Monthly Archives: August 2012

A swing and a miss but they got a YouTube sensation out of it

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Posted on Thursday night for Friday’s blog.

Mitt Romney’s speech was a single with no one on base.  Whether the voters move him around the bases is very much a very open question.  The curve balls the Republican national convention threw the country were too simple and the lines too obvious.  Hispanics. Check.  Women. Check.  Marriage. Check.  Romney could have hit a homerun, but when you start with another Bush, it is hard to be taken seriously.  Jeb Bush defending his brother – certain to go down in history as the worst of presidents – reminded the country of how bad George W. Bush was, how bad a time the country is having recovering and how bad Mitt Romney might be.  The video promoting Romney before he spoke included photographs of Romney’s father, who with his record on civil rights probably would not have supported Arizona’s anti-HispanicLatino that are metastasizing across the country.

This whole enterprise is warped somehow.  The forced, awkward elevation of the man, the lofty descriptions of his business record, the declarations of self-achievement – they all evoke that old Shakespearean line:  “I think he doth protest too much.”  And poor Clint Eastwood.  He represents the skeletal notions of a make-believe past.  The disrespect for the Office of the President with the empty-chair act was astonishing.  I felt sorry for Eastwood and for the men and women who felt they had to prop up Romney with faded delusion and crudeness.  The computer severs at YouTube might be confused at the NSA with spinning centrifuges in Iran.  Not far behind Eastwood were the retellings of family stories – from Marco Rubio’s oddly agitated speech to Ann Romney’s pasta-and-tuna saga of the other night.  They sounded hollow and lonely, even, perhaps meant to scare people into loss.  I figured out that loss was the theme of the convention.  Loss of security. Loss of jobs. Loss of families.  The concept of the family was used to frighten, not to inspire. I also figured out that Paul Ryan is Eddie Haskell.

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Not a Good Night at the Political Ballpark in Tampa

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Posted on Wednesday night for Thursday.

Strike two.  For a country worried and anxious about the future, the second day of the Republican national convention was breath-taking in its failure to produce anything that the nation could use to begin to rethink its future.  Instead, Paul Ryan’s speech was an ongoing lament about problems that President Obama’s predecessor caused.  The only attempt at authenticity was a prerecorded video about the Bushes – one defeated for re-election and the other someone the country wishes it had never elected.  Even a solid Republican had to worry about that kind of a start.

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Small as Small Is: The Republicans in Tampa

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Posted on Tuesday night as Wednesday’s regular blog.

The Republican convention last night seemed, well, small.  Perhaps because the hurricane reduced its schedule, perhaps because the hall looked miniature, perhaps because the too many empty chairs diluted its energy – for whatever reason, the thing looked smaller than similar events in the past.  I could not put my finger on it, except that I suspect that most people in the room feared that most Americans watching – if they watched – do not believe what they heard.  I sense strongly, too, that the delegates in Tampa do not believe that Mitt Romney can win.  All seemed out of sync, including the much-anticipated speech from Ann Romney, dressed in Nancy Reagan red.  I will leave for women to judge if she connected with them.  To me, it was a sycophantic appeal that did little to address the threat Republicans pose to women – a startling oversight in light of the fears raised anew by Todd Akin of Missouri and Paul Ryan.

Any personal story can be interesting.  Any couple’s past can be lovely but it is useless to what happens next if it is just a story.

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It is more than the economy, stupid.

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When does community end?  If the country feels as if it is fraying, that a big scramble is on during which everyone grabs for their own, it is because the sense of unity that fragilely sews together a nation that depends on comity started coming undone first.  It is not the economy, stupid.  The furies of our times are about something else.

The sad and disturbing fact is that many Americans are having trouble handling the new demography that has come down on them pretty fast.  The components of change embedded in the population decades ago by individuals choosing not to have more than two children put the country on a fast track that along with immigration altered the country’s demography.  Now the consequences of those decisions are being reflected in an election that people want to treat as a discussion about the direction of the economy and about its closely-related cousin, Medicare.  But the election is about so much more.  It is about whether the nation at some point understands the dangerous point at which we have arrived, when community is not about everyone.  The Republican line about saving America is rhetorical gauze for something more disturbing.

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HispanicLatinas: More than Solid in Obama’s Corner — for a Reason

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So the polls show between 63 and 70 percent of Hispanic/Latinos (men and women combined) supporting President Obama 75 days until the election.  For the sake of argument, let’s say it is 70 percent, which is where I believe it is.  If that is the case and given that men overall support the President to a lesser extent than women, then a much as 85 percent – or more – of HispanicLatinas support Obama.  How did Obama get to those stratospheric levels?  Perhaps war, healthcare, the economy and women’s issues have something to do with it – and not necessarily just immigration, the shorthand topic to which the media instantly jumps.

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In Tampa: More than a Tropical Storm Named Isaac

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As the tropics churn with potential storms, they cast an ominous backdrop for Tampa as it prepares for the Republican National Convention that starts next week.  It is also a stormy time for speechwriters drafting remarks for the lineup of speakers, especially the Hispanic or Latino “stars” of the party.  With only minimal original input from the speakers who will deliver them, the speeches theoretically are intended to provide answers for voters, and so it will be tough going against a stiff wind for speechwriters to compose something for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martínez and senatorial nominee Ted Cruz of Texas.

Aside from the strident attacks on immigrants that are only a charade for how Republicans feel about the changing demography of the nation, these “stars” will have to address a national HispanicLatino audience with a straight face.  Behind the curtain in the convention hall, GOP strategists have put in motion plans to suppress – actively, consciously suppress – the HispanicLatino vote.  These four individuals know they were elected in unique elections with unusual electoral characteristics and that they are part of an organization that seeks not to expand the progress HispanicLatinos make but to limit it – and aggressively so. Continue reading →

The Age of Scramble

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We entered the age of information – and disinformation – not that long ago.  It changed our world and our lives, and now we live in the age of scramble.  In almost every sense of the word, life has become scramble as noun and verb.  The most vivid image of scramble of late is the tens of thousands of young residents in the country illegally scurrying to take advantage of an opportunity to legalize their presence and status – at least for now.  The long lines of young residents, mostly Hispanic/Latinos brought to the country illegally from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and other places, represent only part of the scrambling of individuals, groups of people, institutions, and organizations reacting to defend their interests or get their slice of the pie that appears to have been getting smaller.

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Male Chauvinists: Soon in Obama’s Corner?

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The latest attack from the right on President Obama comes in the form of former Navy SEALs who disparage him in a video that seeks to diminish his standing as commander-in-chief. Whoever commissioned the video did so weeks ago when the opinion polls showed Obama leading Mitt Romney – and putting distance between the two. One poll reported something unusual: An uptick in support of Obama among male voters, the group least likely to support him.

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Manzano So Much More than Navarrette

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Where and how does one begin to make sense of what Ruben Navarrette wrote for CNN about Leo Manzano and, by extension, Hispanics/Latinos, be they recent immigrants or descendants from founders of some of the oldest cities in the nation?  To start off, the column Navarrette wrote lambasting the young Olympic runner for raising a Mexican and a U.S. flag to celebrate his silver medal in the 1500-meter race was not about Manzano.  It was about Navarrette.  The object of Navarrette’s anger was not Manzano’s alleged act of disloyalty but something about Navarrette that is not yet settled within his own self.

Navarrette admits as much in the column, which in a way is the most important he has ever written:  “Most Mexican-Americans I know would need a whole team of therapists to sort out their views on culture, national identity, ethnic pride and their relationship with Mother Mexico,” the 55-year-old Navarrette wrote.  And that is the problem.  The problem is not Manzano, who knows who he is and knows what he thinks and who is not going to back down from someone like Navarrette who has not figured himself out at his age and remains incomplete – like many Mexican-Americans and other HispanicLatinos.

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Julián Castro and the Democrats’ Looming 75-Percent Solution

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Could President Obama’s share of the Hispanic/Latino vote – as high as 75 percent according to some polls – be bumped any higher after Mitt Romney selected Paul Ryan as his running mate?  Seems unlikely, but the possibility of freezing HispanicLatino support at that stratospheric number alone should make the mouths of Democratic strategists water.  Think of it: Romney, clinging to the anti-HispanicLatino message that he embraced during the primary campaign, puts on the ticket a representative of the tea party – comprised of the most vociferous anti-HispanicLatino Republicans.

If Romney’s campaign already was taking a shellacking nationally – his unfavorable rating among all voters is at an unheard of 49 percent for a challenger to an incumbent President – then among HispanicLatinos Romney has tanked.  That sound you hear should be Chicago going in for the kill to seal the election.  Continue reading →