With much of the white rural vote lining up in the GOP column, Democrats will need to shore up their position with young voters and the growing Latino electorate in order to win the current decade and position themselves as the dominant party in the future. The 2020 election poked some holes in the narrative that the Democrats would dominate elections for years to come due to the growing number of Latino votes. Now, the Democrats will have to learn that they cannot take the Latino vote for granted and must concentrate on outreach to these voters.

Appeal to Latinos Is About More than not Being Trump

Donald Trump's divisive and hateful politics ended up appealing to larger swaths of the American public than they should have because he managed to shroud some of his manifest bigotry in terms of economic issues. Democrats made the mistake of focusing their outreach to Latinos solely on the fact that they were not the party of Trump. At the same, it seemed like the emphasis on immigration made sense in light of Trump's heinous policies of tearing children from their families and putting them into cages. However, the Latino vote has proven that it is not monolithic. Latinos have their own pocketbook issues that they may place above immigration as their chief concern.

The good thing for the Democrats is that Trump is an unusual politician who appeals to voters for idiosyncratic reasons. In other words, all is not lost. The Democrats still won the bulk of the Latino vote in spite of Trump's gains. This means that recalibrating the approach to Latinos should make up the lost ground, especially if Trump ends up out of the way for whatever reason. However, it does mean that the Democrats need to be conscious of how they approach Latinos and not simply assume a one-size-fits-all approach.

With the growing Latino electorate, Democrats need to recognize that there are differences in these voters. For example, Democrats lost major support in Florida as Cuban voters moved decisively towards the GOP. An influx of Puerto Rican voters to Central Florida was not enough to make up for this loss of support. Democrats lost sight of different blocks within the Latino vote and did not have a nuanced message.

The Message Needs to Also Be About Jobs and Healthcare

Democrats need to tailor a better message that steps beyond immigration. While Joe Biden can restore DACA, and he can get rid of many of the Trump Administration's unjust immigration policies, fixing immigration is largely a pipe dream in this divided country. Democrats can deliver for voters in terms of jobs and healthcare, and they need to recognize that these issues are every bit as important to Latino voters as immigration. While many of Trump's disgraceful policies did drive Latino turnout, Trump is now gone, and Democrats need to focus on winning these votes for the long run. Being "not the Party of Trump" is not a message built to win the coming decade.

Moreover, in addition to their message, the Democrats need to build a formidable ground game to reach Latino voters in future election where they are. Although Democrats could not go door-to-door this election because of the pandemic, the outreach to Latino voters was sorely lacking, especially in Florida. The Biden Campaign simply did not make enough effort to reach out, not realizing until it was too late that they had lost serious ground to Trump. Driving turnout among friendly voters is critical to future success. The Democrats seemed to get this in Arizona, but did not learn the lesson on a national scale. Better outreach would have given Democrats the key intelligence that Trump's message had some appeal to Latino voters.

Many Latinos learn more to the conservative side. Thus, Democrats will not be able to reach them with a more liberal message. The message would at least need to be retooled to show these voters how policies align with their own economic interests. In other words, with Trump out of the way, elections will go back to being about kitchen table issues, and Latinos have kitchens too. If the Democrats can somehow rebuild their standing among Florida Latinos and can combine it with growing support in the suburbs, they can finally achieve the elusive goal of prying Florida out of the Red column, where it has been since 2014.