Category Archives: Politics

Off Comes the Shine on Marco Rubio

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Reports earlier yesterday that Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was not being vetted as a serious vice presidential running mate by the Mitt Romney campaign – contradicted later by the candidate himself – imparts valuable political data.  Perhaps a goldmine. 

The first nugget suggests ongoing debate within the campaign about the strategy for the general election itself.  Thus the hash that became the latest Rubio boomlet was no boomlet at all.  More probably it was a botched attempt to influence internal campaign thinking.

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The Dreamers: Tomorrow’s Leaders – the Force the HispanicLatino Community Has Always Needed

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The next few days or fortnight will redeem Charles Dickens’ it was the worst of times, it was the best of times for the HispanicLatino community.  In a clear signal that it understands the political and fundamental role that HispanicLatinos play in developing the future of the country, the Obama Administration set the stage for the incorporation of 800,000 mostly HispanicLatino young men and women into the flow of American life.  For them, it is the best of times, at least in the short run.  They can think about how to proceed with their lives for the next two years and perhaps longer if they make the most of the time they have been allotted.

But depending on what and when the Supreme Court rules on Arizona’s anti-HispanicLatino law, the rest of the community could well be facing the beginning of the worst of times, starting now, if the Court announces its decision today or perhaps next week.  The Court almost certainly will rule in favor of a law that targets HispanicLatinos specifically so that they any individual who appears to be HispanicLatino can be harassed at the whim of any local official.  Indeed, almost any positive ruling by the Court will encourage local officials, including law enforcement and public school officials, to embark on dangerous self-enforcement missions that in some cases will provoke violence. 

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The Fundamental Choice Mexicans Face

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The Mexican presidential debate last night might have changed the course of the election, scheduled for July 1.  But probably not as much as a student-led revolt against the return of the PRI – the party that dominated the country for more than five decades under governments that were feeble excuses for democracy.  The polls supposed that the Partido Revolucionario Institucional would return to power but now show that perhaps the election was called too early.  Students took to the streets and the internet and seem to have reminded their fellow Mexicans of the PRI’s history.  The students shouting in the streets certainly reminded me of the day in 1990 that Luis Donaldo Colossio two years before he was assassinated looked at me across the conference table in our newspaper editorial board room, a quizzical expression on his face.

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Wisconsin last night compounded the value of the HispanicLatino vote for November

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The election results in Wisconsin last night raise more than an eyebrow.  They carry real implications.  The one consequence not being discussed in the post-election analyses on the television sets is the ever-ballooning importance of the HispanicLatino vote.  Take the electoral votes of Wisconsin and perhaps other near-by states out of the equation for November, and it makes Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Florida all the more critical.  As each day passes, the HispanicLatino vote gains greater political currency, and the resources dedicated to it should increase accordingly.  States that are deemed safe today might not be tomorrow, and so whatever additional insurance can be purchased by the campaigns, its cost should not daunt campaign strategists.

The facility with which Gov. Scott Walker swept aside the attempt to recall him also gives rise to the need to review the infrastructure that President Obama’s campaign is building to win in November.  However important labor unions, they can provide only one component of the votes Democrats need.

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Voter purges can lead to voter surges

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Did anyone expect otherwise?  News reports that elections officials are purging hundreds of thousands of HispanicLatinos from voter rolls throughout the nation should surprise no one.  But as easy to identify potential voters to strike from official voting lists through electronic means is the ability to identify them once they have been removed.  President Obama’s campaign has the necessary time and resources to take the steps necessary to protect its flank.  Whether its managers do what needs to be done is another matter.  But no one should think that average voters – HispanicLatino or not – on their own are going to take the steps to make sure their registrations are in order until they go vote – which could be too late.

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On summer’s eve: An election way down the road to being decided

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As the summer begins, where does the presidential election stand five months before Americans go to the polls?  If retired general Colin Powell is to be believed, he is one of those voters still undecided who make the polls a muddle when in fact I suspect they are not.  I guess we are going to trust his word.  The reality is the election is being decided each day.  It would be a good bet that the endless news cycle is driving more voters to an earlier decision than four years ago.  The much-ballyhooed lack of intensity among voters will be a wash if the campaigns do their work correctly.  Even though the electorates of 2008, 2010 and 2012 will be different one from the other, in many ways the election perhaps is closer to already having been decided – except for the final tally of votes.

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More than about civil rights, education is about national security

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Last week in Washington, Mitt Romney said the failure of schools with minority students “is the civil rights issue of our era.’’  Hmmm.  It is more the seminal national security of our time but who’s quibbling?  If HispanicLatinos do not accelerate their educational – and thus their economic – attainment in the short term, they will not be able to stave off the nation’s crushing fiscal demands in the long term.  Without the tax revenues necessary to keep abreast with the technological advances in defense systems, the country’s defenses ultimately will be on par with other nations.  It is only a matter of time.  Not to mention keeping up with other costs.  But this is a fella who cannot bring himself to support any version of the Dream Act, and he seems to not understand how college-opportunities programs after World War II set up the nation for long-term economic growth.

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The HispanicLatino Vote Matters, Right?

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Presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney speaks today at a meeting of HispanicLatino business owners in Washington, D.C., where he reportedly is going to chat with Marco Rubio.  Who knows what they will talk about or what Rubio’s chances realistically are of landing the second spot on the GOP presidential ticket but it should get the attention of individuals who do not think the HispanicLatino vote is not going to be important – much less potentially decisive – in November.

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Lyndon Baines Johnson: The first HispanicLatino — and black — President

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Years ago, when Bill Clinton was styled as America’s first black President, more than a few Americans, knowing it to be hyperbole, were tolerantly amused.  It was fun to appreciate the direct connection the African American community and he shared but, of course, along came Barack Obama.  My bemusement at the Clinton pretext stemmed from the wanton disregard of Lyndon Johnson’s role in cracking open the world for African Americans – and HispanicLatinos simultaneously.  After decades of oppression, minority communities began to emerge from their suppressed selves because of Johnson.  LBJ was America’s first black president politically and America’s first HispanicLatino president, to boot.

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Same Sex Marriage Does Not Trump Arizona

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Many years ago one of the most influential books ever written shaped my own political identity and my view of the world. Ostensibly about the presidential campaign of 1960, Theodore White’s Pultizer Prize-winning The Making of the President told the story of how John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson survived one of the narrowest presidential victories in the nation’s history.  But more than simply converting a political story into a highly interesting narrative, White wrote revealingly about how political markets are hardly more than consumer markets.  In his eyes, fifty states and the District of Columbia – each one different from the other – comprised 51 political markets with many more submarkets of voters, hundreds in fact.  They still do, if not more so.

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