Obama's new political ad directed at the Hispanic and Latino communities

By Richard K. Barry

Because we have all been paying so much attention to the Republican presidential nomination battle, we may not be paying quite enough attention to President Obama's attempt to prepare for his 2012 reelection. Obviously the jobs package along with the new message about having the rich pay their fair share are a part of that plan as will be, no doubt, constant pointing to obstructionist Republicans in Congress.

But other parts of the plan include good old fashioned politicking of the kind that involves reaching out to core constituencies to make sure they are getting the message.

Accordingly, the Democratic National Committee announced on Monday that it would begin running Spanish-language television and radio commercials in Denver, Colorado; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Tampa, Florida.

Obama won all three states in 2008, and each have large Hispanic and Latino populations. Clearly it will be essential to keep them in the win column.

Here's partial text of the ad:

Obama has a new plan that: Creates thousands of jobs fixing roads and bridges, cuts taxes for small businesses for each job they create. And gives credits to businesses that employ veterans that have finished their service. But in the face of Republicans, the President can't do it alone. Read the plan. Stand together for more jobs.

According to CNN:

Obama won two-thirds of the Hispanic and Latino vote in the 2008 presidential election, according to national exit polls, up from the 53 percent Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee, carried four years earlier. But according to recent polling by Gallup, Obama's approval rating among Hispanics and Latinos now stands at 48 percent, the lowest rating since he took over the White House and a big drop from the 60 percent he held at the beginning of the year.

Clearly, the state of the economy has had an adverse impact on the president's popularity across the board, but his inability to get anything on immigration reform through Congress may also be having an impact with Hispanic and Latino voters, though it is difficult to imagine they would be any happier with Republicans. In any case, he's reaching out.

Whatever one thinks of Obama's record as president, it would be foolish for anyone to underestimate his ability and the ability of his team as campaigners.

This might be a good time to start paying more attention to how he plans to win reelection (especially considering the fact that the story lines on GOP pretenders to the throne have become so damned repetitive and boring).

Here's the ad mentioned above for those of you who speak the language. Sadly, I've long forgotten what little Spanish I learned in high school those many years ago.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

California dreamin'

Guest post by J.S. Norquay

J.S. Norquay, which may or may not be his or her real name, is a former midwesterner, documentary filmmaker, and academic who now toils deep inside a large public sector institution in eastern Canada.

California has the third highest unemployment rate in the United States at 12% (Nevada and Michigan are higher). So why did the Republicans' red wave not make it to the Golden State? Barbara Boxer and Jerry Brown won big while the Democrats lost just a single House incumbent. The answer should be considered encouraging for Democrats – it was the Latino vote and those of other minorities. As Nate Silver pointed out, the pollsters underestimated the Latino vote in places like California, Nevada, and Colorado. This explains why Harry Reid was behind in the published polls but won comfortably.

One can account for Reid's and Colorado Senator Michael Bennett's victories in part by the fact that they faced Tea Party fruit cakes like Sharon Angle and Ken Buck. But demographic trends suggest California could be the future of America, a place where minorities will play an increasingly important political role, particularly Latinos.

The exit polls from California report that the electorate on Tuesday was 62% white and 38% minority (22 points of which were Latino) compared to a 78-22 ratio nationally. Like elsewhere, California whites voted Republican -- for Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman. (The poll is not broken down by age and race, but it seems likely that a majority of whites aged 18 to 29 voted for both Boxer and Brown).

And the Republican strategic approach to the election didn't matter. As the L.A. Times noted:

California Republicans had multiple reasons for head-shaking on Wednesday. For decades, the state party has squabbled over whether success would come more easily to candidates running as conservatives or those who presented a more moderate face to the state's sizeable bloc of independent, centrist voters. This year they tried both. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina ran a firmly conservative race and Whitman took a more moderate road.

The problem for Latinos, simply put, is Republican attitudes on immigration as reflected in Fiorina's support for Arizona's new anti-immigrant law (Whitman was opposed). Three quarters of California Latinos have an unfavourable view of Republicans. And their share of California's population continues to grow.

California endorsed the state's efforts to curb climate change by rejecting a proposition aimed at rolling them back. In California, Obama's favorability ratings remain strong. Ideologically, the Democrats should be listening to Californians, not trying to make nice with Republicans east of the Sierra Nevadas.

Back here in the east, all the leaves are gone and the sky is gray.

The Party of No Yes (to bigotry)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

"Conservative Latinos Rethink Party Ties," screams the headline at the Journal. Okay, maybe it doesn't scream, but you get the point.

I think it's pretty clear what's going on. In moving ever more to the right, and in embracing extremist politics that are anything but inclusive, the GOP, while motivating its hard-right base (and the teabaggers), is alienating many of the demographic groups it had been targeting in its somewhat less extreme past, including under Dubya, who, whatever else we may say about him, was generally friendly to Hispanics.

Here's Andrew Sullivan with some persuasive analysis:

The GOP is now doing to Latinos what it did to gays. Its leaders -- by backing the Federal Marriage Amendment in the last decade and now the Arizona law in this -- are essentially saying that they do not understand how these measures could impact a minority's collective psyche. Whatever the technical merits of either measure - and there were intellectually coherent (if, to my mind, unpersuasive) defenses of both -- the lack of empathy or understanding is the real issue. It places the Republican "us" against the minority "them." This is not just a failure of empathy; it is failure of judgment. The votes of Latinos will be massively important in the very near future, and the number of people who know and love gay people grows daily.

The Republican base's inability to place itself in the shoes of homosexuals who are being told they could be second class citizens for ever or in the shoes of Latinos being told they are effectively guilty before being found innocent is a fatal moral and political gambit. Once your party has revealed that it cannot empathize and is willing to stigmatize an entire minority, it takes decades to reverse the damage. 

Another way of putting it is that the Republican Party has embraced bigotry at its core. At this point, if you're black or gay or Hispanic or Muslim or poor or otherwise part of some "Other," how could you possibly vote Republican?

Obama and the Hispanics

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Remember back during the primaries when Hillary was pretty much trouncing Obama among Hispanic voters and there was all that talk about how Hillary's success among Hispanics contributed to her so-called "electability" and how doing so poorly among Hispanics would be a big problem for Obama come general election time?

Yeah, well... here's Gallup:

Hispanic registered voters' support for Barack Obama for president remained consistent and strong in June, with Obama leading John McCain by 59% to 29% among this group.

While Hispanics generally preferred Hillary Clinton to Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, a solid majority of Hispanics have consistently backed Obama against McCain in general-election trial heats. Obama has led McCain by about a 2-to-1 margin since Gallup began tracking general-election voting preferences in early March.

I don't want to say I told you so -- after all, I don't know who you are -- but, well, I told you so. McCain has some support among Hispanics because, unlike most Republicans, he isn't completely crazy (in that xenophobic sort of way that characterizes so much of the nativist GOP) when it comes to immigration -- he worked with Ted Kennedy on a compromise bill, but it's not quite clear where he stands on the issue now, what with all the flippin' and floppin' and panderin' -- but Obama is clearly much more attractive to them, given his positions on the Iraq War, the economy, and other key issues.

Besides, it was clear all along, if not so much to the short-sighted and narrow-minded punditocracy, that Obama was only doing poorly among Hispanics relative to Hillary, not in absolute terms. Hispanics may have preferred her to him, but that never meant that they preferred anyone to him, let alone a warmongering faux maverick who sucks up to the GOP's right-wing base like McCain. Remember that Hillary, like Bill, is especially strong among Hispanics. But now, with the long and sometimes bitter Democratic race over and done with, "Hispanics of differing demographic backgrounds all tend to solidly support Obama."

Which, needless to say, bodes well for November.