June 6th, 2016 – Second Reading Podcast

[0:00:00] Welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The Republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party chart. Tell people on a regular basis there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the Constitution. They have become the norm. At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room?

[0:00:32 Jim] And welcome to the second reading podcast for the week of June 6th. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. I’m joined by my colleague Josh Blank, and today Josh and I are here to talk about Hillary Clinton’s chances in the general elections in Texas about what’s up with Donald Trump and Latinos, and a

[0:00:52 Josh] little

[0:00:53 Jim] bit about how Latino voters shape politics in different ways in Texas than they do in the US But we start today with the question of Hillary Clinton in Texas. Now most people assume that Texas is a very safe Republican state in the presidential election. What do you think, Josh? Safe, quite safe. So why is this all happening? You might ask, given that Josh didn’t hesitate and head of very brief and direct answer to that, well, there was, Ah, really good, I would say profile in New York magazine last week, in which the reporter had very unusually high level of access to Hillary Clinton, is a very, very long article. Is reading it, getting ready to write something and kept thinking, What is this gonna be over soon? It’s really good, but it just seems to keep going. But during that that interview Hillary Clinton had what became kind of a money quote in Texas, and the direct quote and part of this is from the writer who wrote this in the first person. So it starts with the Hillary Clinton quote that says if black and Latino voters come out and vote, we could win Texas, she told me firmly, practically licking her lips. Now that’s the kind of journalism that you don’t get in your daily paper.

[0:02:09 Josh] I’m excited.

[0:02:09 Jim] So So what? Was she looking her lips about? Josh?

[0:02:13 Josh] Well, you know, she was being asked about, you know, with Donald Trump on the ticket and her expected strengths. You know, where might she compete that we wouldn’t expect her to? And she instantly said, Taxes. Texas is the place, and this is something that, you know, seems to be kind of a recurring theme all of a sudden where you know somebody’s running statewide, whether it be Hillary Clinton or Wendy Davis and of recent vintage, right. And people start to say, especially Democrats, or to say, Hey, maybe we could win, right? And then the press gets into it and they just can’t help but pick this up. And they can’t help but run with it and talk about it. And you have no more fully formed thoughts about the press, probably than I do. I mean, why is that?

[0:02:50 Jim] Well, my thoughts are very fully formed on this. Yeah, I mean, I think the press likes, ah, story about potential conflict, and you’ve always political reporters in Texas. He spend their their lives there, you know, eight hours a day, at least you know, with breaks for drinking, right, talking about politics. And when you talk about party politics in Texas and presidential politics, it can be really boring because, you know, the Republicans are gonna win all the time, given what we’ve seen in the last few years. So just a suggestion, right? That there might be some competition in the presidential election just gets their hearts going pitter patter and gets them sitting down at the word processor eyes.

[0:03:33 Josh] I mean, talk about, we’re going to move on to the real thing here. But also, there’s probably some of this which is wishful thinking, right? I mean about given what you’re saying, right in the sense that, like odds are, there’s gonna be almost zero presidential competition in Texas, you know, for a lot of reasons, you know, which we’ll talk about. But one of the main reasons we’re not gonna talk about is how expensive it is to run here. And in some ways, you know, if you’re the pressing need to write about this every day of Hillary Clinton would just come to Texas a little bit during the campaign. Make a shell of its It’s a couple more articles you can write

[0:04:00 Jim] yeah, more to do it makes your job a little easier, but without, you know, overly picking on our friends in the press, right? Sorry, guys and girls. Let’s at least look at this. Is there an argument that she can win? Right. So let’s look at the arguments on both sides. So why would somebody at least plausibly say that Hillary Clinton could at least be competitive or possibly win?

[0:04:21 Josh] Right? So the first argument here and we’re gonna talk about this one a little bit more later, but is that Trump is alienating and motivating minority voters and especially Latino voters. And this is something the Republican Party is very, very aware of and concerned about, and they’ve been wondering out loud. And there’s obvious reasons, too, right. The proportion of the population that’s Latino is increasing, basically every single year, and additionally, the percentage of the voting population that is Latino keeps increasing. So in 2000 it was 7% in 2000 for it was 8%. In 2008 it was 9%. In 2012 it was 10%. You get the idea, and in Texas, where we have a much bigger ah Latino population, the projected population of taxes in 2016 that is Latinos 40.6% in 2020 for the next presidential election the 42.6% and this just goes unabated. So the fact is that, you know, having a good shot at winning some significant portion of the Latino vote is really important. See any party? And so this is sort of the first thing is what Trump is doing again, which will talk more about, is probably leading towards some sort of fear among Republicans that they’re going to get wiped out with Latino voters.

[0:05:33 Jim] Right in Hillary Clinton’s definitely speaking to that fear in the in the quote from the magazine.

[0:05:37 Josh] That’s so that’s the first argument that she can win. The second argument is the Trump’s candidacy is going to surge Republicans from turning out to vote. So what is that about?

[0:05:47 Jim] Oh, so that’s really the idea that is, We look at poll numbers in Texas early on. We do know that there are certain number of Republicans that find Donald Trump somewhat distasteful, shall we say, right now there’s some of this is very straightforward. So and we saw a lot of discussion of this during the primary election, the argument being that if you are an evangelical voter in Texas, that is, if you’re somebody who is more or less a devout Christian in the Republican Party

[0:06:16 Josh] and consistently strong, conservative outer.

[0:06:19 Jim] Exactly. And somebody who believes in in conservatism is a kind of culturally restrained believe. Shall we say that you believe in tradition and hierarchy and good behavior and virtue, if you will. Donald Trump isn’t on the surface of it, really Your guy I mean that that’s being a little it’s being that’s being a little arch. But the point being Donald Trump is a secular guy who’s lived a secular life from the urban Northeast, and he’s not a natural fit for these kinds of voters.

[0:06:51 Josh] Let’s let’s take it seriously for one second. So again, the first argument being Trump alienates minority voters. Second organ being the trump is gonna discourage Republicans from turning out to vote. So what does the data say about that? Well, the problem with that data is that when you look at Texas Republicans, they really, really dislike Hillary Clinton, right? Right. I mean, there’s this question of, you know, defection, which is a whole other thing. Are they gonna go vote for? Certainly not. There’s this question of whether they’re going to just not turn out at all. But the fact is, you know Hillary is a potential president, even in the face of a Donald Trump presidency is probably enough to keep Republicans in the fold here in Texas. In our ah, February 2016 polling, Clinton was viewed unfavorably by 91% of Texas’s GOP voters, even amongst the GOP voters who have an unfavorable view of Trump. So these Air Republicans in Texas who don’t trump 92% of them viewed Hillary Clinton unfavorably.

[0:07:46 Jim] So we begin to see some of the weaknesses in this argument. So before we automatically just get honest about what we think about this, let’s one more. One more factor that is an argument that she can win goes to this idea that we’ve written about that we call kind of the the myth of Bill and Hillary in Texas. So part of this is the idea that Bill and Hillary Clinton have deep roots in Texas, and that’s really hinges on two little historical factors. One and one of the great Democratic romances is that as young people getting involved in politics, they campaign for George McGovern in 1972 in Texas, and McGovern was probably one of the most liberal candidates ever to run for the presidency. And he got trumped than the other piece of that is. The Clintons campaigned actively, even though they didn’t do especially well in Texas in 92 96 had a relationship with, ah, lot of the Democratic elite in the leadership. In particular,

[0:08:46 Josh] they’ve maintained a connection over that

[0:08:48 Jim] exactly in particular, and Richards in Texas. So there is the special Texas connection there. Now, as we’ve written, if you look at this numerically, it doesn’t hold up especially well. In summary, Hillary Clinton’s approval numbers in the her view among Texas Democrats is not that much different than the views of Democrats towards Obama and Wendy Davis. Obama being obviously the president who’s not very popular overall in Texas and has not won an election here. And Wendy Davis, who was the gubernatorial candidate again very popular among Democrats, was the nominee for governor in 2014 and then got trumped. So if we look at that numerically in our polling, you know at comparable points. Hillary Clinton’s favorability among Texas Democrats is 67 with 67% favorable Onley, 75% of Texas Democrats held a favorable view of Obama. 69% of Texas Democrats held a favorable view of Wendy Davis as she was getting set to run. So in summary, she’s about as popular as people that have lost

[0:09:55 Josh] right? But if you

[0:09:56 Josh] read

[0:09:56 Josh] this stuff that people are writing about, if you come across this sort of building Hillary’s deep Texas ties, you have this sense that every Texas Democrat is just lining up around the block to, like, give her money and vote for her and be in her presence. And it’s just she looks like every other Democrat

[0:10:11 Jim] and to be, you know, and to be fair to her, she did really outperform all the polls on Super Tuesday vs Bernie Sanders. You know, we and many other people had her much closer than she turned out to be in the primary election in March of this year, and she all apologies to the people. They’re feeling the burn out there. She really did kind of kick Bernie Sanders, but in Texas pretty thoroughly, Okay, so let’s then, you know it’s hard not to bleed into this ahead of time. Let’s talk about the argument against her prospects in Texas. So the most obvious one is that the Democratic track record is we have implied here in Texas is very poor. There’s been no Democratic statewide winner since 1994. The Democrats have not won Texas in the general election since 1968 and in 1968 when they won, Hubert Humphrey barely beat Richard Nixon with less than 50%. And there was 1/3 party candidate, George Wallace, who pulled 19%. And Humphrey had been Lyndon Johnson’s vice president. Lyndon Johnson being obviously a text, pretty taxing. So if you look at the trend line here, we’re not seeing a lot of prospects

[0:11:26 Josh] unprecedented. Maybe

[0:11:28 Jim] it would be a pretty unprecedented flip in terms of minority voters. Latino turnout, as you were saying, has been low here in the Democrats, despite talking about it for virtually every election cycles since I’ve been in Texas have been unable to really crank up Hispanic turnout.

[0:11:48 Josh] Let’s put some meat on those bones, right? So I mean, as I said in the projections for Texas, we’re expecting that Latinos make up about 40% of the statewide population this year, we look back to the exit polls there were in exit polls in Texas in 2012. Why? Because Texas was expected to be so uncompetitive that they didn’t deem it worth, wouldn’t even paper. They would even pay for the exit polls. But if we look at the 2014 Texas exit polls, it seemed like Latinos made up about 17% of the electorate, so less than half of their representation the population. In 2008 with Barack Obama on the ticket, they made about 20%. But the point is, they were voting it extremely low rates. And this sort of Jim was mentioned. This sort of talk of, you know, what is going to motivate Hispanics to turn out in large numbers like Maybe maybe it

[0:12:31 Josh] is

[0:12:32 Josh] Donald Trump. There’s some limits on that, but the fact is, he may increase turnout, and he may increase turnout significantly among Hispanics. But is it enough to make it up? Odds are no, and there’s kind of two reasons, right? One is, you know, the nature of Latinos is a group in Texas, which is that they’re not uniformly Democratic voters were not uniformly Democratic voters anywhere

[0:12:53 Jim] but there, even less uniformly Democratic voters in Texas than they are in comparable states with large Latino populations.

[0:13:00 Josh] Exactly, And so that we’re being fair here, you know, in presidential elections, Democrats tend to do a little bit better with Latinos than they do in sort of the, you know, sort of less populated midterm elections. But just as a point of comparison well, in 2012 was a good year for Democrats with Latinos. I think Barack Obama won like 70% national, yet we don’t know what how he didn’t Texas, because we didn’t have any

[0:13:23 Jim] more than 70% nationally, we think.

[0:13:25 Josh] But in 2014 Abbott actually took 44% of Texas Latinos in that race. Give or take right. So that’s one reason it’s not as though a big increase in Latino turnout all of a sudden means that all those votes are going to Democrats. In fact, it doesn’t guarantee it at all, but also the you know, the voter that needs to be made up here is about 1.25 million votes. That’s the gap between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama in Texas. So how do you even begin to close that huge of a gap?

[0:13:56 Jim] It’s a very abstract argument to suggest that this is very likely I would put it that way. I mean, I I think what this was really hinging on when you look at some of the arguments we’ve seen in the last couple weeks, that air saying, Look, this could happen She could turn the state at least purple if not read when you come right down. When you look at that 1.25 million number, which is just a huge number, it really does come down to everybody’s general explanation for predicting something that’s very unlikely now. And that is in the post trump universe. Anything can happen. Anything, because everybody’s been wrong about everything that Donald Trump has had anything to do with for the last year. We now are, you know, sort of to the point of it. People saying Well, yeah, it seems completely unlikely and there’s no evidence that it could happen. But there was no evidence for Donald Trump happening. I think that’s not entirely true, which is a different subject, but that really is the heart of what’s fueling this, I think

[0:14:57 Josh] right. But what is making this even more like entertained more than we would even expected? Teoh is this other thing. We were talking about her weight, which is Trump’s seeming refusal to soften his approach to Latinos at all, whether type of individual Latinos or even the group entirely. Right,

[0:15:12 Jim] right? So let’s turn to that and talk about Donald Trump and Latinos. So one might have thought in a certain world that even if Donald Trump shoved his way into the Republican nomination race by saying a bunch of things that he thinks conservative white voters will not say out loud, like the things he said about Mexican immigrants being rapists and killers in his campaign announcement.

[0:15:41 Josh] That’s about Mexico is sending to us

[0:15:43 Jim] about building a wall in having Mexico pay for it, and so on and so forth. You

[0:15:49 Josh] still

[0:15:49 Jim] might have thought, given the conventional wisdom that after he had secured the nomination effectively, which he has effectively, that he might moderate his behavior in anticipation of the general election. That’s what we tend to assume about candidates now before we talk about why, whether he really hasn’t done that, with Latinos. Let’s talk a little bit about what we mean when we say he might have moderated his positions or got moved towards the middle of least somewhat for the general. Like

[0:16:17 Josh] I like to be the voice of the conventional wisdom. It’s easier. The conventional wisdom is with Donald Trump is running in a Republican primary. He’s really trying to appeal to the most engaged, the most ideological, the most active voters in the Republican electorate. So he’s not a

[0:16:32 Jim] letter interested in doing something about it,

[0:16:34 Josh] right? People who are interested in showing up to a caucus site in March, right the year before the election, right? I mean that

[0:16:41 Jim] we’re in February in Iowa,

[0:16:43 Josh] right February in Iowa, driving on icy roads to express their political preference.

[0:16:47 Josh] These

[0:16:47 Josh] are not representative of the whole party on either side, Democrats or Republicans. But these are the voters that the candidates essentially have to appeal to. And not only that, you know they need to create distinctions amongst theirselves goes again. At this point, most people just use party is the main label. So I know you know, if you’re a Democrat, you even if you don’t know anything about the candidates, You probably for a Democrat or a Republican. But once again to this primary process treatment. Super engage people, right? And you’re also having talked about a bunch of candidates have to figure out a way to distinguish themselves in this narrow ideological space.

[0:17:17 Jim] But once you start talking about the general election, you’re talking about a very different universe of voters,

[0:17:21 Josh] right? You’re talking about not only your time on voters on the other side, but even less so. But you’re talking about a whole host of less engaged, less interested in especially less ideologically inclined voters, with probably weaker opinions about a lot of these issues who might actually be turned off by some of the stronger opinions you took in the primary. Which is why, historically, candidates, after sort of appealing to sort of the liberal base on the Democratic side, that conservative base on the Republican side they take careful steps back towards the middle again, not not the exact middle, but least more towards the middle of their party when going into the general election. But we haven’t seen that from Trump. When it comes to basic, especially this anything, anything Yeah, I guess. Anything trying, I’m going to think of something that

[0:18:02 Jim] somebody out there might think of Ah, thing or two. And so we, you know, we don’t want to be. We don’t want to over generalize here, but but not much. And certainly in terms of Latinos, very recently, we have seen him exhibit a real reluctance to moderate his position on that, Even doubling down, he attacked the judge who had issued some negative opinions in the lawsuit against Trump University.

[0:18:25 Josh] The judges of Hispanic,

[0:18:26 Jim] yeah, by referring to the judge who’s Hispanic, is a Mexican, basically. And then he’s also been very critical of one of the stars of the Republican Party. And that’s Governor Susannah Martinez of New Mexico. So he not only has done this, but he’s done it in her state. Let’s hear a clip of Donald Trump talking about Governor Susana Martinez of New Mexico.

[0:18:48 Josh] Since 2000 the number of people on food stamps in New Mexico has tripled. We have to get your governor to get going. She’s got to do a better job, okay? Your governor has got to do. She’s not doing the job. Hey, maybe I’ll run for governor of New Mexico. I’ll get this place going. She’s not doing way. Gotta get her moving. Come on, Let’s go.

[0:19:15 Josh] Governor, I personally think Trump would be a great governor of New Mexico.

[0:19:19 Jim] Well, so does he. But I think there’s nearest. I can tell there is not a job that Donald Trump finds themselves trail unqualified for that almost doesn’t need any extra.

[0:19:31 Josh] I want to add one point. Just so you know Susana Martinez. In addition to being the governor, a Latina, a Republican, the governor of New Mexico is all woman. Yes, is also the head of the Republican Governors Association, which is a big party organization. That is certainly gonna be very active in this election cycle. So not only, you know, is he insulting a fellow Republican? Which opening quotes, I guess. You know, a woman wrote a Latina Ah, Governor, which generally, you know, try to be polite, but also someone who is directly gonna be very involved in this 2016 election on his behalf,

[0:20:07 Jim] right? You mentioned that she’s a governor. You mentioned all these things. I mean, it really is almost every way that you could have been rude and offensive and in polite to your host and violate political norms. He pretty much hits everything on the list, and this is definitely having an impact inside the Republican Party. So one of the other big inside politics stories in the last couple of weeks, but one that is really telling. And I think seen as a signal, certainly to the political press, is that inside the party there are people that are just migrating away. They’re backing away from the Trump campaign is rapidly as they can, so it’s a high profile Republican National Committee operative name. Ruth. Get a Who? I had a job, a major communications job in the Republican National Committee,

[0:20:56 Josh] reaching out toe Hispanic media

[0:20:57 Jim] about reaching out to Hispanic media. Exactly. And she basically resigned from that job and has now moved to another job that will have her exclusively engaged in congressional races so that she doesn’t have toe have anything to do with the presidential campaign, including even saying anything positive about it. Now, on one hand, one can look at this and think it’s really inside baseball. She was replaced by another Hispanic woman that had actually worked for Jeb Bush

[0:21:25 Josh] and actually criticized Trump

[0:21:26 Jim] within minutes of her being announces the replacement. Yeah, there were piles of tweets have heard criticizing Trump. Now both of these point to the role and invited to think a little bit more about the role of Latinos in the election and in an upcoming election and in politics in the United States, in Texas and toe

[0:21:45 Josh] wind

[0:21:45 Jim] up, it’s worth observing. I think that if you look at this dynamic in the Republican race nationally and this discussion of Latinos in Texas, that there’s something interesting going on something that tells us a little bit about the difference between Texas in the United States and and politics and in the two setting. So in national politics, as we’ve implied here, I think the Latino vote really is essential to Democratic competitiveness. Is, is the Latino population grows? We see Democratic success at the presidential level really kind of increasing, and conversely, we see Republicans becoming more and more concerned and attentive to the role of Latinos in the process, into, if not bending over backwards toe become the party of Latinos, at least certainly working not to alienate them. And in fact you know that’s what we saw in the aftermath of the 2012 election. After Mitt Romney lost Latinos by such a huge margin, there was a lot of soul searching in the Republican Party. A big document in game plan was produced that was really intended to get everybody on the same page.

[0:22:55 Josh] It seems strangely quaint now that the Republican Party basically said no. You know, we have a problem here, and we need to actually address this, and it’s quaint in the sense that I mean, they were right and they probably will continue to be right. But this elected cycles basically just totally blown out. I mean, they basically have ripped that document up and set it on fire.

[0:23:11 Jim] And this dynamic with Donald Trump at the national level is one of the things that is really making Hillary Clinton, despite movement in the polls, the favorite to win the presidency in the fall. I mean, that’s why there’s so much concern over Trump’s appeal. But if we look back at Texas as we just discussed, the idea that somehow Latinos could carry Hillary Clinton over the line in Texas really does seem like a very, very very unlikely outcome,

[0:23:41 Josh] right? I think what people forget is, I mean, even though this state is increasingly diverse and is a majority minority state, if you look at the turnout patterns, which again it’s unlikely to see, you know, even if there’s a big infusion, it’s still it’s not gonna be big enough. The fact is, there’s a lot of a lot of Republicans here. That’s what I always say. People forget that there’s a lot of Republican. There’s a lot of white Republicans. There’s a lot of conservative Republicans, and if you just sort of start out with the baseline party identification of who’s gonna show up in the, you know, an election? The fact is, the Democrats have about 10 points to make up

[0:24:12 Jim] usually, and Latinos in Texas have just enough of a different profile. And it’s not night and day, but is a significant matter of degree in terms of having lower turnout and identifying with the Democratic Party at a somewhat lower rate, particularly in midterm elections, but including overall then Latinos in the rest of the country to him, particularly in the big Latino states. And so the upshot is that even though Latinos are important and they’re in Texas. They’re the fastest growing group in this state, and there is tons and tons of talk about their role in the political system. It doesn’t have the critical mass inside Texas because of these factors. The predominance of Republicans, turnout rates, relative

[0:24:57 Josh] relative Democratic identification,

[0:24:59 Jim] Felicity and relative party identification that they do nationally. And so we have this interesting contrast where you have the same dynamic, manifesting itself in very different ways in Texas than it does at the national level. And so at that point, I think we’re gonna manifest ourselves out. Thanks for listening, and we’ll talk to you next week. Second Reading Podcast is a production of Texas Politics Project and the Project 2021 Development Studio at the University of Texas at Austin.