Mike Madrid Profile picture
Mar 12, 2024 10 tweets 2 min read Read on X
It’s hard to underscore how significant the creation of a ‘Border Security Group’ by Democrats is.

It’s potentially transformative for Democrats who have been losing Hispanic voters since 2012.
Read this article carefully. It correctly describes the party’s decision to emphasize immigration as a driving issue to Latino voters.

This is perhaps the most tragically flawed strategic decision I’ve witnessed by either major political party in decades. nbcnews.com/politics/congr…
Since the high water mark of Democratic Latino support under Obama, Democrats have been losing shares of Latino voters.

In three of the last four general elections Latinos have either shifted towards Republicans or maintained historically high levels of GOP support
Immigration has never polled high in the minds of Latino voters except in partisan surveys that Democrats and affiliated groups relied on - to their detriment.

No credible pollsters would have advised Democrats lean into this issue the way they have.
Because no one questioned the data, polling and advice Democrats have literally been messaging to the fastest shrinking share of the Latino electorate since 2012.

They’re now reaping the fruits of those decisions.
It is unconscionable that Democrats are suffering historic losses of Latino votes to Donald Trump but it’s happening because no one questioned the bad strategy of moving left when Latino voters were quantifiably moving right.
Again, losing record shares of Latino voters should have been enough of a red flag but losing them to Donald Trump should have been a five alarm fire going off.

But there wasn’t a peep beyond denial that anything was wrong
The shift towards humane but stringent border security - led by Latino members, border representatives & marginal seat members may be the wake up call the Democrats have needed and just in time.
Again, Latino voters (like all Americans) increasingly want border security. They feel the problem and want it resolved.

The problem Democrats have had with moving to the left to appeal to Latinos has always been wrong- but now a decade of data can no longer be ignored & denied
I will be explain why this happened in 2012, the flaw in Democratic polling and research that led to this but for the moment suffice it to say it appears the adults in the room have finally realized they’ve been misled.

Thank God.

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More from @madrid_mike

Feb 2
There’s a bitter contradiction unfolding in Latino politics: Latino voters are increasingly rejecting Republicans because of ICE overreach—even as the ICE agents who killed Alex Pretti were themselves Latino. 1/5 A short 🧵to explain Image
The unmasking of the agents involved in Pretti’s killing won’t calm the outrage. It sharpens it. The issue isn’t ethnicity—its power, impunity, & an enforcement culture that treats entire communities as suspect.

BUT Latino ICE agents complicate things 2/5 Image
For many Latino voters, from Miami to Dallas, ICE raids are the breaking point. “Law and order” loses its appeal when it becomes unchecked state violence, shielded from accountability, defended reflexively by one political party. 3/5 Image
Read 5 tweets
Jan 20
When Empires Decline

History rarely lets us pin imperial decline to one man. But at the pace of American devolution, Trump’s name will likely be etched into the story,perhaps in faux gold.
The fall of empires follows patterns. What differs is how people respond to lost status.🧵 Image
Some societies accept decline with realism & adapt.

Others suffer a kind of phantom limb syndrome, lashing out at a world that no longer bends to them. The Aztecs fell to Spanish power with resentment. Faced with diminishment its leaders chose destruction over accommodation. 2/5 Image
After Appomattox, the American South followed similarly. Rather than rebuild, it invented the Lost Cause—turning defeat into myth & grievance into identity. Preserving hierarchy mattered more than prosperity.The result was a century of poverty,violence,& arrested development. 3/5 Image
Read 5 tweets
Jan 17
In the waning days of the reign of Roman Emperor Caligula, we see a ruler who began with public favor & ended in absolute isolation.

His descent into decadence and self-worship wasn’t sudden — it was a slow erosion of norms that eventually ate the institutions around him. 1/5🧵 Image
Caligula’s final months were marked by divine pretensions, humiliating demands & the humiliation of political rivals.

Sound familiar?

He famously declared himself a god, tightened his grip on power, & punished dissent with cruelty that turned colleagues into conspirators. 2/5
The elite of Rome knew the madness wouldn’t last forever. While public spectacle and lavish pageantry masked an empty treasury, fear and obedience replaced any real loyalty. Senators applauded in public while whispering threats in private. 3/5 Image
Read 5 tweets
Jan 12
Do protests work?

Like a lot of us, I’ve spent too many hours in early 2026 doom-scrolling. Last night I saw Rachel Maddow asked whether protests after the murder of Renee Good would matter—or whether protests ever matter at all.

Her answer stopped me cold. 🧵 Image
Maddow cited the 3.5% Rule: political scientists have found that when 3.5% of a population engages in sustained, nonviolent protest, authoritarian regimes topple.

In 30+ years of political consulting, I’d never heard this.

So I looked deeper.

There’s real evidence behind it. Image
The murder of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent ignited something already building. Within days, protests erupted across red and blue states alike—spontaneous, decentralized, organic.

This wasn’t paid protesters.
It was Americans deciding that silence = complicity. Image
Read 4 tweets
Jan 5
January 6 is not a “difference of opinion.”

It was an attack on the basic rule that keeps democracies alive: losers accept the result.

Pretending otherwise is how republics rot from the inside. 🧵 Image
The most dangerous part wasn’t the broken windows.

It was the lie that elections only count when your side wins — and that force is an acceptable response when it doesn’t. Image
Every failed democracy tells the same story in hindsight:
“It wasn’t that bad.”

“They had grievances.”

“We needed to move on.”

That’s not healing.

That’s amnesia. Image
Read 7 tweets
Jan 3
Venezuelans make up a very small portion of the total U.S. Latino electorate, accounting for approximately 1% of the U.S. Hispanic population as of 2021 data. 

As for voters it’s probably half a percent above or below that - most of it located in Florida. 🧵
What about Cubans?

Both Cubans and Dominicans each make up less than 7% of eligible Latino voters. 

Again, Cubans are most determinative in Florida.

So will the Venezuelan situation impact the Latino vote?
If there is an impact nationally it certainly won’t have anything to do with Latino affinity across national origin or sympathies for or against ‘socialism’.

That’s Cold War nonsense usually espoused by a small handful of anti-communists from those countries & I agree with them
Read 6 tweets

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