Newsweek: A Latin Power Surge

[NVMojo]

You think it's bad we didn't take poor counties in Kentucky? Read this. I am trying the graphs of Hispanic growth in the red states, etc. that ran with the print edition of this article. Astounding. Dems, we gotta wake up and help everyone understand that the issues we relate to are the same things everyone can relate to. I find it appalling that so many Hispanics voted Republican and here are the majority of loudmouth Republicans sitting down along the border trying to keep the rest of their people out! Jeezus, Karl Rove can spin shit!

Story here:

May 30 issue - Antonio Villaraigosa's cell phone was trilling incessantly. Every Democrat in the nation, it seemed, wanted a piece of the newly elected mayor of Los Angeles, the first Latino to win the office in 133 years. John Kerry phoned to congratulate him, as did John Edwards, Howard Dean, Al Gore and Sen. Chris Dodd. Driving to city hall last Friday as he spoke by phone with a news-week reporter, Villaraigosa interrupted the interview to field yet another call on a different phone. "Yes, I would like to speak to Senator Clinton," he said. "Can I call you back?" he told the reporter. Afterward, Villaraigosa recounted his exchange with Hillary: "She said that she and President Clinton were just elated with my victory," and "if they could be helpful in any way in the coming weeks and months," they were eager to do so. Villaraigosa said he had responded with a few admiring words of his own. She was "an example of what I need to do as mayor of the city of Los Angeles," he had told her. "Not get so caught up in all of the national attention and focus on my job."

snip....

Though they won the Hispanic vote last November, Democrats lost ground to Republicans for the second straight presidential-election cycle. President George W. Bush captured roughly 40 percent (the exact figure remains in dispute) of the Hispanic vote, compared with 35 percent in 2000 and Bob Dole's 21 percent in 1996. For the Democrats, the set-back came in just the year that Latino voters, long considered a sleeping giant, stirred from their slumber. With turnout increasing from about 6 million in 2000 to an estimated 8 million last year, the Hispanic vote has become the El Dorado of American elections. To remain viable as a party, Democrats need to win Latinos back. At stake is nothing less than control of the presidency and Congress. If the GOP maintains its current share of the Latino vote, says Simon Rosenberg of the New Democrat Network, "then the Democrats will never be the majority party again in our lifetimes."

How did things become so dire for the Democrats? For starters, John Kerry's campaign botched its Hispanic outreach, according to many accounts. Latino operatives complained that the campaign leadership marginalized and undermined them at every turn. The leadership's assumption, according to Paul Rivera, a senior political adviser on the campaign: that Latino votes would break down roughly as they did in 2000, as a Democracy Corps poll last July wrongly suggested. The Hispanic team struggled constantly for resources, the operatives say, and assurances of ad buys in battleground states often went unfulfilled, keeping Kerry off the Spanish-language airwaves for days at a time. "If the Kerry campaign had won Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico," all Latino-rich states, says Tom Castro, the campaign's deputy national finance chair, "John Kerry would be president right now."

more....

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7937319/site/newsweek/

[OKNancy]

1. Another on the long list of screw-ups

They shouldn't listen to polls which are often wrong, a good campaign listens to the people and the workers and the those on the ground.

Hopefully a better bunch are in control of things now.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

2. This should never have happened.

"Latino operatives complained that the campaign leadership marginalized and undermined them at every turn."

"The Hispanic team struggled constantly for resources, the operatives say, and assurances of ad buys in battleground states often went unfulfilled, keeping Kerry off the Spanish-language airwaves for days at a time."

Those were two mistakes of epic proportions. We need to work to make sure our party doesn't make these same mistakes again.

[blurp]

3. Part of the difficulty was gay-rights

When it comes to social issues, the Hispanic community tends to be very conservative and religious.

This is one reason why the repubs are so divided over the issue of immigration.

They welcome immigrants that bring very strong religious feelings about abortion, etc, but are afraid of their tendency toward socialism.

I did hear one repub I know say he wishes more strong catholic Hispanics would come because then they could outlaw abortion.

As someone who is pro-choice and atheist this made me shutter.

[hector459]

4. Racism and money lust make strange bed-fellows. Confincing Hispanics

that they should fear and despise blacks is similiar to what happened to poor whites (endentured servants included)during the Civil War. If you can get enough people to hate and fear another group, you can get them to fight your battles for you. The south was able to raise its military by misleading poor whites into believing that they should fear black slaves and that the blacks were out to get the endentured servant jobs that these poor whites held. The bankers, plantation owners, and landed gentry were able to do this and hence the Civil War.

[NVMojo]

5. good points and isn't it funny that repukes are creating such hate

and discontent against Hispanics coming across the border when they will end up voting with them against abortion and other uptight causes? This whole thing just freaks me out.

A few weeks ago, a dear repuke friend just about ripped my head off over the immigration issue. When I said, "what does it matter? Most of them are doing the low income menial jobs us uppity US citizens won't dignify ourselves with ...like hotel housekeepers, janitors, etc?" She blew a gasket and blamed the illegals for sucking at the trough in California and for being responsible for the state debt there ....

...I'm just scratching my head ...

[amandabeech]

6. Just a correction.

Indentured servitude ended with the Revolutionary War.

There were plenty of poor whites around at the time of the Civil War, and many of them may have descended from indentured servants, but they were free as we would characterize it today.

[LuPeRcALiO]

7. More spin.

Look, maybe Kerry lost a few latino votes over abortion, but I read some analyses of the exit polling that showed latinos voting for Kerry as much or more, proportionally, as for Gore, in every state.

Funny how the county vote tabulations don't show the same thing.

[autorank]

8. Excellent Post! This is a wake up call.

It's time to get 70% of the Latino/Latina vote. I saw one of the long-time American-Latin journalists on TV. He said the magic # was in the mid sixties for the Dems to win. We should be in the 70's.

The Republicans will put a Latino on the ticket in 2008, since they'll be desparate. We need to think about that and how to handle it.