Before the election, Texas Democrat James Talarico offered a simple political lesson that should not have sounded revolutionary. “We have to start treating Black voters as swing voters.”

Talarico, who is white, first had to repair his relationship with Black voters after defeating Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who is Black, in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. Resentment was already simmering after prominent Democrats blamed Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 loss to Donald Trump on wokeness, language Black voters understood as code for Black issues.

Black women in Texas also bristled at claims that Talarico was more electable than Crockett. Those assertions landed badly with voters who had reliably supported Democrats and saw the party reflexively favoring the white candidate.

Talarico had won most white Democrats and Latinos during the primary, but the lingering frustration required a campaign focused on racial reconciliation. He had to rebuild trust with Black voters while retaining the groups that helped deliver his nomination.

That strategy worked. Talarico defeated Republican Ken Paxton last week, becoming the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from Texas in 36 years.

Democrat Abdul El-Sayed faced a different version of the same challenge in Michigan. Although he did not defeat a Black candidate for his nomination, he needed to reach Black voters who believed Arab and Muslim voters had punished Harris over President Joe Biden’s Gaza policy.

El-Sayed had been slow to embrace Harris and also confronted long simmering tensions between Black and Arab communities in Michigan. At the same time, he weathered accusations of antisemitism while retaining Jewish voters and white voters ranging from progressive to moderate.

The broader lesson is not merely that two Democrats in dramatically different states needed to energize Black voters whom their party might otherwise take for granted. It is that every voter must be persuaded, which is the basic work of politics.

Trump pursued Black and Hispanic voters in 2024 while running against Harris, an HBCU graduate seeking to become the first woman, first Black woman and first Asian woman to serve as president. His coalition crossed cultural and class lines.

Trump received 13% of the Black vote and 46% of the Hispanic vote. Those figures represented a 5 point increase among Black voters and an 18 point increase among Hispanic voters, and Trump credited both groups for his victory.

He also promised them, “I’ve heard your voices in the campaign and I look forward to working with you in the years to come.” But his economic policies drove up Black unemployment, while his immigration policies left Hispanic Americans fearing they could be snatched from the streets.

Inviting people into a political tent is not enough. Parties must give them a reason to remain, and the Black and Hispanic voters newly attracted to Trump did not stay for long.

MS NOW’s Hayes Brown noted Thursday that Republicans, particularly in Texas, built their mid decade redistricting gerrymanders around the increased Hispanic support they received in 2024. They seemingly assumed those voters would continue behaving the same way, a risky bet built on presumed loyalty.

Recent elections have repeatedly challenged that assumption. Millions of voters who supported Barack Obama in 2012 backed Trump in 2016, while millions of Trump’s 2024 voters supported Democrats in places such as Texas during the midterms.

Some Republicans appeared to recognize the danger. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, a Florida Republican and Trump loyalist, attracted attention with an advertisement arguing that Trump’s policies had gone too far, while her race against Democratic challenger Eliott Rodriguez remained too close to call as of Friday evening.

Republicans have also treated white working class and middle class voters as permanent members of their coalition, but the MS NOW Voter Poll found their support had softened since 2024. The party now faces a choice between examining those defections and embracing comforting explanations that avoid introspection.

Talarico and El-Sayed asked difficult questions when faced with the possibility that Black voters might defect or stay home. They won in vastly different political environments because they treated persuasion as a responsibility rather than loyalty as an entitlement.

Politicians should no longer expect unconditional support from Black voters or any other community. Treating reliable Democratic constituencies as voters whose backing must be earned should become normal, not a supposedly radical campaign innovation.