Does 2004 show that Dem panicking over the Rio Grande Valley is overblown?

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Well 2004 was to a great extent a foreign policy/culture war election, and after 2004 there was a historic recession that polarised politics around class issues again. Obama also did much better in the Midwest than Kerry and Gore for this reason - a fatal error many on this site made in 2016 was to imagine that Obama's Midwest overperformance was an unbreachable 'freiwal'.

So I'd say that if the economy is good in 2024 Democrats should do fine in the Rio Grande Valley. But Republicans have clearly learned there is mileage in cultural wedge issues on Hispanic voters and aren't going to abandon the strategy as McCain and Romney did. Those two could conceivably have won, as Trump did in 2016, by ignoring Hispanics and running up the score with WWCs. But that's no longer an option now Republicans are on the defensive in the sunbelt: with the loss of so many suburban whites the GOP coalition has to broaden racially to survive.

If the above doesn't happen then Democrats will keep winning. Which is a plausible outcome. But clearly the path of least resistance for the GOP is rural conservative Hispanics rather than trying to win back college educated whites who are dealigning with the party culturally.