Hispanics

From a piece by Sam Stein on the Huffington Post:

One of Congress' most influential Hispanic members says that John McCain "walked away" from the Latino community and is not a "person of principle" on immigration reform -- a perception that could haunt the Arizona Republican in the general election.

In an interview with The Huffington Post, Sen. Robert Menendez offered a scathing rebuke of McCain, painting him as a candidate who sold his political soul to secure his party's presidential nomination.

"In my mind, he has dramatically shifted. He has really taken a Republican tact," said the New Jersey Democrat. "It seems to me, and it is out there in the community, that he walked away at a critical time. And when you take that view, which shows that he is not the person of principle that he would like to show himself being, and you wear the Republican mantle that is so negative and anti-immigrant... I think it is very hard for John McCain to make hay with Latinos at the end of the day." 

Watching all this tonight I feel pride, and a powerful sense of possibility. I am proud of our nation, I am proud of Senator Clinton and I am proud of Senator Obama, his family and his remarkable campaign.

As each day goes by I am more and more convinced that we are entering a new age of politics, an age of possibility, where so much is possible now, where we can imagine, imagine a tomorrow and an America so much better than today.

I end my brief post by reposting something I wrote just after Senator Obama's impressive win in the Iowa Caucuses, called Obama, Race and the end of the Southern Strategy:

For the past several years NDN has been making an argument that for progressives to succeed in the coming century they would have to build a new majority coalition very different from the one FDR built in the 20th century. The nation has changed a great deal since the mid-20th century, as we've become more Southern and Western, suburban and exurban, Hispanic and Asian, immigrant and Spanish-speaking, more millennial and aging boomer and more digital age in our life and work habits than industrial age. 21st century progressive success would require building our politics around these new demographic realities.

Looking at the leadership of the Democratic Party today, there is cause for optimism on this score. The four leading Presidential candidates includes a mixed race Senator of African descent, an accomplished and powerful woman, a border state governor of Mexican descent and a populist from the new South. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi represent areas west of the Rockies. Taken together these leaders represent a very different kind of politics, a 21st century politics, for the Democrats.

But of all these great changes the one that may be most important today is the growth of what we call the "minority" population. When I was born in 1963 the country was almost 89 percent white, 10.5 percent African-American and less than 1 percent other. The racial construct of America was, and had been for over hundreds of years, a white-black, majority-minority construct, and for most of our history had been a pernicious and exploitive one. Of course the Civil Rights Movement (particularly the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act) began to change our understanding of race around the time of my birth, but it was the Immigration Act of 1965 that changed the face of America. That act changed who would enter America, reorienting our new immigrant pool from Europe, as it had been for over 300 years, to Latin America and Asia. And America changed.

As the chart below shows, today America is 66 percent white and 33 percent "minority". While the African-American population has grown a bit, most of that increase has come from the recent historic wave of Asian and Hispanic immigrants. In my half a lifetime the "minority" population in the United States has tripled. When I was born one of out ten people walking around America were non-white. Today it is one out of three.

I think it is safe to say that America is going through the most profound demographic transformation in its long history. If current trends continue, America will be majority minority in my lifetime or soon thereafter. In a single lifetime we will have gone from a country made up largely of white Europeans to one that looks much more like the rest of the world.

If Senator Obama becomes the Democratic nominee this profound change will become something we all begin to discuss openly. Today the nation is having a big conversation about this change - whether it understands it or not - through our ongoing debate over immigration. While this debate has seen some of the most awful racist rhetoric and imagery since the days of Willie Horton, what should leave us all optimistic is that only 15 percent of the country is truly alarmed about the new wave of immigrants arriving in America. Consistently about 60 percent of the country says we need to leave all the undocumenteds here, indicating a pragmatic acceptance of the changes happening around our people and their families. Once again the uncommon wisdom of the common people appears to be prevailing here, and it is my hope, perhaps my prayer, that if Obama is the nominee American can begin to have a healthy and constructive discussion of our new population rather than what we have seen to date.

My final observation this morning is a point we focus on in our recent magazine article, The 50 Year Strategy. This election is the first post-Southern Strategy election since its early emergence in 1964. The Southern Strategy was the strategy used by Conservatives and the GOP to use race and other means to cleave the South from the Democrats. This strategy - welfare queens, Willie Horton, Reagan Democrats, tough on crime, an aggressive redistricting approach in 1990 - of course worked. It flipped the South (a base Democratic region since Thomas Jefferson's day) to the GOP, giving them majorities in Congress and the Presidency. 20th century math and demography and politics dictated that without the South one could not have a majority in the US. But the arrival of a "new politics" of the 21st century - driven to a great degree by the new demographic realities of America - has changed this calculation, and has thankfully rendered the Southern Strategy and all its tools a relic of the 20th century. As Tom Schaller has noted, today the Democrats control both Houses of Congress without having a majority of southern Congressional seats, something never before achieved by the party of Jefferson, Jackson and Lyndon Johnson.

In our article we lay out what might become the next great majority strategy, one yet unnamed, that we believe may be used by the Democrats to build a durable 21st century majority. It will be built upon an America described above, and will embrace the new diversity of 21st century America at its core. At a strategic level, resistance to the new demographic reality is futile, which is why GOP leaders like George Bush, Ken Mehlman and even the Wall Street Journal's editorial page (here and here) have railed against the GOP's approach to immigration. They rightly understand that positioning their party against this new demography of America may render them as much a 20th century relic as the Southern Strategy itself.

Liberating American politics from the pernicious era of the Southern Strategy should be one the highest strategic priorities for left-of-center politics. Last night a powerful and thoughtful man emerged on the national stage who deeply understands - and is himself the embodiment of - the moral and political imperative of moving beyond this disappointing age. He appears to be summoning the courage, the vision, and the conviction to usher in a whole new - and better - era of politics for America. At its core this new politics will embrace diversity and difference rather than exploit it; at its core this new politics will be defined by hope and tolerance not fear and Tancredoism; at its core this new politics of tolerance is not just a requirement for a more just America here at home, but is a requirement if America is to reassert itself abroad in the much more globalized, multi-polar, interconnected, and open world of the 21st century.

And of course the arrival of this new post-Southern Strategy age of American politics will be accelerated by the extraordinary level of political participation of Millennials, the largest generation in American history, whose life experiences and values are much more Obama than Nixon.

Whatever happens in this campaign, the arrival of Barack Obama and his politics is a welcome development for our nation struggling to find its way in a new and challenging day.

In our long essay about the future of left of center politics, Peter Leyden and I point out that Democrats have won 19 states worth 248 electoral college votes in each of the last four presidential elections. This group includes important states like PA and MI. It is this analysis which has led us to argue that the true battleground of this election will be in the heavily Hispanic states of AZ, CO, FL, NM and NV (and a handful of other states like OH, MO, IA, NH and perhaps NC, WI and VA).

One of the big arguments coming from both the McCain and Clinton camps has been that Obama cannot win those northern industrial states so critical to this Democratic map, and that they can. But is this true? Can McCain, in this environment in which the GOP is weaker today than it has been since at least 1982, and perhaps the 1960s, really think about winning a general election state they have not won since 1988? I have always believed that once a Democratic nomiee was picked, those 248 Electoral College votes would begin to settle in for the nominee and the game would move to the battleground described above, which in recent years was won by the GOP.

A new Survey USA poll of Pennsylvania indicates that as Obama begins his transition from candidate to nominee, that these traditional Democratic states may be reverting back to form. This new poll has Obama beating Senator McCain in PA by 8 points, 48-40, well outside the margin of error -- and this is before Senator Obama has been officially crowned the nominee. Another poll has the uber battleground of Ohio even. I've seen other recent polls that have Obama within a few points of McCain in Texas and Arizona (driven to some degree by the Hispanic community's aggressive abandonment of the GOP).

While it is early, and these polls will bounce around, looking at the national polls (A new Reuters poll released today has Obama up 8) and new state polls, there is growing evidence that Obama is successfully bringing the Democratic Party together, is winning over key Clinton constituencies and that his much discussed weakness with certain white voters is not carrying over to the general election battlefield in any meaningful way.

It also means that we will be seeing an unprecedented national campaign for the Hispanic vote, a battle which Senator McCain begins in a very weakened position and without a lot he can do to change a very anti-GOP dynamic that has taken hold in the Hispanic community.

Lots of news this Sunday morning, but we zero in on two important pieces - Frank Rich's Sunday column and a major Carolyn Lochhead essay in the SF Chronicle. Both take a look at theme we've written about a great deal - how our changing demography and Barack Obama's candidacy is starting a very important conversation about the changing nature of race in 21st century America.

From Lochhead's excellent article:

It seems odd that during a time of war and terrorism, a mortgage crisis, health care worries and a teetering economy, that race would assert itself. Last summer, the Democratic contest seemed destined to focus on Iraq. Instead, it has become a lesson in demography.

With few domestic policy differences separating Clinton and Obama, the patterns that have emerged revolve around age, income, education and the ethnic and racial composition of various voting blocs. Clinton has drawn her highest support from white women, Latinos, seniors and lower-income workers. Obama's inroads among each of those groups in Virginia recast the contest and now threaten Clinton's last hopes in Texas and Ohio on March 4.

"That race has become an issue in 2008 should come as no surprise in light of enormous immigration-driven population changes," said Simon Rosenberg...

"The country is undergoing its most profound demographic change in its history," Rosenberg said. "When I was born, the country was 89 percent white and 10.5 percent African American and 0.5 percent 'other.' Today, it's 66 percent white and 33 percent minority. We've seen a tripling of the minority population in the United States in a very short period of time."

Race began percolating as an issue most recently with the 2005 immigration debate, he said, and continued in that guise through the early GOP primaries, where he contends Republicans "demonized" Latinos. "For any civil society, that kind of transition is going to be hard."

Thanks to the fast-growing Latino vote, many analysts believe 2008 will be the year when a presidential election will be decided for the first time by minorities. Some contend that milestone was already passed when President Bush drew more than 40 percent of Latino voters in 2004, providing his victory margins in closely contested Southwestern states...

Frank Rich's op-ed covers similar terrain but in his typical penetrating fashion, talking about the GOP's embrace of its race-based Southern Strategy and this year's all white, very 20th century Presidential field. In the piece he refers to a new book, Millennial Makeover, by our good friend Morley Winograd, who is the one who introduced NDN and NPI to the importance of the coming Millennial generation.

For more on this whole subject of the changing demographics of America, come see Morley and his partner Mike Hais at our upcoming forum, A Moment of Transformation?, in Washington, DC on March 12th. It is free, open to the public and will be full of big ideas and powerful leaders. I hope you will join us.

You can find more on our thinking about our changing people in our recent magazine piece, The 50 Year Strategy, in our recent report Hispanics Rising and in a new essay, On Obama, Race and the End of the Southern Strategy and in our recent study, The Progressive Politics of the Millennial Generation.

And I will be talking directly about all this at a public NDN forum on the 2008 elections this Wednesday, Feb 20th, in Washington, DC. This one begins at 12:30pm, is open to the public and also features the ever interesting Joe Trippi and Amy Walter, the editor in chief of the Hotline. I hope you will join us for this one too.

According to the exit polls Mitt Romney and John McCain tied 33% to 33% among the 89% of the Florida Republicans who voterd last night who were not Hispanic. Among Hispanics, who where 11% of the Florida GOP electorate last night, the vote was 54% McCain, 24% Rudy and 14% Romney. So it was the vote of Hispanic voters who put John McCain over the top in Florida, and gave him the most important win of his fight for the GOP nomination.

Thus, John McCain, the candidate who championed immigration reform, may have had the nomination delivered to him by those Hispanic voters he has been fighting for. And Romney, who has led the anti-immigrant crusade in the GOP field this year, saw this strategy explode on him - as it has virtually every other Republican who has invested in it - last night.

Perhaps there is justice in the world.

Thanks to our friend Frank Sharry for passing this along.

After snowy Iowa and New Hampshire the Presidential campaign has gone national, adding states like Florida, Michigan, Nevada and South Carolina and then the unprecedented Super primary on February 5th.

On the Democratic side we are seeing the first year of a new nominating calendar which was designed to involve two regions - the South and the West - and two groups - African-Americans and Hispanic - to the traditional Iowa and New Hampshire Midwest, Northeast and largely white mix.

The idea of broadening this primary calendar to include these 2 new regions and 2 important communities was something I championed in my race for DNC Chair in 2005. Of all the candidates running I was the only one who was willing to challenge the old system, a system that only once had produced a Democratic candidate who received more than 50 percent of the vote in the general election (Carter 1976), and which was simply not representative of the nation America had become. I was very pleased when the DNC adopted a plan very similar to mine in the spring of 2005, which choose Nevada and South Carolina as the representatives states of these regions.

Embracing these regions and voters is particularly important to Democrats, the much more diverse party of the two political parties. In 2008 minority voters will make up perhaps 25% of all those who vote, and may be as much as 40% of those who vote Democratic in 2008. While it may be another 40 years before the nation becomes majority "minority," the Democratic Party is likely to become a majority minority Party within the next ten years or so as the African-American, Hispanic and Asian populations grow in the US and remain largely Democratic. Given the way the Electoral College has played out in recent elections, the Democrat's new emphasis on Hispanics and the heavily Hispanic states of AZ, CO, FL, NM and NV could alone swing the Presidential race to the Democrats in 2008 (see our recent magazine article "The 50 Year Strategy" for more on this).

As I wrote the other day helping our people embrace this new much more diverse America of the 21st century - and other emerging demographic realities like the rise of Millennials and the movement of the population to the South and West - is one of the modern progressive movements most urgent strategic challenges. By adopting this new map, by the historic diversity of the Presidential field, by the emergence of a Western-based Congressional leadership and the placement of their convention in Denver this year, it is clear that the Democrats are increasingly becoming a party built around the emerging demographic realities of 21st century America.

Vist here for a new NDN Backgrounder on Nevada, Immigration and Hispanics, here for an excellent Dan Balz overview of the upcoming Super Duper Tuesday in the Washington Post today and see below from on the ground reports from NDN staffers Joe Garcia and Travis Valentine from Nevada. This more national orientation should be on full display tonight in the Democratic debate from Las Vegas.

It was this week I think that the campaign of 2008 no longer became like some other year, or the candidates like some previous presidential aspirant. After the remarkable comebacks, the rise of Obama and Huckabee, the new and very different calendar, the replacement of burgers with tacos, this race has now officially just come the Presidential campaign of 2008, unique, unlike any other. And it is a quite a campaign.

Building on two previous posts (here and here) I offer my latest take, long, and occassionally cogent:

We are entering a very different stage of the campaign where free media and the reach of the campaign’s supporters will matter much more. There are 3 stages to this year’s primary campaign. Stage 1 is all the states prior to Feb 5th, where voters will see a great deal of candidate time, paid advertising and field-based voter contact. These voters had a great deal of information about the candidates to make up their minds.

Stage 2 will be what amounts to a national primary, where 23 states, some big ones, vote. The campaign will move from a target audience of a million or so voters to a target of tens of millions. Despite the large amounts of money raised by the Democrats, these voters will be voting with much less information. Few will have seen the candidates live, few will have seen a substantial amount of paid media, and the field operations of the campaigns simply cannot touch all these voters in a meaningful way. Voters will be increasingly dependent on the talk in the free media (the press, blogs etc), the debates and contact from trusted friends and colleagues to help them make up their minds. Stage 3 will be the states that come after Super Duper Tuesday, and will take shape only after the enormous vote on Feb 5th.

This means several things. First what happens in Nevada and South Carolina will matter much more than the delegate count. If Obama sweeps in both states he will get a tremendous lift, a lift big enough to potentially give him the nomination. And since he is expected to win in South Carolina, the coming fight for Nevada is going to be very consequential. Which helps explain why the Clinton camp has taken the desperate tact of challenging the Caucus system Nevada has established and approved by the DNC. This move could end up truly blowing up in their faces as it will likely motivate their opponents in Nevada, anger Nevada voters, increasingly turn the labor movement against them and re-evoke the worst of the angry imperial face the Clintons have occasionally shown throughout the campaign.

Second, as the campaign goes national and voters have less information to make their decisions, the vast networks established by Obama and Clinton will become much more central to their campaigns. Much attention has gone to the amount of money raised by the campaigns, but now each of them will be turning to these unprecedented in size networks to engage their friends and colleagues across the country in the campaign. I am already getting in my personal inbox more passionate appeals for and against candidates than any time I can remember. And imagine what will happen if the 1m or so people in Obama’s network all reach out several times to everyone in their own social networks – that 1m could reach 15-20m more. Most studies show that personal contact from a friend, relative or trusted colleague is the most persuasive form of all voter contact. That’s why one data point to track closely in the next few weeks is not only how much money each campaign is raising but how many new people are either giving up or signing up. Which is also why the endorsement of someone like John Kerry, or an organization like Emily’s List, with a very active list of supporters nationally, matters so much more than it used too.

Third, despite’s Barack’s possible sweep of NV and SC, this scenario favors Hillary. Call it the politician we know scenario. Whatever they think of Hillary the voters in the Feb 5th states know Hillary. She has been vetted. She has been around. Her husband has become essentially a running mate, and will allow her campaign to hit twice as many media markets each day. Barack is still unknown to so many, and for all the reasons described above, few voters in the Feb 5th states will be able to directly connect with his charisma and magic as they have in these early states. He has fewer tools to fill in the information gap voters have about him, which why for him winning NV and SC becomes so important. For the Obama world they should be very worried about voters on Feb 5th just deciding to go with the politician they know rather than the one they don’t.

Two new national polls tonight capture both the opportunity and challenge Barack now facing Barack. A Post/ABC Poll has it 42 Clinton, 37 Obama, showing a 25% point gain for Barack over the last few weeks, indicating what could happen if he wins NV and SC. But another poll, a NYTimes/CBS Poll, has it 42 Clinton 27 Obama, largely unchanged since their last poll. This 2nd poll reminds us how hard it is going to be for Barack to fill in the gaps with voters in this coming national primary in just a few weeks time, at the same time the Clinton assault against Barack is growing more pointed, and I think effective.

Hillary’s overall strategy is formidable. The campaign appears to be bearing down on women, Democrats struggling harder to get ahead and Hispanics. Her Hispanic campaign got a boost this week as Sec. Henry Cisneros joined her campaign, and she did very good events Hispanic events in East Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Women were, remarkably, 57 percent of the Democratic vote in both IA and NH. And her laser-like focus on the economy produced for her in New Hampshire as she won this issue – the most important in the campaign today – nine points. Her quick roll out of a credible stimulus plan this week was dexterous, and allows her to maintain the upper hand on this defining issue. In the new Post poll, which had the race close, Clinton leads Obama on the economy by a whopping 13 points.

Obama’s lack of significant engagement on economic issues these past few weeks has to be one of the biggest strategic mysteries of the campaign so far. Obama’s post-partisan positioning, and the absence of a serious campaign in the Hispanic community, will be more challenging for him in the many Feb 5th states with large numbers of Hispanic voters and Democratic-only voters. In the coming days I expect to see Obama toughen up his language on Bush, promote his wife and other female surrogates, emphasize the economy more and significantly ramp up his Hispanic campaign, including letting the very talented Jimmy Learned (his Hispanic media advisor) do his thing.

I thought Senator Clinton was very good on Meet the Press today, and certainly seems to have regained her stride.

The Obama campaign has shown remarkable political strength. Much more than a speech, the Obama campaign now has to be considered one the most impressive Presidential campaigns ever put together. Imagine that this man, African-American, young, unknown to most Americans a year ago, has raised more money and has more donors and more supporters than Hillary Clinton. He won the Iowa Caucus handily, and came within a few thousand votes of also winning New Hampshire, a place steeped in Clinton lore.

The campaign has earned the endorsement of 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry, respected Senator Bill Bradley, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, influential Congressman George Miller and the governors or Senators of the tough, swing states of Arizona, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota and Virginia. In New Hampshire both Democratic members of Congress supported Barack. And just this week he earned the support of a very powerful set of unions in Nevada, a truly impressive political feat.

If Romney beats McCain in Michigan this week, it could slow the McCain momentum, once again exposing the weakness in their field, but also leaving more independents open for Barack in those states where independents can vote on Feb 5th. The strength Barack has shown throughout this campaign – and particularly these tough days after New Hampshire – increasingly leads me to believe this race could decided after Feb 5th, with two very strong, well funded and competent campaigns going at it till the very end.

I don’t think we saw a Bradley-Wilder effect in NH. The thesis simply doesn’t fit the facts. First, Barack’s vote percentage didn’t drop from the polls leading up the vote. Hillary gained. Thus no one lied about supporting Barack. Second, Barack won men 42-30. This means the Bradley-Wilder effect would have only worked with white women not white men. How exactly would that have worked?

A much more plausible explanation is that women surged for Hillary (something aided by the many moms home that day taking care of their kids – many public schools were closed that day to allow the voting to take place). John Judis makes a similar argument here.

And let me join the chorus of voices expressing their disappointment at both the public and quiet whispering campaign of the Clinton world about Obama’s race, family history and religion. For the Clintons, who ran on healing the racial divide in 1992, I hope we hear no more of secular madrassas, adopted Christianity, shuck and jive, urban drug use or the incredible claim that it is Barack’s campaign fanning the racial fires in America today. The Clintons may want to win this thing but if they do it by continuing to stumble all over Barack’s race and heritage, particularly right before we head to states with heavy Hispanic and African-American populations, they may have a very hard time putting their party back together at the end of the day.

Mark Leibovich of the Times has a very good piece today looking at the history making campaigns of both Clinton and Obama, and the legacy of both the women's rights and civil rights movements. And while we have much to be proud of with their candidacies - and the candidacy of Bill Richardson - the difficulty of the conversation about Barack's candidacy and the role of race reminds all of us how just important the Obama campaign is for the much more racially diverse America of the 21st century.