst and frustration that so many voters felt. And that is something that Trump tapped into in 2016. What is for you the biggest

reason that Trump was able to find new voters? One of the assumptions of that memo was that you could not find particularly non-college white voters, that that was a capped group. Trump has brought more of those folks to the polls. Why do you think that is? So no group is capped. That would be a foolish thing to say because not everyone in this country votes. And sure, you have a capped voter group if you're doing business as usual in politics, if you're afraid to actually start listening to people. And Trump reached them through an economic angst message that basically said to them, you still matter. So that also has an awful lot to do with that we take care of Americans

before we worry about taking care of people in other countries. And that's not cut and dry. And please don't misuse it or misread it for how it's intended. What I just said, I heard in focus groups for ages. Why aren't we taking care of our own people? We have kids who don't have enough to eat. We have homeless in the streets. This shouldn't be in this country. And he was able to sort of collect that and reflect that back to many Americans.

So the Trump campaign disproved the autopsy in its ability to energize and expand their coalition with new voters, many of whom were white. And it did that in a way that flew in the face of the autopsy's central recommendation. But the Trump message initially was more than economic. I mean, he also came down, of course, built the wall, the kind of cultural messages too. Because in courting those new white voters,

Trump leaned into anti-immigration rhetoric and stoked fear about the country's demographic changes. What did you think about those cultural messages and how those were resonating with the public? We have to be specific. What are they? I'm talking about build the wall. Because build the wall, the wall was about border security. That to him is about fairness. I'm talking about the Mexican and rapist comment. I am talking about some of those comments that also brought people to him. I'm talking about birtherism. I mean, it seems like there's a whole scope of issues. I understand the trade and economic point. I guess I'm saying, do you see those other things as core to the

reasons why people were coming to Trump too? No, I don't. You don't? I don't. No, I don't. People vote on their pocketbooks first and foremost, generally. Okay, look, I don't. You don't? I don't. No, I don't. People vote on their pocketbooks first and foremost, generally. Okay, look. I've talked to a lot of Trump supporters over the past six years. I've been to about a dozen Trump rallies. I've been to Trump's stock. And people who voted for Trump told me directly that his messages on race and identity matter to them. There are people

who didn't vote for Donald Trump in spite of build the wall or birtherism, but because of it. So it was both of those messages, economic and cultural, that helped Trump reach a new group of voters. And not all of them were white. That after Romney's loss, they said, oh my God, Romney lost Hispanics. We must talk more about immigration. It's like, well, then you're not listening to Hispanics. Yes, they care about that, but they care about 50 things.

And so listen, we don't tell voters what's important to them. They tell us. So sure, you're going to get a majority of Americans saying, a majority of Republicans saying, I think we should reform our immigration laws or enforce them or whatever. Of course. But where's the intensity? Is that more important to you? As a Hispanic male head of house who wants to keep his job and wants his kids in a better school and wants to make sure his multi-generation household that includes his parents, his mother's mother, his own kids, and he and his wife, he wants to make sure

the issues for all three generations are attended to. And let me tell you something, people, if you don't know people on guns, if you don't know people who are pro-life, if you don't know people whose kids go to public school or who don't have college degrees. It's even beyond that. Just pretending people don't exist, oh, I can't believe anybody would actually go to church on Wednesdays and Sundays. I can't believe anybody would actually own 12 guns in the house. I can't believe, well, there are people out there like that. And just attacking Trump and never really educating oneself on the Trump voters, now 74 million strong. I mean, that's just, that is ignorance and arrogance. Here's what I would say to you.

We never deeply examine that which we deeply disdain. And that's what's happened. That's what happened with the autopsy. So there's no question that 2016 explodes that first assumption about the white vote. And Conway is suggesting it exploded the assumption about minority voters as well. And it's true that Trump did better than expected with Latino voters, about the same as Romney, actually. But that assumption didn't really blow up until the 2020 election. It's great to have you with us here on this election night in America, perhaps the most consequential election in a generation. We're getting a read right now, at the most consequential election in a generation.

We're getting a read right now, at least, of who came out to vote. And that picture is not necessarily as expected. When you look at the demographics. When the most surprising results. What was surprising? Trump performing well in heavily Latino populated southern Texas counties. In places like Texas and Florida. This is potentially the trouble spot for Joe Biden.

And it's Miami-Dade, as you can see. Cuban turnout was 13 points higher for Trump. So there's undeniably something real going on here. Came from the very group Trump had aggressively targeted with his rhetoric. President Donald Trump was able to garner a little more than one third of the Hispanic vote nationally. A group I didn't spend much time on the ground with. But, hello, can someone hear me? I didn't know much time on the ground with. But... Hello? Can someone hear me? I didn't know you were such a singer. My colleague, Ginny Medina, did.

Weren't you, like, kicked out of choir instead? Literally thrown out, but that's a story for another day. Okay. So, Ginny, take me back to election night 2020. I mean, how did it feel to have the rest of the political world waking up to something that you have been trying to say and your stories have been reporting for a long time now, which is that the Latino vote is broad and complicated and definitely shouldn't be taken for granted by Democrats? Right. What happened on election night 2020 was sort of funny in a way, because the first

results that came in that applied to this were the Florida results. And the reaction from the sort of pundit class and on television was like, what's going on there? And there was just total shock. But the reality is, is that Cubans in Miami, Latinos in Florida have been voting for Republicans for a very long time. So for anybody paying attention, it wasn't a shock at all. And at the same time that that's happening, you have another state, Arizona, where the results were much murkier. And eventually the state swang toward Democrats for Joe Biden, in large part because of Latino voters there. And so you have these two things going on at the same time. But to me, the really interesting part was Texas and South Texas specifically, because that's a region that

had voted for Democrats for decades, for really more than a century. And all of a sudden you saw these dramatic swings toward Trump. So I want to break this all down, because I know that you have a perspective on that election that I think might surprise some people, which is that you see the presidential election in 2020 as a bigger bombshell for the political establishment than in 2016. Am I representing that right? Yes. I mean, for me, 2016 really wasn't all that much of a surprise. I live in California where we have all seen other politicians ride to power on this anti-immigration message, anti-immigrant message. That didn't seem so shocking to me. That seems like a repeat of what we've seen throughout history.

I think what I expected and what many people in the political establishment expected was a real severe backlash, particularly from Latino voters against Trump after 2016 and going into 2020. And of course, that's really not at all what we saw. You had him coming down, of course, the escalator, insulting Mexicans. And not only that, you had four years of real anti-immigrant policies and sort of continued rhetoric of anti-immigration and build the wall. And Democrats sort of banked on this notion that they could be anybody but Trump and win among those voters. And in fact, that's not at all what happened. So given all of those things, I can see how the long-held assumptions about how minority voters would behave could still hold as recently as two years ago. But

I've yet to hear an explanation for why people were so convinced that minority voters would universally back Democrats. I mean, do you have some kind of sense of where that belief comes from? Oh, for sure. Part of that belief comes from the story of California and what we had seen here over the last few decades. What do you mean? Well, in 1994, there was a ballot measure called Proposition 187. And that would have basically made it impossible for any undocumented immigrant to receive any sort of social services, any kind of non-emergency health care, public education, anything like that would have been explicitly prohibited. And at the time, there was somebody, a Republican named Pete Wilson, running for re-election as governor. And just like President Trump did,

they keep coming, 2 million illegal immigrants in California. He really campaigned on this message of anti-immigration. The federal government won't stop them at the border, yet requires us to pay billions to take care of them. And cracking down on illegal immigration. And I'm working to deny state services to illegal immigrants. And use the enthusiasm for Prop 187 to win re-election. Keep California great again.

Absolutely. And keep California great by kicking these immigrants out or stopping their flow or stop giving them services. And just like happened in 2016, white voters really showed up and of course voted in favor of this measure and voted in favor of Pete Wilson, who won reelection. But the victory for Republicans was sort of a mirage because what happened next in all the subsequent years is that Hispanic voters registered in force. There was a big surge of new voters, new citizenship from Latino voters, and they showed up overwhelmingly for Democrats. And it was a backlash against the Republican Party. So instead of being the sort of purplish state that California had been for a long time, this is a state that elected Ronald Reagan, remember? California turned into this solidly blue, deeply blue place,

we know it as now, in part because of those new Latino voters. Okay, so this feels like a critical piece of our puzzle. California is really where the assumption that an influx of Latino voter would be good news for the Democratic Party, that's where it comes from. I mean, it seems that's why the political establishment was caught so off guard in 2020 was because they took the lesson of the 1990s, that Prop 187 lesson, to say that it applied to Latino voters all across the country, that they would behave just as Latinos in California did. Is that right? Right. I mean, the term Latino encompasses this huge diversity of people,

some people who have been in the country for a few years, and some people who have been here for many generations, some people who come for economic reasons, and some who come sort of fleeing dictatorships and communism. And everybody comes with a different set of assumptions and a different set of desires and a different history. And there has been this sort of pervasive notion that Latinos are a voting bloc, that there's some sort of monolithic vote that will overwhelmingly favor one party or another

and that's going to march in lockstep together. And though that's been a pervasive sort of conventional wisdom thought, it's never been borne out in reality in the data. So coming out of that election, it seems that both parties, and in particular Republicans, understand that some Latino voters are willing to support the party in places they may not have expected, that they can make big difference in elections. How then did they apply that going forward? How did they use that information for, say, this year's midterms? I mean, I think what Republicans really took from 2020 is this notion that they could still use the kind of rhetoric, including anti-immigration rhetoric, that they wanted to use

and not lose Latino voters in many parts of the country. And it's now gotten to the point in 2022 where it's not just voters that this is attracting. There's actually a record number of Hispanic candidates running as Republicans. And one of the most interesting places to see that play out is South Texas in the Rio Grande Valley, where you have several races where Latinas are running as Republicans in Democratic strongholds and believe that they can win. And probably the most interesting place to see this is the Texas 15 congressional race. My name is Monica de la Cruz. Where you have a Republican, Monica de la Cruz.

My home is close to a port of entry for illegal immigrants. She's very much in favor of a border wall. And the Biden administration has given a green light to the cartels, to the Mexican cartels, to take control of this border. She's very heavily focused on border security. She's talked about elections being stolen. She's talked about elections being stolen. She's just unapologetically a Trump Republican candidate and thinks that she can swing the district to go for Republicans for the first time in basically a century. I mean, Jenny, hearing you say all of this, I'm struck by the fact that when Reince Priebus put out that autopsy 10 years ago. The thought was that Republicans had to improve among Latino voters, but doing so required them to embrace immigration reform,

to moderate their messages on race and particularly immigration. Now, in 2022, you have Republicans making real inroads with Latino voters and an increasing landscape of Latino candidates. But at least in Texas, that is not coming through the autopsy's vision of how you needed to talk to those communities. It's coming through a Latina candidate who herself is campaigning against immigration reform. I don't know that anybody could have with a straight face predicted that, or at least have anybody believe that prediction. I mean, the conventional wisdom was absolutely that Republicans needed to soften their message on immigration in order to win these new Hispanic

voters across the country. And now what we're seeing is that's just not at all the case. So we started this show by saying I was going to ask a provocative question, so I want to ask one. Did Trump solve the memo? I mean, he didn't embrace immigration reform. He didn't stop anti-immigration rhetoric. But still, the Republican Party is making meaningful inroads and running credible Latino candidates. Do they have to credit Donald Trump for that? Well, sort of. I mean, there's no question Donald Trump deserves credit for some of this enthusiasm.

In the Rio Grande Valley that we're talking about, for example, there were Trump trains all the time of these big trucks with Trump flags flying off the back of them. Quite literal trains. Well, I guess not. Trump caravans. Quite literal, I mean the millennial definition of literal, which is not literal at all. So you had these Trump caravans that were bringing out voters. And I think it's important to say some of these voters are first time voters who had never voted for their lives. And the first vote they cast is for Donald Trump. But honestly, I think that also gives him

a little too much credit and paints a little bit too simplistic of a picture because what we really still do not know is if this is some significant, meaningful, lasting change. Is this really a big shift or is this sort of a blip and just the normal historical swing that we've seen among Latino voters for decades? So if the first mistake was expecting this group of voters to embrace the Democratic Party as a blowback to that conservative anti-immigration rhetoric, we could be making a mistake in the opposite direction,

which is expecting a mass rush to Republicans and some big Democratic blowback when there's not really evidence of either. Right. There's this notion among a lot of Republicans that I talk to and even pundits who will say, oh, well, these Hispanic voters are conservative and their values have been conservative all along. And this is the party they really belong to. And I think that just is an oversimplification. I mean, there is a widespread assumption that Latinos care about immigration more than anything else.

That's not been borne out in polling. There is a widespread assumption now, to go back to the overcorrecting, that all Latinos care about is the economy at the expense of everything else. I also don't think that is the case. So Jenny, after all of these stories, after traveling and talking to folks, what do you think your reporting tells you about the idea that demographics were destiny, that the racial changes in the country driven by Latino voters were going to help the Democratic Party? I mean, I think it's very clear at this point that demographics alone are absolutely not destiny,

and that Democrats cannot count on the sort of sheer goodwill of Hispanic voters to ride to power. That they're going to have to work for that and that it will be a long protracted battle with Republicans for many years going forward. So there's a clear line from what Jenny laid out. Back to the Republican autopsy and the Obama years. It's not just that both parties made assumptions about people that were wrong. It's also that they relied on those assumptions to shape their decisions and shape how they talk to people for decades. But the idea that voters aren't monolithic, that people contain multitudes, it's so obvious, so simple.

And it's the party's disconnect from those basic realities that's fueling some of the political disconnect in this country. Because what I'm hearing in my reporting is that so many people feel like they're not being seen or understood for their complexities. So why, then, did voters elect a president in 2020? We are in a battle for America's soul. I really believe that. And we have to restore it. president in 2020, who basically asked him to set those complexities aside in service of a larger purpose.

And now, with all that's happened in the past two years, will that strategy time, we've told ourselves that American democracy is guaranteed. But it's not. We have to defend it. Will that strategy work for Democrats again? That's why tonight I'm asking our nation to come together, unite behind the single purpose of defending our democracy regardless

of your ideology. That's next time on The Run-Up. The Run-Up is reported by me, Astead Herndon, and produced by Elisa Gutierrez and Caitlin O'Keefe. It's edited by Franny Carr-Toth, Larissa Anderson, and Lisa Tobin, with original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, and Alisha Ba'i-Tub. It was mixed by Corey Schreppel and fact-checked by Caitlin Love. Special thanks to Paula Schumann, Sam Dolnick, David Halfinger, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Shannon Busta, Nell Gologly, Jeffrey Miranda, and Maddie Maciela.

See you next week. To hear more, go wherever you listen to podcasts. See you next week.