Hispanic/Latino

Michael Gerson revisits one of our favorite subjects today on the op-ed page of the Washington Post:

Now hearings are beginning on another immigration reform bill, with a legislative debate likely to ripen in 2010. For Democrats -- pledged to comprehensive reform but weighing union opposition to a temporary-worker program -- the immigration debate will be difficult. For Republicans, it may be an invitation to political suicide.

Some conservatives dismiss electoral considerations as soiled and cynical. They will make their case, even if that means sacrificing Florida, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and . . . Indiana. Yes, Indiana, which had supported Republican presidential candidates for 40 years before Obama captured it on the strength of Hispanic votes. This is a good definition of extremism -- the assumption that irrelevance is evidence of integrity. In fact, it is a moral achievement of democracy that it eventually forces political parties to appeal to minorities and outsiders instead of demonizing them. The scramble for votes, in the long run, requires inclusion.

By 2030, the Latino share of the vote in America is likely to double. Some Republicans seem to be calculating that this influence can be countered by running up their percentage of support among white voters. But this is not eventually realistic, because non-college-educated whites are declining as a portion of the electorate. And it is disturbing in any case to set the goal of a whiter Republican Party. This approach would not only shrink the party, it would split it. Catholics and evangelicals, who have been central to the Republican coalition, cannot ultimately accept a message of resentment against foreigners. Their faith will not allow it.

In considering illegal immigration, many talk appropriately about the rule of law. But there is also the imago dei -- the shared image of God -- that does not permit individual worth and dignity to be sorted by national origin. This commitment does not translate simplistically into open borders and amnesty. It does mean, however, that immigrants should not be used as objects of organized anger or singled out for prejudice and harm. If Republicans head down this dreary path, many could no longer follow.

Which is why the departure of Martinez is unfortunate. Most elected Republicans bring serious arguments and good motives to the immigration debate. Fewer leaders, however, are willing to confront the extremists in their midst. And now one more of those principled leaders is gone.

I offered my own thoughts on the Martinez departure in this recent essay.   And of course we agree with Gerson - it is time for the GOP to sue for peace with the Latino community, and there is no better way for them to work closely with the Democrats to pass CIR next year.

In an essay yesterday (which is still running on the front page of the Huffington Post), Waking Up To the Coming Battle Over the Census, I talked about the very real possibility that the national Republican Party will mount a sustained effort to undermine the Census next year because of the Constitutional requirement for it to count all people, including undocumented immigrants.  One could easily imagine Rep. Joe Wilson, for example, leading this effort.

Yesterday we came across this story from the Salt Lake Tribune, which reports on a new bill just introduced in the United States Senate by Sen. Bob Bennett which attempts to identify the undocumented population and bar them from contributing to the reapportionment process.   From the news article:

Bennett, a Utah Republican who faces a tough re-election effort, introduced a bill last week that would add an 11th question to the Census forms asking if the person is a citizen or legal resident. He wants to exclude undocumented immigrants from the count used to apportion seats in the U.S. House.

"It does not make any sense for congressional seats and the Electoral College to be determined by a process that unfairly provides the advantage to those communities with high illegal populations," Bennett said in announcing his legislation.

The question Bennett raises, and is raised by the authors in the Wall Street Journal in my post yesterday, is should the undocumenteds be counted?  The 14th Amendment says:

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed

The interpretation of this question for these many years is that, yes, everyone must be counted.  And certainly the 2010 Census is designed to do just that.  But given how the national Republican Party played politics (successfully by the way) with the Census and reapportionment process the last two times the nation went through this, we should expect another run this time too.  And my guess is that despite the Constitutional requirement to count everyone most/many Americans would agree with Senator Bennett - why should places like Arizona gain at others expense through the presence of what will clearly be labeled "illegals?"

Which is why this debate could end up being so tough for those elected officials, including the President, required to defend the constitutionality of the current census strategy - because for many it will seem like it "makes no sense."

So how to avoid what could become a very ugly and divisive fight, pitting region against region, community against community, immigrants vs native born?

Pass comprehensive immigration reform prior to the start of the census count, making the "illegals" legal and finally fixing the broken immigration system once and for all.

Open to other ideas too.  Feel free to share 'em.  Anxious to hear your thoughts on this.

The Miami Herald's Andres Oppenheimer has a column this morning which asks a good question - Will boycott against CNN's Dobbs Work? 

Oppenheimer writes:

`CNN gives Dobbs an unparalleled and powerful perch from which to spread right-wing misinformation and promote hate and fear. And his advertisers help make that possible -- and profitable -- for CNN,'' says the Dropdobbs.com website.

``These advertisers depend on the loyalty of a broad consumer base that includes millions of Latinos who are tired of being demonized by Dobbs. . . . Let's send a message to these advertisers that they will be held accountable for financially supporting the spread of hate.''

According to Simon Rosenberg, head of the New Democrat Network and a former television journalist himself, cable TV shows such as Dobbs' are fueling a dangerous social polarization in the United States.

``Dobbs spreads things that are clearly untrue and uses wild and extreme rhetoric, particularly about Hispanic Americans, that should have no space on a mainstream network like CNN,'' Rosenberg said. ``He is free to say whatever he wants on his own website, his books and on his radio show, but CNN and Time Warner, which are globally respected companies, should take a stand regarding this kind of speech.''

Should we support this petition?

Edward Schumacher-Matos, a lecturer at Harvard and Miami Herald ombudsman, says that ``the boycott is perfectly legitimate. As much as Dobbs may not mean to demonize immigrants and Latinos, he does. He hammers at this issue night after night, and he takes so many facts out of context, that even if I don't think he is a racist, he feeds into racism.''

In addition, Dobbs often misleads the public by presenting opinion disguised as news, Schumacher-Matos added.

Edward Wasserman, a journalism-ethics professor at Washington and Lee University and a Miami Herald columnist, added that just as Dobbs has a right to free speech, news consumers have a right to boycott companies that sponsor irresponsible journalism.

``If you find the general drift of Dobbs' commentary to be incendiary, reckless, deceitful, then you shouldn't be buying these advertisers' products,'' Wasserman said.

and then concludes:

My opinion: If Dobbs' show was presented as an opinion show -- ``The angry-white-male nightly diatribe'' would be a proper name for it -- I would be against a boycott drive because it would curtail his right to free speech. But if Dobbs, Beck, and other cable TV entertainers continue to deceive the public by using news formats to disguise opinion as news, and cross the line from dispassionate discourse to fire-brand crusading, they must live with the consequences, including boycotts.

(If you wonder why The Herald runs my column under the banner ``In my opinion,'' and why I always end my columns with the words ``my opinion,'' it's precisely to let you know exactly what you are reading.)

The key issue should not be where Dobbs or other Hispanic-phobic TV show hosts stand, but whether they present themselves as what they are -- opinionators. And Dobbs clearly doesn't pass the test.

Syndicated clolumnist Carl Leubsdorf takes a look at the prospects of immigration reform today in his column.  I'm in the following excerpt:

Still, all signs are that Obama is serious about pushing the comprehensive immigration reform he promised in the campaign, once lawmakers act on his extensive 2009 agenda.

That was his clear message last month to more than 100 representatives of interested business, labor and advocacy groups at a meeting clearly designed to ease concerns about his intentions.

Still, despite pressure from Hispanic supporters – and the fact that fixing immigration is long overdue – it's easy to doubt that Congress would tackle so tough an issue, especially in an election year.

But Simon Rosenberg, president of the liberal think tank NDN and a longtime advocate of comprehensive immigration legislation, believes the political climate actually favors action.

"The Republicans need to do something about the fact that their opposition to immigration reform is continuing to drive down their numbers with the nation's fastest-growing group," he said. "And the Democrats need to do something because they promised to get it done."

Besides, he said, "there is a history of bipartisan cooperation on immigration, which is not true of some other issues"

I remain optimistic that the President and Congress will take up immigration reform early next year.  

For more feel free to review our recently released backgrounder on comprehensive immigration reform.  It has lots of good stuff for any one wanting to get caught up on the issue.  And Andres also recently posted video of Senator Ted Kennedy making a powerful pitch for CIR at an NDN forum just before the 2007 Congressional debate began.  It is still powerful and germane to the debate today.

It was a week of expansive quotations for the NDN family in the news. Simon had the kicker quote in a major NPR piece this week about the Justice Department's inquiries into "enchanced interrogation" techniques. From the piece:

The administration said that the practice, known as rendition and condemned by human rights advocates, would proceed with more oversight.

"I think the Obama administration is having a hard time calibrating all of this," says Simon Rosenberg, president and founder of the New Democrat Network. "They were left a bad set of practices and realities by the Bush administration."

"The Obama team is finding that unraveling this is harder than they thought it would be, and they're trying," Rosenberg says. "But we're going to be having this debate a long time, and this [inquiry] is an important step."

That debate, he says, will necessarily involve how the country treated terrorism suspects in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Suggestions that discussion about what happened in the Bush era is either partisan or out-of-bounds is ridiculous," he says. "Laws may have been broken, and our standing in the world was affected."

"We need to have a conversation about this in our country."

Andres was quoted extensively in the Las Vegas Sun about the lack of Latino involvement in local politics:

Andres Ramirez made a bid at becoming only the second Hispanic mayor in Southern Nevada history when he ran for mayor of North Las Vegas against incumbent Mike Montandon in 2005. He lost, in a city where an estimated 38.6 percent of the population is Hispanic. He would have joined Cruz Olague, who held the title in Henderson for two years in the 1970s.

When Ruben Kihuen was elected to the Assembly in 2006, he became the second Hispanic immigrant to become a state lawmaker, after Pablo Laveaga, who was elected in 1875 and hailed from Sinaloa, Mexico. Kihuen was born in Jalisco. He joked at the time about doubling the number of Spanish-speaking voices in Carson City, referring to Moises Denis, who was born in Brooklyn to Cuban parents.

When you go through this litany with Ramirez, who now works as vice president of Hispanic programs for NDN, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, he accentuates the positive.

He notes that most other large counties in the top 15 for Hispanic population have had their large populations for much longer. In Clark County, and Nevada generally, he says, Hispanics "have become a quantifiable political force only since the last census" - less than a decade.

And while Ramirez won't overlook the historical paucity of elected and appointed officials with Latin American backgrounds, he also underlines the impact of those who have worked in other areas, such as former Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority chief Manny Cortez, "one the most powerful tourism officials in the world."

As for politics, Ramirez also points out that the expanding Hispanic population has voted in increasing numbers in the past decade, contrasting the highly contested 1998 race between Harry Reid and John Ensign, when "35,000 Hispanic votes was considered the most you could get," with the recent presidential election, when more than four times as many Hispanics went to the polls.

As for Kihuen and Denis, their victories are the result of lobbying on redistricting from Ramirez and others following Census 2000. The result: District 11, which is Kihuen's, and District 28, which fulfilled its intent with Denis' 2004 election.

Locally, the lack of Hispanic surnames on councils and commissions, Ramirez says, doesn't negate the increasing number of Hispanic staff members whose jobs are to ensure Spanish-speaking constituents are heard.

The rest is a question of "time and maturity." Ramirez predicts a near future that includes the more Hispanic state senators and more candidates for local offices.

Rob was featured in The Age talking about the benefits of a carbon tax:

TRADING of emission permits around the world will become a financial rort that fails to reduce carbon emissions - and will ultimately be scrapped in favour of a simple carbon tax, a former senior official in the Clinton administration has forecast.

Robert Shapiro, former US undersecretary of commerce and author of Futurecast, predicted that the US Senate would reject the emissions trading scheme proposed by President Obama, which is now before it.

Speaking by video to the Trade 2020 conference convened by Austrade and the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, Dr Shapiro said ''cap and trade'' systems as proposed by the US and the Australian governments to limit carbon dioxide emissions and allow trade in permits do not work as intended.

''Cap and trade has proved very vulnerable to vested interests, and therefore too weak to deliver the necessary emission reductions'', he said. ''Cap and trade creates trillions of dollars of new financial instruments to be traded, and subjected to the next financial fads. China and India will never accept a cap and trade regime.''

A better solution is to impose a carbon tax on emissions and return the revenue from it to households so people are not made worse off, Dr Shapiro said. A similar approach in Sweden has cut emissions there by 8 per cent since 1990 while GDP rose about 40 per cent.

CEDA research director Michael Porter strongly supported Dr Shapiro. CEDA today will release a report urging the Rudd Government to scrap its emissions trading scheme in favour of a carbon tax.

Finally, Simon was also featured in a Politico video about Senator Ted Kennedy. Simon addresses Senator Kennedy's remarkable legacy on immigration reform around the 5 minute mark. Check it out here:

As Dan wrote earlier a quote of mine is running in a thoughtful Dan Balz piece running on the Washington Post's website.  As it was slightly edited from what I sent him, I offer up the original statement: 

The President's naming of Sotomayor is a smart acknowledgement of how the nation is changing.   Driven to a great degree by Hispanic immigration over the past generation, the nation is on track to be a majority minority country by 2042, and is already one third non-white today.  
 
This changing racial and demographic makeup of America is one of the most profound structural transformations happening in our country today.  Democrats have consistently shown a deep understanding of these changes, and working hard to fashion a new politics to accomodate and speak to the new America of the 21st century.  National Republicans, on the other hand, seems to be resisting these inexorable changes in ways that could make them a minority party for a long time to come.  If during the next few weeks the Republicans appear to be playing politics with race rather than raising legitimate issues about Sotomajor's judicial approach it could reinforce the deep impression that the Republican Party's anarchonistic and intolerant approach to race and diversity is making them less capable of leading a very different and more racially diverse America of the early 21st century.  

For more see this recent backgrounder on Sotomayor and race we released a few weeks ago.

Earlier today on Meet the Press Tom Brokaw cited NDN in asking Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL) whether the weak showing of the Republicans these last few years with Hispanics was endangering their Party's ability to be a majority in the 21st century. The transcript:

MR. BROKAW: Senator Martinez, as you know, politics is about keeping score. I know this is tough for you to hear, probably, but you were 0-for-3 last Tuesday. You're a Republican; you are from Florida, that went to the Democrats; and you're Hispanic, or Latino in some parts of this country, and the Hispanics went overwhelmingly for the Democrats this time. Jill Lawrence wrote in USA TODAY: "`If the Republicans don't make their peace with Hispanic voters, they're not going to win presidential elections anymore. The math just isn't there.'" That's according to Simon Rosenberg, head of the NDN, a Democratic group that studies Hispanic voters." How do you get back to the Hispanics?

SEN. MARTINEZ: Governor Jeb Bush--former Governor Jeb Bush last week made a comment that if Republicans don't figure it out and do the math that we're going to be relegated to minority status. I've been preaching this for a long time to my colleagues within my party. I think that the very divisive rhetoric of the immigration debate set a very bad tone for our brand as Republicans. The fact of the matter is I think in Florida there was not a great ideological shift, but I think there was plenty of room for improvement in how that state was looked upon.

The fact of the matter is that Hispanics are going to be a more and more vibrant part of the electorate, and the Republican Party had better figure out how to talk to them. We had a very dramatic shift between what President Bush was able to do with Hispanic voters, where he won 44 percent of them, and what happened to Senator McCain. Senator McCain did not deserve what he got. He was one of those that valiantly fought, fought for immigration reform, but there were voices within our party, frankly, which if they continue with that kind of rhetoric, anti-Hispanic rhetoric, that so much of it was heard, we're going to be relegated to minority status. (bold added). 

For three years now NDN has argued that the way the Republicans had handled the immigration issue - by demonizing Hispanics - was one of the biggest political mistakes made by a political party in the last 50 years of American politics.  As Peter Wallsten writes in the LA Times today, this failure with Hispanics may have cost them 4 prominent states in this election, but may cost them Arizona and Texas in the coming years.  If that comes about it is game over, lights out for the GOP in the Electoral College for a very long time. 

And see here for Jill Lawrence's piece in USA Today mentioned by Brokaw, and here for our landmark study that lays out this argument, Hispanics Rising II.  

In reviewing the polls today the trend lines continued unaltered - Obama holds his commanding lead with no evidence that the race is in any way breaking towards McCain.  As DemFromCT's am report shows there was no meaningful movement towards McCain overnight and Obama's numbers held.  Gallup's 3 daily tracks released at 1pm this afternoon have all sorts of bad news for McCain, with the 2 likely voter tracks each now having the race 52-42 for Obama.  For all this talk that the late breaking vote may break to McCain there is no evidence of this. What still must be terrifying to the national GOP is that there are so many late polls with Obama ahead by 8-12 points, and with their man still mired in the low 40s. 

I offered some thoughts yesterday on why the race the broke the way it did this Fall.  Called Keys to the Fall: Obama Leads, McCain Stumbles, you can find it on the Huffington Post (where it ran on the home page for almost 24 hours) or a version right here on our blog. 

So.....I was asked by a newspaper to offer my predictions for Tuesday.  I committed to Obama 53, McCain 46 and Obama claiming 353 electoral college votes.  But given the polls of recent days there is a remote but growing possibility that Obama wins by 10 points or more.  

Also if you haven't seen it read Jonathan Weisman's front page political story in the Wall Street Journal today.   It includes this passage, which includes data and arguments that will be familiar to our readers:

Demographics also shifted in the right places to give Democrats a lift. In Colorado, Virginia and North Carolina, the influx of a younger, more-educated populace brought voters more receptive to the Democrats' message. A concerted Republican campaign to curb illegal immigration turned a wave of new foreign-born voters against the GOP in Florida, Nevada and Colorado, just as the Latino vote in those states was growing.

Between 2000 and this year, the Hispanic electorate will have doubled, to 12% of voters, according to Census data and NDN, a Democratic group that studies the electorate. That growth has been concentrated in once-Republican states, not only in the Mountain West but in the South. By 2006, Hispanics represented 31% of voters in New Mexico, 13% in Nevada, 11% in Florida and 8% in Colorado.

President Bush and his political team were able to ride that wave, nearly doubling the GOP's share of the Latino vote from 21% in 1996 to 40% in 2004, according to exit polls. Then came 2006 and the Republican Party embrace of get-tough legislation on illegal immigration, followed by Republican efforts to kill bipartisan bills to stiffen border enforcement and provide illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship.

In 2006, Republican support among Hispanics fell to 30%. Even Sen. McCain, who co-authored the bipartisan immigration legislation, does not appear able to reverse the trend. An NDN poll in August, when Sens. Obama and McCain were virtually tied in the polls, found Sen. Obama leading among Colorado Hispanics 56% to 26% and Nevada Hispanics 62% to 20%.

In Colorado alone, more than 70,000 new Latino voters have registered since 2004. An Associated Press-GFK poll released Wednesday found that 16% of Colorado's likely voters identify themselves as Hispanic -- and 70% of them back Sen. Obama.

The growth of professional havens in Northern Virginia, the Research Triangle of Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and the Boulder-Denver corridor of Colorado may also be contributing to the changing electoral landscape. Voters in such places tend to be younger, more ethnically and racially diverse and less interested in social-conservative issues, such as abortion and gay marriage. And there are a lot of them: 83 million so-called millennials between ages 19 and 37, compared with 74 million Baby Boomers between 51 and 69.

530pm Update: This from today's Washington Post track analysis: 

In today's Washington Post-ABC News daily tracking poll, Obama holds a 53 to 44 percent lead over McCain, unchanged from yesterday, and little in the survey suggests that trimming the margin would be an easy feat.

For the first time, the slice of likely voters who report they will "definitely" vote for Obama has (by just a hair) now reached 50 percent, a milestone which George W. Bush never reached in Post-ABC tracking polls in 2004 or 2000, and the number of movable voters - those who said they could change their minds or who remain undecided - has slimmed to 7 percent.

McCain's campaigning over the past week has not convinced more voters that Obama is a risky choice, nor has he gained ground as the candidate better able to handle taxes or the economy. (Obama holds a 13-point advantage on taxes, his largest of the campaign, and a 14-point lead on the economy.) For the second time in Post-ABC polling, Obama has crossed into majority support as the candidate better able to manage an unexpected crisis.

One plus for McCain: Strong enthusiasm among his supporters has moved up a bit to 41 percent, the highest level it's been since the Republican convention, but still far behind the 68 percent of Obama supporters who are deeply enthused by his candidacy. 

I agree with the sentiment in Frank Rich's column today. Old Man McCain is one of the worst candidates the GOP could have chosen this year, and one of the wobbliest major candidates we've seen run for President in modern times.

When the media scrutiny comes - and it will come - it will not be kind (see here for the latest on his serial bending/breaking of campaign laws this election).

Update: To us at NDN nothing more has spoken to the character of John McCain than what he has done on the immigration issue. As Andres wrote recently, in 2007, when collapsing in the GOP primaries, McCain made the very political decision to walk from his own immigration reform bill and was thus instrumental in the collapse of the Senate bill. On this matter, there is no way to ascribe virtue to what he has done. At the moment of truth he showed cowardice, not courage, and betrayed a community he once championed. He has since repeatedly said he would not support his own bill if it came back to the Senate.

To us at NDN this one example - and there are more - shows how far McCain has fallen since the heyday of the Straight Talk Express. In his desperate last attempt to win the GOP nomination over the past year John McCain became a craven politician, tossing long held beliefs on taxes, immigration, torture, campaign finance over board faster than folks have gotten tossed from American Idol. While this strategy may have been effective in winning him the nomination it also needs to become a central part of how the country comes to understand who the McCain of 2008 - not the McCain of 2000 - has become.

His dispiriting ideological implosion speaks to the larger collapse of conservative and GOP politics brought about by the Bush Presidency, a new reality of American politics that may be with us for a very long time.