John Podesta’s e-mail to the Clinton team, urging the nominee to make some calls to “needy Latinos” like Federico Pena and Bill Richardson, has gotten fleeting coverage from most of the media. But syndicated columnist Reuben Navarette noticed it, and he tears into Podesta, Clinton and the Democrats, laying out what he “needs”:

I need Democrats to stop taking Latino voters for granted, and finally act in ways that show they deserve this support. It’s not enough for Democrats to simply scare off Latinos from voting for Republicans. They should spend money, create outreach efforts and abandon the cheap and easy “chips and salsa” approach to courting America’s fastest-growing group of voters.
I need Democratic Party leaders to show some respect for Latino voters, who have given a majority of their votes to the Democratic nominee in the last 14 presidential elections. When a corporation has a customer that loyal, they shower them with perks, rewards, and upgrades. Only in politics does loyalty work against you by sending the message that you have nowhere to go.

Navarette is probably as tough a critic of Trump’s illegal immigration rhetoric as you will find, but even he’s appalled at how the media has decided to handle Trump this cycle:

I need for the media to stop dealing from the bottom of the deck and give as much attention to the WikiLeaks story as it has the revelations about Donald Trump’s vulgar language and boorish behavior. What we’re learning from the emails isn’t just idle gossip. It’s newsworthy material. For instance, it matters that former CNN contributor Donna Brazile—who was at the time the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee—appears to have leaked a town hall question to the Clinton camp but not to the camp of Clinton’s rival for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders. Doesn’t the public, especially those Sanders supporters who still haven’t committed to Clinton, deserve to hear the truth?
I need for the media to regain its focus and stop trying to keep Trump away from the White House, not because this is not a worthwhile goal but because this is not its role. Americans have always known the Fourth Estate leaned to the left and had a knack for helping liberal Democrats win elections. But we’re in uncharted territory now that newspapers and broadcast networks have pushed aside the Democratic nominee for president and dedicated itself to defeating the Republican nominee itself.

In all likelihood, Hillary Clinton will win the Latino vote by a wide margin. But if turnout in this demographic is lower than expected, or if Clinton’s margin isn’t as wide as expected, how much of that outcome will stem from Latinos concluding that Democrats take them for granted and don’t really offer a better option than Republicans?