Monthly Archives: September 2012

An Aware Clinton and the New Demography 40 Years Later

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Posted Wednesday evening for Sept. 6, 2012.

It was Bill Clinton who was the first President to put into words something already afoot: The remaking of America.  In the days after he won election in 1992, Clinton said he wanted a Cabinet that reflected America.  He proceeded then to assemble a Cabinet that included two HispanicLatinos, San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and Denver Mayor Federico Peña as Secretary of Transportation.

Clinton – the most capable and aware President since Lyndon Johnson – understood what few Americans did, that the country had begun a historic demographic shift already changing the country.  Sometime in 1972 or therabouts, twenty years before Clinton organized a more demographically correct Cabinet, the population replacement rate of the “white” population had already dipped below the necessary 2.1 births per woman and it has fallen each year since to probably 1.7 today.  Such a decline in demographic terms creates a void and triggers an extremely powerful force for change, with the potential to cause countries to disappear — a very high price for a nation to pay.  But stepping into that breach a growing HispanicLatino population already was leading the formation of a new demography critical for the nation’s survival.

Coming full circle 20 years after he was first elected, Clinton addressed a Democratic national convention last night that reflected the new America that its new demography has created. Benita Veliz, the undocumented student who addressed the convention, represents a vital part of the new demography America needs and requires.  Veliz introduced another immigrant from an earlier generation of HispanicLatinos, Cristina Saralegui, a Cuban American long a fixture on Spanish-language television at Univision and now Telemundo.  Saralegui debunks the notion that all Cubans are Republicans.  Saralegui delivered a full-throated personal endorsement of Obama that spoke about the future of the America that Clinton understood was changing long before most decision-makers.

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Revival in Charlotte

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Posted on Tuesday evening for Sept. 5, 2012.

The polls all say Hispanic/Latinos are solidly in President Obama’s corner.  To what degree is the question.  The surveys suggest their support bumps up against 70 percent – higher than the share Obama won in 2008.  I pay very close attention to my family when I am around them for signs that corroborate national political storylines. I learned the hard way to pay attention to them, especially one sister in particular who undoubtedly is the most conservative of my seven siblings. She did not even like the sainted Ann Richards.  During the Monica Lewinsky debacle at the White House, however, she volunteered immediately when I inquired from Washington that she did not think that President Bill Clinton should resign.  Of course, my sister said, what he did is terrible, but do not rush to judgment. I was skeptical for days thereafter but she was proven right when Clinton not only did not resign but went on to be an exceptional President.  And a great ex-President.

So it is that over the Labor Day weekend I became convinced that the support for Obama among HispanicLatinos has increased and that the intensity level is high – higher than four years ago.  I believed before – but am now convinced – that HispanicLatinos took the incessant drumbeat against immigrants by the Republican right wing personally.  Recent polling by Miami pollster Sergio Bendixen suggests the same thing.  It was not what my sister and her husband said this time.  But they harbor no doubt.  Not so four years ago.  Even after Obama won the nomination. They were not really sold on him.  But something has changed.

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Dimension and Democrats

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Now that the Republican national convention has gone into the books as one the least effective political gatherings in American history, come now the Democrats to put before the nation what most Americans might regard as too stark a choice. There is a tendency for 24/7 pundits and partisan strategists to reduce elections to clear-cut choices between a Democratic or Republican philosophy when parts of either are needed to govern. Viewers got a sense that the Romney brain trust was hoping to develop a different dimension on immigration so as to pull back from the rhetoric that has offended so many HispanicLatino voters.

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Eva Longoria and Clint Eastwood: Changing Drivers for America’s Future

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Reposted from August 7, 2012

A recent news report on CNN — followed immediately by a television commercial — put our current state of affairs in bas-relief. The news report headlined Eva Longoria and Clint Eastwood. Reporters captured Longoria, the beautifully young and erudite Hispanic or Latina actor most famous for her role in Desperate Housewives, attending a fundraising event for President Obama. In stark and almost desperate contrast, observers recapped the aging Eastwood endorsing Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee. After the news anchor took the viewers to break, up popped a commercial for Cisco touting a computerized robotic arm that fixes broken computer production lines at a factory with not a human worker in sight. The producers of the commercial dispensed with all body parts – not even a face. Only a voice accompanied the ad. Intended to be innocuous, the voice instead must cause viewers to conclude unsettlingly that American manufacturers will need fewer and fewer workers in the future.

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