The Latino Vote at the DNC
Clip: 10/9/2024 | 5m 22sVideo has Closed Captions
Excitement or Concern? A look at an historic Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Shortly after the Republican National Convention, and weeks before the Democratic National Convention, President Biden decided to drop out of the race for his candidacy for reelection. What does this historic moment mean for the Democratic party? Will it be an energizing moment or one of concern?
The Latino Vote at the DNC
Clip: 10/9/2024 | 5m 22sVideo has Closed Captions
Shortly after the Republican National Convention, and weeks before the Democratic National Convention, President Biden decided to drop out of the race for his candidacy for reelection. What does this historic moment mean for the Democratic party? Will it be an energizing moment or one of concern?
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship(lively music) - [Speaker] Welcome to the DNC!
- [Group] Fix the courts!
- [Protestor] Are you guys ready to storm the United Center?
For Trump!
Do it for Trump!
- [María] The moment that Kamala Harris went on the ticket, we went from registering 60 to a hundred voters a day to that first week of registering 8,000 voters a day.
- [Victor] Señoras y Señores, "El Relajo de la Mañana".
Yo me encuentro acá en Chicago en la cobertura de la Convención de Democratas.
- We take phone calls, you see the comments on Facebook, people saying they're, they're coming out to vote for her, and now they have a choice.
This injection of energy that you see nationally, I can tell you I've seen it with my audience locally in Pennsylvania.
- [Darryl] Vice president knocked it outta the park with her selection for vice presidential nominee.
Like me, he's a hunter, so I think he'll do a great job of articulating the need for responsible common sense gun violence prevention measures.
- [Dolores] We have a woman of color that is running for the presidency that sends out a very strong message to all of our community because knowing that someone that looks like us can actually be the president of the United States of America, we can make it happen.
Si se puede.
- [Speaker] Pleasure to meet you.
So much.
Great inspiration for us young Mexican Americans here.
- [Julián] Young Latinos are paying more attention, they're more enthusiastic, and they're probably more likely to vote in November than we could have said five weeks ago.
- [Crowd Chanting] AOC!
- [Alexandria] If you're an immigrant family, just starting your American story, Kamala is for you.
- [María] We will make history and elect Kamala Harris, president.
Vota!
- [Mike] How are things going there in, in Chicago?
Chuck, you're there.
You've been a part of the festivities there.
How's it feel there on the floor?
- [Chuck] There's just more energy.
Is that gonna relate into more vote?
Latino vote is back.
We're gonna win.
We're gonna lose.
I just know that there's just a palable.
I think I said that right.
More energy around everything.
30 days ago, I was having to call Democrats not to jump off the top of buildings.
We had a Democratic party and a base and a Latino electorate that was not motivated to show up.
Enthusiasm was an all time low, lower than I'd seen it in my 34 years of running campaigns.
Folks were just not excited to vote for Joe Biden.
Compare this to 2020, and the Bernie Sanders campaign inspired a whole new generation of Latinos and young activists to be involved in their own party.
Just because we didn't win, overall, there's more and more that came from that than just an election result.
We keep talking about Latinos are so hard to reach.
I think what we're doing here at the convention, what the DNC is doing is the perfect thing to reach this younger electorate to at least give them the option to see what are the Democrats even talking about?
And do you like it?
There's 200 content creators sitting in the front, couple rows of the convention who are TikToking this and who are folks with lots of followers, who then the next day, if they're not involved in politics, they will see somebody else talking about that.
But again, it's the hat tip to the community.
You can say you don't like TikTok great.
Don't like it.
But that's where our people are.
- [Mike] The way we campaign, the way we communicate is fundamentally different.
And it does seem for the moment that there is at least been some very significant strides that have been made.
It is remarkable to hear a DNC crowd with the U-S-A-U-S-A chant taking away this, this peculiar fascination that Republicans have thinking they own these things.
They own the flag, they own the USA chants, I thought I was watching the Republican Convention in the 1980s.
- [Kamala] I fought against the cartels who traffic in guns and drugs and human beings.
Who threatened the security of our border and the safety of our communities.
- [Mike] One of the things that's been really fascinating is that to make themselves competitive for this election, the Democrats made a pivot on immigration.
I don't know that I've ever seen a party pivot as strongly and decisively away from, away from its orthodoxy, the way the Democrats have just done under a woman of color.
It's, it's extraordinary.
- [Kamala] Last year, Joe and I brought together Democrats and conservative Republicans to write the strongest border bill in decades.
The Border Patrol endorsed it.
- [Mike] Uh, we wanna say that it's a bipartisan bill, and technically I suppose that's true, but basically it was a capitulation by the Democrats to give the Republicans everything they wanted on border security.
- [Kamala] We can create an earned pathway to citizenship and secure our border.
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Examine the priorities of a politically diverse Latino electorate for the 2024 election. (1m 40s)
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