HOW DARE THEY THINK FOR THEMSELVES?  WHAT IS THIS, SOME KIND OF FREE COUNTRY?  Yes, I know, it's very upsetting to the moguls of the Democratic Party that Hispanic Americans are thinking for themselves and leaving the party in large numbers.  This may mean, brace yourselves, that the party might actually have to serve the interests of these ungrateful souls in order to keep them in line.  Who do they think they are?

The short answer lies in the backgrounds of two Hispanic women – one a stalwart of the Democratic Party's hard left, the other one of the new, stubborn types, who just won't go along with the way things have been.  Read about them.  This is good, explanatory journalism.  From RealClearPolitics: 

Mayra Flores’ stunning victory last week in Texas’ 34th Congressional District shows that the culture war dominating America’s public discourse is not really about race.
Her district, which runs from west of San Antonio to the border town of Brownsville, is 85% Hispanic, which is the second highest proportion in the country. It went for Barack Obama in 2012, Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Joe Biden in 2020, albeit by diminishing margins. The region is now represented on Capitol Hill by a Republican, which hadn’t been the case for approximately 150 years.

Flores’s story could not be more different than her headline-grabbing counterpart in the Democratic Party, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. A comparison between the two sheds light on the cultural and political realignment shaping the country, including a potential sweet spot in American electoral politics, one that emphasizes a socially conservative agenda while centering on the economic plight of the working and middle classes. At stake are two different visions of America.

Flores is the antithesis of AOC. She embodies an authenticity that the “It Girl” of the liberal-left sorely lacks. Despite her calculated efforts to cultivate an image of some sort of besieged escopetera fighting her way out of the Sierra Maestra, AOC is a product of the American middle class – and the Eastern liberal establishment. It is AOC who appears on the cover of Vanity Fair and attends the Met Gala, all to speak truth to power of course!

Flores has received hardly any of this adulating media coverage, which is odd, given that she is the first Mexican-born woman elected to Congress. Except for a few appearances on Fox News, Flores didn’t benefit from the fawning interviews on MSNBC or CNN that helped make AOC a household name. Given all the emphasis on “firsts” and representation in our cultural and social life over the last decade, one would expect Flores to be plastered all over the mainstream media for the coming months, if not years. Gender and ethnicity, it seems, only matter when it suits a particular partisan agenda.

When Flores was asked how she could possibly be a Republican when she was born in Mexico, she responded, “They know nothing about our culture.” Flores’s socially conservative culture emphasizes faith, family, and hard work – values that were once the bedrock of American society – replenished anew with each new wave of immigration.

Flores’s Mexican heritage is especially significant. The Latino experience in America is diverse and while Republicans can expect to get some support from Cubans and Venezuelans fleeing Communist rule, Mexicans and other Hispanic groups have, in the recent past, voted increasingly for Democrats. Flores’s victory suggests that this may be about to change.

COMMENT:  Read the whole thing.  If the Hispanic exodus steams on, the panicking Dems will have to replace Hispanics with another willing interest group.  It may be tough.  How many trans anthropologists are there anyway?

July 15, 2022