Category Archives: Politics

HispanicLatinos within the Democratic Ranks: A Dangerous Unease

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So I have a friend – a longtime Democratic liberal stalwart – who announced to me over lunch that he intends to vote Republican in November.  I was stunned.  His decision upends his long work record and rings totally out of character.  You are going against the flow of history, I reminded him gently.  A surge in the HispanicLatino community seems to be building in favor of President Obama and the Democratic ticket.

I am just tired of white liberals, he rejoined.  I have never felt comfortable around them but now I am done with them.

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PBS’ American Experience on Clinton: Incomplete but Invaluable

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The retelling of the Bill Clinton story recently on PBS’ American Experience was more saga than the usual documentaries of that renowned series, which seeks to capture and project the nature of an American Presidency and its importance to history.  Nevertheless, it set the mind to thinking how different and hopeful were the times then.  We have gone from promise to precipice.

The Clinton Presidency of course gave way to the hapless administration of the nation’s affairs and its government by George W. Bush, and it would serve the Obama camp well today to make sure that it does not approach this year’s election in the form of Al Gore, one of the Clinton Administration’s endpoints.  Gore bears the unique responsibility of having lost a national election for his failure to carry his home state or others where using Bill Clinton might have yielded victory.

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On Stage Last Night: The Old America

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If you believe that the country is undergoing a historic demographic transformation and that a new America has emerged with a majority of the country realizing it needs a new way forward, then you need to look no farther than last night’s Republican presidential forum in Arizona.  The debate was for and about the old America, that is to say, that part of the country that is willing to hear candidates for the Presidency who would spend 25 minutes…on birth control.  The discussion last night was of interest to voters who care about the issues that hardly matter to the rest of America: The bailout of the auto industry that worked; immigration that helps prop up a declining national population and, of course, birth control.  And that was the first hour.

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Religion as Danger to the Constitution

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The spectacle of fundamentalist preachers extending their hands blessing Rick Santorum’s candidacy at a religious convocation in McKinney, Texas, several weeks ago was jarring.  The image stays with the mind, especially as the controversy over birth control – can that be right, a controversy in the year 2012 over birth control? – continues to roil the race for the Republican nomination for president and leaves Andrea Mitchell breathless.

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To Be or Not to Be: A Nation in Decline with HispanicLatinos at Its Center

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The United States is in decline and in danger and, like nations throughout history, can fail.  Unless HispanicLatinos – continuously becoming a larger part of the national population – understand the circumstances confronting them and the country, they will jeopardize their own existence and further complicate the viability of America’s future.

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On the Catholic Vote

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A headline in a news story the other day asked ‘Is Obama losing the Catholic vote?’  The story sought to answer a question that might interest political strategists more so than the American public.  It is a curious thing, the relationship that Americans have to government and to religion.  Depending on the political environment, Americans rush to any and all sides of any debate involving both.

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Ten Million Here, Ten Million There, Pretty Soon It Adds up to Real Corruption

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The reader comments section on the AP story of a Mexican official detained last week at an airport with $1.9 million in a briefcase and backpack were predictably sanctimonious, and of course the money run cannot be defended legally.  To these readers, corruption is endemic in all of Latin America and is part of the HispanicLatino genetic makeup.

The same readers might note that at the same time that the official’s plane was in the air, millions of dollars in wire transfers whizzed through cyberspace into the coffers of the so-called super-pacs by supporters of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich – legally, of course.  Two good fellas – a casino owner and his wife from Las Vegas – gave Gingrich $10 million.  No corruption or outsized influence there.

When the Supreme Court of the United States unleashed the wave of money that has engulfed the American political process – already undermined by the system before the Court’s disastrous decision, mind you – it made any bungled Mexican money-packing operation look like a lollipop compared to the ten pounds of Belgian chocolate on which the Republican candidates have already gorged themselves in just the first month of the primary season. Continue reading →

On Florida and Jan Brewer and Ann Richards

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It is interesting to see the national media try to make sense of the HispanicLatino vote in Florida before the Republican primary on Tuesday.  The media speaks of it as one vote, and it is in a sense.  The HispanicLatino vote next week could be as much as 80 percent Cuban American.  But most HispanicLatinos in Florida now vote Democratic, so the media would be more accurate to describe the group voting next week in the GOP contest as the Cuban Republican vote, and they should point out that it is shrinking as each day passes due to its aging nature.  Continue reading →

Basic Math: A No Vote is a Half Vote

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So a Peruvian student in the country illegally, Lucy Allain, now of New York, last week accosts Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and asks him why he does not support the Dream Act.  The expected confrontation occurs.  He withdraws his hand as if she were trash, she said later.  Aides move Romney away from her.  I can imagine how she felt.  Romney is simply wrong on the issue.  More so, in his world, Romney would be called a cad.

But Lucy is wrong on another, vital matter. Asked by Jorge Ramos on Univision’s Sunday news program, Al Punto, for whom she would vote for if she could, she responded that she would vote for neither Romney nor President Obama, who has failed the HispanicLatino community – and the nation – by not pursuing immigration reform, not pushing for the Dream Act and pursuing a deportation program that in the end will prove counter to the national interest if it stands over a protracted period of time. Continue reading →

Barbarains at the Gate

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President Obama in one speech displayed why only the angriest of furies that could be goaded into action by a Newt Gingrich can defeat him.  As important as the State of the Union speech last night was, so was the announcement by News Corporation – read that Fox – that it is creating a Spanish-language network to begin telecasting this coming fall.  It was only a matter of time before Fox plunged into the continuously expanding HispanicLatino market.  Continue reading →