Tag Archives: 2012

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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Not Good: Events Taking Shape Without Significant HispanicLatino Participation

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It says a lot about the country today that the Republican nominee for President is being chosen without any meaningful participation by one of its largest population groups.  Aside from Florida where the HispanicLatino vote played some role, the HispanicLatino electoral quotient in the primaries and caucuses has been nil, which is in stark juxtaposition to the cover of Time magazine that has so many across the nation twitter.  Yesterday’s primary in Arizona – of all places – saw almost no participation by HispanicLatinos.  In a different world, HispanicLatinos should have rushed to vote for a more moderate Republican candidate win. But HispanicLatinos skipped the primary as if it never existed – a fact that speaks to how bifurcated the country is politically.

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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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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 →

South Carolina Sends Message…to Obama

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— This blog is reposted from Saturday night; the usual business-oriented blog on Mondays will be published tomorrow. —

Though it is easy to dismiss that bane of the average American – the so-called “experts” – they do hold vast institutional and collective wisdom – but perhaps it is about the past.  All of them – from the left to the right – have been wrong this year.  And so in this uproarious year, their judgment is now near useless given South Carolina.  None of these experts expected that after three GOP contests three different candidates could call themselves a winner.  One does not have to be an expert in these things to sense something is not plumb with things-as-usual.  I have been around journalistically and politically long enough to be confounded totally by what has happened in South Carolina. For me, it now is not outside the possibility that President Obama could lose this election.  Continue reading →

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

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So Andrea Mitchell on her program yesterday on MSNBC I think ran a clip of a Mitt Romney ad seeking HispanicLatino support.  I guess that was what he was doing.  It might have been an old ad when he ran for governor or senator.  Three weeks after saying if Congress passed the Dream Act he as President would veto it, the idea of a Romney commercial seeking HispanicLatino votes is indeed an illusion.

True, not all HispanicLatinos support the proposal to assist college-age students who are in the country illegally, most for no fault of their own.  But whether a majority of HispanicLatinos support the Dream Act is not as important as what Romney’s sentiments represent: A red target that he and the other Republican candidates have painted on the backs of all HispanicLatinos.

More interesting than ascertaining if most HispanicLatinos support the act is determining whether any of the dreamers, as I call these holders of our future, are or were the children of the subcontracted undocumented workers that used to take care of Romney’s lawns and shrubs.  I presume the well-resourced Obama campaign is looking into this matter, as well as to the possibility that Romney’s investments in more than 70 companies that led to workers losing their jobs might have included any HispanicLatinos. Continue reading →

Authenticity: The Menendez Margin

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There is a reason beyond the obvious as to why Sen. Bob Menendez could be the most important HispanicLatino politician in the country today.  Yes, being a member of the Senate and of its majority party helps.  But Menendez’ strength is not simply institutionally derived.  Rather, he can speak in a credible way in English and in Spanish that eludes other prominent HispanicLatinos and being able to do so bequeaths him with the most important tool that all political leaders must have: The power to communicate.  Money might be the mother’s milk of politics but the ability to communicate effectively is its currency.  As such, Menendez could be one of President Obama’s most important tools for re-election.  Continue reading →

Another Front in the War Begins in Arizona

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Back when Richard Nixon began the culture-wars that have led America to its current political paralysis, he and his cynical advisors used the friction between a generation bent on change and the so-called silent majority to win elections.  Thus came to be the modern-day Republican Party that exploited the nation’s fears about a new culture dominated by acid, amnesty and abortion and then took advantage of the resentment against movements seeking to affirm women’s rights, the civil rights of minorities, protection of the environment and the rights of gays and lesbian.  The culture-wars were anchored by the infamous “southern strategy” that was – and is – racist to its core.

Instead of incorporating the change that a generation born of television, openness, wealth and mobility were going to bequeath on the nation and bending it to produce a positive result, the Nixon cohort sought to abuse the divisions of a culture-war that after so many bitter years has been won by the generation of change on every front.  Nothing punctuates the victory over reaction than the pre-Christmas lesbian couple selected in San Diego for the traditional kiss by which the Navy celebrates the returning home of a ship.  Seen around the world, the kiss should be seen here for what it is: The end of the Nixonian culture wars.  Nevertheless, a new war is being stoked by Nixon’s political descendants who put HispanicLatinos in the cross-hairs of history. Continue reading →