Former Obama adviser warns Democrats won't have a chance if they don't win back the Hispanic vote

Recapturing the Hispanic vote must be the Democratic Party's priority to win back Congress and have a real shot at returning to the White House. This has been highlighted by Dan Pfeiffer, former adviser to Barack Obama, who has alerted Democratic leaders that, if they don’t return to pre-Hillary Clinton levels of support among this community, "there is no path."

Reversing the Hispanic "exodus"

During his latest episode of Podcast save America, Pfeiffer stressed that it would not be enough for the Blue Party to simply reverse the Hispanic "exodus" of the past elections. He argued that Democrats must regain the earlier advantage, from a time when the Latino vote was considered captive to the Democrats.

"There’s no way to look at this without recognizing the massive scale of our problems. You can kind of tell yourself that things might be kind of OK by looking at just the shift from ’20 to ’2, but if you really want to assess where we are as a party, you have to look at the shift from 2016 to 2024."

Concern about Latino voter shift to the right 16 points in 4 years

That is, Democrats need to win back at least 70% of Hispanics who voted for Hillary Clinton 9 years ago. Kamala Harris’s dismal 54% in 2024 made it clear that this is not enough to contend for the White House—especially with troubling signs like Donald Trump winning the Latino male vote.

"It’s not all about men. Latinos moved 17 points [to the right] in eight years. Latino men went 14 points [toward the GOP] in eight years,” Pfieffer said. “Latinos are the fastest-growing population in the country. They are particularly politically powerful because of how the population is distributed in electoral-rich sunbelt states like Texas, Florida, Arizona, Nevada."

"If that trend continues, there is no path for Democrats to win elections"

Pfeiffer stressed that Hispanics "are becoming more of the electorate, and we are losing more of them at a very fast rate. If that trend continues, there is no path to Democrats winning elections."

"The message I take from this is, anyone who thinks that we can get away with just tinkering around the edges, just hoping that Donald Trump becomes unpopular or they nominate some yahoo in 2028 or we’re going to ride the wave of tariffs and inflation to a narrow House victory is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. We have to be willing to ask very hard questions."