Little at the Republican convention in Tampa jolted the 70 percent or so of Hispanics and Latinos – whom the polls suggest are already in President Obama’s corner – to rethink their support for his re-election. I still do not know what henna is exactly even after I looked it up on the internet. I thought I overheard a woman at a restaurant in Charlotte say that “Romney makes me want to rip the hens out of my hair.” A search on Yahoo for ‘hens’ and ‘hair’ later got me to henna. Ripping either from your head sounds dreadful – perhaps bad enough for even traditional Republican-voting Cubans to reconsider their presumed vote for Mitt Romney. If the question does linger for more than a passing moment in any HispanicLatino mind, it can be answered with another question: Why HispanicLatinos?
Tag Archives: Romney
Hillary and HispanicLatinos in 2016
The just-past national conventions dropped a number of stones into the political pond ahead of 2016. The splash from each stone might be dismissed as early speculation but in politics speculation mists the leaves of future candidacies. From each splash-point already radiates the ripples that will form the ebb and flow of the currents leading to the next series of election cycles.
Some of the ripples emanating from Charlotte and Tampa were larger than others. Some will have staying power but most will run out of energy over time, dreams lost in the backwaters of unviability. Other currents, perhaps waves, might form as human events trigger as yet unseen political storms. But whatever crests come at whatever time, they will have to lap up against the immediate reality of a woman named Hillary Clinton.
An Aware Clinton and the New Demography 40 Years Later
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.
A swing and a miss but they got a YouTube sensation out of it
Posted on Thursday night for Friday’s blog.
Mitt Romney’s speech was a single with no one on base. Whether the voters move him around the bases is very much a very open question. The curve balls the Republican national convention threw the country were too simple and the lines too obvious. Hispanics. Check. Women. Check. Marriage. Check. Romney could have hit a homerun, but when you start with another Bush, it is hard to be taken seriously. Jeb Bush defending his brother – certain to go down in history as the worst of presidents – reminded the country of how bad George W. Bush was, how bad a time the country is having recovering and how bad Mitt Romney might be. The video promoting Romney before he spoke included photographs of Romney’s father, who with his record on civil rights probably would not have supported Arizona’s anti-HispanicLatino that are metastasizing across the country.
This whole enterprise is warped somehow. The forced, awkward elevation of the man, the lofty descriptions of his business record, the declarations of self-achievement – they all evoke that old Shakespearean line: “I think he doth protest too much.” And poor Clint Eastwood. He represents the skeletal notions of a make-believe past. The disrespect for the Office of the President with the empty-chair act was astonishing. I felt sorry for Eastwood and for the men and women who felt they had to prop up Romney with faded delusion and crudeness. The computer severs at YouTube might be confused at the NSA with spinning centrifuges in Iran. Not far behind Eastwood were the retellings of family stories – from Marco Rubio’s oddly agitated speech to Ann Romney’s pasta-and-tuna saga of the other night. They sounded hollow and lonely, even, perhaps meant to scare people into loss. I figured out that loss was the theme of the convention. Loss of security. Loss of jobs. Loss of families. The concept of the family was used to frighten, not to inspire. I also figured out that Paul Ryan is Eddie Haskell.
Not a Good Night at the Political Ballpark in Tampa
Posted on Wednesday night for Thursday.
Strike two. For a country worried and anxious about the future, the second day of the Republican national convention was breath-taking in its failure to produce anything that the nation could use to begin to rethink its future. Instead, Paul Ryan’s speech was an ongoing lament about problems that President Obama’s predecessor caused. The only attempt at authenticity was a prerecorded video about the Bushes – one defeated for re-election and the other someone the country wishes it had never elected. Even a solid Republican had to worry about that kind of a start.
Small as Small Is: The Republicans in Tampa
Posted on Tuesday night as Wednesday’s regular blog.
The Republican convention last night seemed, well, small. Perhaps because the hurricane reduced its schedule, perhaps because the hall looked miniature, perhaps because the too many empty chairs diluted its energy – for whatever reason, the thing looked smaller than similar events in the past. I could not put my finger on it, except that I suspect that most people in the room feared that most Americans watching – if they watched – do not believe what they heard. I sense strongly, too, that the delegates in Tampa do not believe that Mitt Romney can win. All seemed out of sync, including the much-anticipated speech from Ann Romney, dressed in Nancy Reagan red. I will leave for women to judge if she connected with them. To me, it was a sycophantic appeal that did little to address the threat Republicans pose to women – a startling oversight in light of the fears raised anew by Todd Akin of Missouri and Paul Ryan.
Any personal story can be interesting. Any couple’s past can be lovely but it is useless to what happens next if it is just a story.
It is more than the economy, stupid.
When does community end? If the country feels as if it is fraying, that a big scramble is on during which everyone grabs for their own, it is because the sense of unity that fragilely sews together a nation that depends on comity started coming undone first. It is not the economy, stupid. The furies of our times are about something else.
The sad and disturbing fact is that many Americans are having trouble handling the new demography that has come down on them pretty fast. The components of change embedded in the population decades ago by individuals choosing not to have more than two children put the country on a fast track that along with immigration altered the country’s demography. Now the consequences of those decisions are being reflected in an election that people want to treat as a discussion about the direction of the economy and about its closely-related cousin, Medicare. But the election is about so much more. It is about whether the nation at some point understands the dangerous point at which we have arrived, when community is not about everyone. The Republican line about saving America is rhetorical gauze for something more disturbing.
HispanicLatinas: More than Solid in Obama’s Corner — for a Reason
So the polls show between 63 and 70 percent of Hispanic/Latinos (men and women combined) supporting President Obama 75 days until the election. For the sake of argument, let’s say it is 70 percent, which is where I believe it is. If that is the case and given that men overall support the President to a lesser extent than women, then a much as 85 percent – or more – of HispanicLatinas support Obama. How did Obama get to those stratospheric levels? Perhaps war, healthcare, the economy and women’s issues have something to do with it – and not necessarily just immigration, the shorthand topic to which the media instantly jumps.
In Tampa: More than a Tropical Storm Named Isaac
As the tropics churn with potential storms, they cast an ominous backdrop for Tampa as it prepares for the Republican National Convention that starts next week. It is also a stormy time for speechwriters drafting remarks for the lineup of speakers, especially the Hispanic or Latino “stars” of the party. With only minimal original input from the speakers who will deliver them, the speeches theoretically are intended to provide answers for voters, and so it will be tough going against a stiff wind for speechwriters to compose something for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martínez and senatorial nominee Ted Cruz of Texas.
Aside from the strident attacks on immigrants that are only a charade for how Republicans feel about the changing demography of the nation, these “stars” will have to address a national HispanicLatino audience with a straight face. Behind the curtain in the convention hall, GOP strategists have put in motion plans to suppress – actively, consciously suppress – the HispanicLatino vote. These four individuals know they were elected in unique elections with unusual electoral characteristics and that they are part of an organization that seeks not to expand the progress HispanicLatinos make but to limit it – and aggressively so. Continue reading
Male Chauvinists: Soon in Obama’s Corner?
The latest attack from the right on President Obama comes in the form of former Navy SEALs who disparage him in a video that seeks to diminish his standing as commander-in-chief. Whoever commissioned the video did so weeks ago when the opinion polls showed Obama leading Mitt Romney – and putting distance between the two. One poll reported something unusual: An uptick in support of Obama among male voters, the group least likely to support him.