This week Vice President Joe Biden came out swinging against Romney. While the Vice President may be voluble and gaffe prone, he will be the President’s secret weapon in the swing states. Biden, unlike the President or Romney, can connect with the key swing constituencies of blue collar voters.
President Obama’s Latino Kryptonite Gay Marriage?
This post originally appeared on NBCLatino.
Barack Obama is untouchable, at least in the Latino electorate. Two recent polls show his support among Latinos ranging from 70-80 percent. However, these polls took place before the President stated that his views on gay marriage had evolved to where he now supports gay marriage. And if the Republicans have it right, then the deep social conservatism of Latinos will be the undoing of the president.
Latinos are a religious bunch and overwhelmingly Catholic. Close to two-thirds of Latinos state that religion provides quite a bit, to a great deal of guidance in their day-to-day living. And for a majority of Latinos this guidance is attained through regular attendance at religious services – not just the occasional wedding, funeral, or baptism! It is this level of religiosity that has led Republicans to await a great Latino migration into the socially conservative promise land of the GOP. And today, this belief translates into a glimmer of hope for Romney that the mostly Catholic Latino electorate will unfriend the gay-friendly president and like Romney.
There is no doubt that Latinos are religiously devout. But, the real question is what does that have to do with politics? The answer is, very little. According to a recent impreMedia-Latino Decisions poll 63 percent of Latino voters strongly disagree with religious leaders telling members which candidate to vote for. The distaste for mixing politics and religion is actually higher among Latinos than the general electorate. In the Latino electorate the view that politics is about moral issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion is in the micro-minority, fourteen percent.
MSNBC Live: Romney Campaign Immigration Flub
A senior official in Romney’s Latino outreach effort said that the GOP candidate was still deciding his stance on immigration. The official said that she misspoke, but this slip points at the potential for Romney to perhaps flip flop on the issue of immigration as he nears the general election.
Cinco de Mayo, the symbolic Latino outreach holiday
This post originally appeared on NBCLatino.
Gone are the days of “the great tamale incident” when on a campaign visit to San Antonio President Gerald Ford bit into a tamale, husk and all. Today’s candidates are not only wise to the nuances of Latin cuisine but to broader Latino cultural knowledge, such as Cinco de Mayo not being Mexico’s Independence Day. The candidates get it, or at least they have aides that do. But do Latinos really care?
The 2000 presidential election was the first time there was a large-scale Latino political outreach effort. Together the RNC and the DNC spent over $10 million courting the Latino vote through culturally targeted advertisements, surrogate outreach, and in the case of George W. Bush offering up his Spanish language skills. President Bush’s Spanish wasn’t much better than a freshman in Spanish 101, but with his pigeon Spanish he highlighted to the Latino community that he had a history of successfully working with Latinos as Governor of Texas and that he believed in the need for comprehensive immigration reform. In the end, President Bush was successful in courting the most Latino voters of any Republican presidential candidate in both 2000 and 2004.
In 2008 Barack Obama outdid his predecessor’s Latino campaign outreach in both style and substance. He not only signaled his support of immigration reform, he promised to have it passed in the first year of his administration. He also one-upped President Bush in being the first candidate to do a 30 second ad spot all in Spanish. Barack Obama made sure that his substantive policy messages to the Latino community were not lost in translation and this paid off in his garnering close to 70 percent of the Latino vote. Continue Reading
President Obama, The Ladies’ Man
This article originally appeared as part of the University of Texas Election Series
He’s tall, dark, and handsome. It doesn’t hurt that he croons rhythm and blues and can shake it up on the dance floor. President Obama is the ultimate ladies’ man, but not because of his swagger or looks. His popularity among women boils down to politics. Part of his appeal to women is simply inherited, for decades women have preferred Democratic candidates. The other part of his female magnetism comes from his aggressively courting women this past year by highlighting women’s policy issues.
Women are pre-disposed toward Democratic candidates. In the 2008 presidential election women preferred Barack Obama by seven percent over John McCain. This preference by the part of lady voters in 2008 was only part of a larger trend known as the gender gap. Since 1980 there has been a significant difference between the percentage of women and men voting for a presidential candidates, with larger proportions of women preferring the Democratic candidate. Perhaps not surprisingly, the largest gender gap in history occurred in 1996 with President Bill Clinton capturing 11% more of the female vote.
While President Obama knows he’s got the gender gap on his side he’s not relying on this alone going into the 2012 election. Over the last six months the President together with his party’s congressional delegation has sought out policy positions that center on women and more specifically that highlight differences between Republicans and Democrats on such issues. The Democrats have done a good job of racking up the policy points and painting the GOP as not a very attractive guy to go on a date with. Continue Reading
Hardball: SB 1070 Reaches the Supreme Court
Arizona’s SB 1070 had its day in court, the Supreme Court to be exact. The decision that will result will greatly affect Latinos both in Arizona and across the country. However, on a broader level, the SCOTUS decision has implications for the two presidential candidates and their campaign leading up to November.
SB 1070, a Win-Win for the President
This post originally appeared on NBCLatino
Yesterday’s oral arguments in the Supreme Court concerning SB 1070 were highly anti-climactic, at least with regards to their political implications. It’s a toss up as to whether the court will vote to uphold key provisions of the law or if the court will split—as a result of Justice Kagan’s recusal—and the provisional blocks put into place by the lower courts will hold. Either way, the Obama administration has a compelling narrative to mobilize the Latino community in the lead up to November’s election.
The arguments heard yesterday revolved around whether Arizona was helping or hindering the enforcement of federal immigration laws. Arizona argued that they simply wanted to act as a cooperating junior partner. The administration argued that Arizona was usurping federal powers and that this meddling would interfere with their law enforcement efforts. The 80 minutes of oral arguments dealt with the narrow issue of state versus federal powers. Save for a warning from Chief Justice Roberts to the Solicitor General that the issue of racial profile not be brought up, the question of racial profiling was absent.
Unlike the Supreme Court, the President is concerned with the very real and tangible effect of racial profiling. While his administration is also concerned with constitutional pre-emption they have not lost sight of the human face of a law that gives broad in-roads to civil rights violations. The human and civil rights of Arizonans and in particular Latinos in Arizona are put in peril with the “show me your papers” provision. Since SB 1070 was signed into law the Obama administration has challenged the law up to the highest court in the land where it unfolded yesterday. Continue Reading
MSNBC UP: A Discussion of the Environment
In the lead up to earth day and the second anniversary of the BP oil spill we discuss climate change and the mix of public policy necessary to address and balance environmental and employment concerns.
To The Contrary: Political Wives, Female Ambition, and Immigration
The panel of this week’s PBS To The Contrary tackled a wide array of issues starting with the call for Syrian first lady Asma al-Assad to stand up to her husband’s attack on his countrymen. We then turn to women in the United States and a new Pew poll that finds that women place a high-paying career as a top priority. Finally, we tackle the issue of immigration with a specific focus on a move to make e-verify mandatory.
Watch April 20, 2012 on PBS. See more from To The Contrary.
The Bill Press Show: A Discussion of the Latino Vote
This week the President’s re-election campaign launched “Latinos for Obama.” The full court press is officially on for the Latino vote by the Democrats. However, the GOP claims that it has still not given up on courting this electorate.