Category Archives: Politics

Feels Like It Is Going Obama’s Way

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On the weekend before the election, it feels it is going President Obama’s way.  My own sense of how it ends, made earlier this week, is only an educated guess.  The inside-the-Beltway crowd insists the election is a close contest.  The savants in the newspapers and on television assert that the election is a near standoff between an aroused Tea party financed by this century’s version of robber barons and the presumably more sophisticated Obama ground game.  That is a simple narrative that might prove imprecise.  After all, the Tea party derived its sweep in the 2010 midterm elections from a smaller and therefore different electorate.

In 2010, about 91 million people voted – 38 million less than the 129 million who voted in 2008 when Obama won by almost 10 million votes.  It seems it would take less effort among Obama supporters to generate as many Tea party voters.  So the worry about lagging enthusiasm among Obama’s supporters that the pundits fuss over probably is not as appropriate as they surmise.  Obama would have to lose close to 100 percent of his winning 2008 margin and suffer other desertions from his ranks to lose the election – ranks that have grown naturally, too.  It could happen, of course.

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Channeling Harry: An Obama Win

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Before President Obama’s self-admitted off-night in Denver, when he allowed Mitt Romney during the first presidential debate to conjure himself into someone he is not, some writers were hinting at and others were outright using the ‘L’ word.  So sloppy had been Romney’s campaign and so error-free was Obama’s leading up to that night in Colorado that a burgeoning Democratic lead in the polls was building the narrative of an inevitable Obama win, perhaps by a landslide.  But that seems to have changed. Now what?

Romney supporters and some knowledgeable observers use the 1980 Carter-Reagan election – when the bottom fell out from under incumbent Jimmy Carter in the closing two weeks of the campaign – as the model to project a Republican win next week.  Other pundits think the 2000 Bush-Gore model will predominate.  In that scenario, George Bush lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote, a result that could retain Obama in office.  Other observers influenced by a Romney surge are proposing a Romney landslide.  Hmmm.  For my part, I am thinking 1948, when incumbent President Harry Truman came from behind and walked away with a hard-earned victory over Tom Dewey.  I think this for several reasons.

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HispanicLatinos: Progressive Voters. True or False?

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The current election, however it turns out, presents an opportunity for progressive-minded activists to confront their sometimes-hidden fear that HispanicLatinos could form an antediluvian, conservative wave as they become a larger share of the national population.  Indeed, if HispanicLatinos vote in the near-70-percent range for President Obama and he wins re-election, they might give progressives the wrong idea.  Worse still would be if Obama loses re-election and progressives see no need to develop the HispanicLatino vote for elections to come.  If HispanicLatinos remain within the Democratic fold in future elections as they might on Nov. 6, they undoubtedly could make the years ahead grim for Republicans.

The degree to which HispanicLatinos become truly progressive/liberal is a key question for progressives and Republicans alike.  And so now is the time for both to appreciate fully the power of the entire changing demography of the country – not just of the HispanicLatino population – and therein lie lessons to be learned regardless of how the 2012 elections turn out.  An indication of how HispanicLatinos might be trending politically comes of late from researchers at the Pew Center.  They reported last week that 52 percent of HispanicLatinos approve of same-sex marriage – a turnaround from 56 percent opposed six years ago.  Among HispanicLatino Catholics, approval was higher, at 54 percent — a little higher than the national norm..

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America: A Community in Jeopardy

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In Monday’s perhaps decisive presidential debate on foreign policy, its participants mentioned the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Had Richard M. Nixon been elected in 1960 instead of John F. Kennedy the world almost certainly could have come to an end two years later.  Nixon was an insecure, neurotic man who would have sided immediately with the Joint Chiefs of Staff who – to a man – wanted to bomb Cuba the sooner the better.  The Russian reaction against American bombers would have triggered a nuclear catastrophe.  Kennedy was the stronger man.  He withstood the pressure of the less visionary around him, and he risked the judgment of an American people freaked out over communists lurking in every closet.

It does matter who gets elected, and in recent years across this country at many levels of government the wrong men and women have been elected for as equally a potentially conclusive moment in American history – when the very concept of community is at stake.  And the problem might be compounded in less than two weeks when the country votes for President.  Regular readers of this blog know that its central tenet is the impact and potential of the country’s new demography.  And the new demography is on par with any experience the country has faced.  It is not as compelling as missiles off the coast of Florida.  Rather, it is a slow-motion event not given to searing images or dramatic news footage, and it is happening against a backdrop of publicly-elected individuals who are fearful of the demographic change the country is undergoing and who certainly are no longer willing – as generations past did – to help pay for the success of the community of the future.

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What Would McGovern Do?

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Sen. George McGovern’s death on Sunday morning could be seen as a final revenge had the 1972 presidential candidate been a vengeful man. It came, after all, on the eve of the foreign policy debate between President Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney.  Even in death, the ever-faithful McGovern rendered another public service to his country. To consider how right McGovern’s anti-war policy was regarding the disasters in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan and to reflect on his heroic role as a bomber pilot in World War II and to then accept that someone like George W. Bush sat in the Oval Office as President is to understand how colossally important elections are.

So upon McGovern’s death with a national election days away, there is no quarrel about President Obama’s success in foreign policy and why he should remain in the White House.  Successfully prosecuting Al Qaeda, Bin Laden and the war on terror just as McGovern pursued Axis bombing targets in Germany and Italy, Obama has extracted us from Iraq and is doing so from Afghanistan. McGovern would have done the same in Vietnam, which should have been the last of this country’s interventionist imbroglios had Bush not taken us down a similar path. If Mitt Romney is elected and another set of bumblers take office with him, no lesson will have been learned.

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The Debate’s Effect on Arizona: California Here We Come, Right Back Where We Started From

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Against a backdrop of ever-changing polls, the debate last night highlighted the essential political question for Americans – certainly for Mitt Romney’s disdained 47-percent and most assuredly for HispanicLatinos:  Whether they believe the tiger trying mightily to shear his stripes.  All Americans have heard – and seen on videotape – Romney denigrate HispanicLatinos and dismiss at least 47 percent of the American people at a time when national unity is elementally important.  We do not know what he might think of undecided voters after last night.  The polls will soon enough begin to tell the latest version of the tale but no one knows what other images of the candidates – stripes or no stripes – the optical nerves of 70 million Americans sent to their brains.

Did they see a President in Barack Obama or did they see through the superficial arguments that Romney floats into the air hoping that the weight of truth does not crash them back to earth?  The debate and its results are important but there seems to be more going on with the innumerable polls that change storylines from day to day.  Polls of states are more reliable than national polls, and so what is happening in Arizona might be instructive.  Indeed, Arizona might be the most important state in the 2012 election.  And the polls after the debate in Arizona will probably conclude that the public has seen enough of the campaign.

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Paul Ryan: Too Angry Too Young

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Gore Vidal many decades before he grew old said in a television interview that the old grow angry when they accept that their youth is indeed lost, never to return.  That was rich coming from Gore, who was angry most of his life, living as he did long before more tolerant times changed public sentiment towards his sexual orientation.  Gore had a reason to be angry, but by all reports he was not the prototypical angry white male when he lived out his last years with more grace than Clint Eastwood and Jack Welch are displaying in their last decades.  Now the times are giving us angry white men like Paul Ryan.  His business suit last night during the vice presidential debate seemed a tight fit, perhaps made so by its efforts to contain youthful, muscular ire.

Eastwood, of course, is now remembered for his vulgar empty-chair routine at the Republican National Convention in Tampa that embarrassed himself and Ann Romney and her kids on national television.  The Romneys all showed up excitedly to see the bonanza of a Hollywood star endorse Mitt for president.  What they got instead were the rantings of an old, angry man taking license with the here and now.  Only a couple months later, Jack Welch, the former chairman of General Electric, also took fictitious liberty with reality, accusing the Bureau of Labor Statistics of cooking the numbers so that the employment rate fell just in time to benefit President Obama’s campaign for re-election.

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Go Hard Now at the HispanicLatino Vote

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So much has been made of the debate on Wednesday.  With good reason.  President Obama did not do so well.   But my mind goes to the HispanicLatino couple driving off in separate cars to work this morning two days after the debacle in Denver.  What should the couple look for now having heard two years of anti-HispanicLatino rhetoric from the Republican party and, two months before the election, having been told by its candidate for President that they are part of the 47 percent of the country that does not matter?

Before the debate, the couple and perhaps their kids already might have been a part of the 70 percent of the HispanicLatino electorate that wanted Obama re-elected.  A news report the day before the debate had HispanicLatino support for Obama surpassing 70 percent in some polls.  That would be historic, approaching Kennedy-Johnson 1960 and Johnson-Humphrey territory in 1964.

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So, Archbishop, You’re Going to Tell Me How to Vote?

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That line could have come from King George VI played by Colin Firth in The King’s Speech.  The archbishop thought he was going to tell the king how to run his business, in this case using a speech therapist without proper credentials to help him prepare for his coronation.   The king with the speech defect put the archbishop in his place.  So comes now Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles who wants Catholics to “let their faith form their political decisions” before they vote this year.  Gomez plans to write a series of essays on the principles that should guide Catholics in this year’s elections.  “We have important obligations as citizens. But we have to carry out those obligations always in light of our duty to God,” the archbishop directed.  Of course, Gomez gets to define that duty.

Almost simultaneously, the Pew Center reported that support among Catholics for President Obama’s re-election has ballooned to at least 54 percent compared to 39 percent for Mitt Romney.  Obama’s rise among Catholic voters came even though Romney picked Paul Ryan, a Catholic with movie star looks, as his running mate.  Since almost 70 percent of HispanicLatinos support Obama, it would seem that as many or more HispanicLatino Catholics support Obama.  HispanicLatinos and the rest of the Catholic electorate will help hand Obama and Catholic Vice President Joe Biden score a one-sided victory in California in November.

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How Should Republicans Spell Landslide? W-h-i-g.

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Some 30 years ago, Horace Busby, an advisor to and speechwriter for Lyndon Johnson, famously coined the phrase “electoral lock” arguing that the Republican party would win contests for the White House for decades to come.  Busby, a good man of progressive virtue, had no clue about how the HispanicLatino population one day would upset the Electoral College applecart.

The Republican electoral lock on the White House that Busby predicted lasted a little more than one decade (1980-1992) and had the Supreme Court not taken away Al Gore’s win in Florida, the country might have elected a Democrat as President for 20 years running.  And now the nation would be on the verge of adding four years to that string if the polls are right that President Obama is more than edging towards re-election.  The polls, this week at least,  indicate Obama nearing landslide territory.

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