Obama’s Secret Weapon – The Latino Vote

The one demographic which hasn’t traditionally turned out in large numbers is Hispanic voters. 2008 was an exception with Hispanic voters helping power Obama’s win. As such, looking at hstorical data – most of the national polls like Gallup undercount the number of Hispanic voters utilizing the “likely voter” model. Creating the situation – should there be a major turnout of Hispanic voters – most of the national polls will be wrong by 4 to possibly 12% if Pollster Nate Silver  of Five-Thirty-Eight is right.

Recent polling of Hispanic voters indicates that this may just be the case…

Even more interesting may be what this means in the down-ticket races. There is a possibility of some unexpected upsets of Republicans.

If you are Hispanic, and thinking about voting Republican…I have one word for you – Arizona. A vote for Romney empowers the Republicans in places like Arizona to take their campaign of ethnic hatred and domestic terrorism nationwide.  It is your children who are the losers in that.

Latino Excitement at Record Levels in US Election

Just over a week before the United States votes in a highly anticipated and historically tight presidential election, a new poll released Monday finds that interest by Latino voters has strengthened significantly over the past two months, and that turnout among Hispanics could be higher than the records set in 2008.

According to the latest impreMedia-Latino Decisions poll of registered Hispanic voters, 45 percent say they are more excited about the current election than they were for the 2008 election, when Barack Obama was elected. That number has gone up by eight percent over the past 10 weeks, when the poll was first taken.

Further, a full 87 percent of respondents say they would most likely be voting when national polling sites open on Nov. 6, with eight percent having already taken advantage of the early voting options made available in certain states. During the last presidential election, 84 percent of registered Latino voters cast ballots – far higher than the U.S. national turnout, of 57 percent, that same year.

The high levels of interest mean that Latinos will further cement the community’s importance in the current and, particularly, future election. Hispanics make up one of the single fastest-growing sectors of the U.S. population, with around 50,000 Latino youths currently becoming eligible to vote every month.

To date, they have tended to vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party. The prospect has reportedly led to existential debates within the Republican Party, which has seen its voter base – which skews older and whiter than the Democratic base – continue to shrink as a percentage of the overall voting public.

“The polls show that this year we can anticipate record participation among Latino voters,” Monica Lozano, the head of impreMedia, said Monday in a statement. “It looks like the ‘sleeping giant’ has woken up.”

The new numbers will receive particular scrutiny given the general lack of Spanish-language polling that has taken place during the campaign season, despite a massive amount of polling figures coming out on a daily basis.

In mid-October, the widely watched pollster Nate Silver suggested that the relative lack of Spanish-language respondents could increase Barack Obama’s figures by around a dozen percentage points, including in some of the most strongly contested “swing” states, such as Florida and Colorado, that will eventually decide the election.

Indeed, the strong new numbers will be particularly welcomed by Obama’s campaign, which has made the Latino vote a central pillar of its strategy. In an initially off-the-record interview released last week, Obama stated, “Since this is off the record, I will just be very blunt. Should I win a second term, a big reason … is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community.”

The president also noted that this “alienation” of Latinos by Republicans is a “relatively new phenomenon”. This is seen as referring to a host of new and pending laws enforcing voter identification requirements that many have suggested would impact particularly on Latino and other minority voters – typically strongholds for the Democratic Party.

According to a new report released last week by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO), “More than 100 years of virtually unchecked discrimination at the polls against Latino U.S. citizens” is now being compounded by a “significant added obstruction in the form of restrictive state voting laws … (that) will have a worse effect on the Latino electorate than on all voters.”

NALEO suggests that these new policies could negatively impact on around 219,000 Latino voters across the country this election, a number it calls a “conservative estimate”. Indeed, after the U.S. courts recently halted proceedings in several states planning to institute new voter ID laws, the report suggests that number would have been closer to 835,000.

Notably, a Republican state official has been caught on tape stating that such legislation was being enacted specifically in order to help the Republican challenger Mitt Romney’s chances of election.

Juan Williams on Race and This Election Cycle

Juan Williams put together a good article over on “The Hill” – the only problem is it misses the key driver in this election cycle – Women. It isn’t race that is going to drive this election. The white male dominated GOP has done an incredible job of alienating white women, which will undoubtedly pay dividends in terms of local election, House of Representative and even Senate losses.

The Republican party is increasingly looking more like “Custer’s Last Stand” instead of a political entity – damage which done almost exclusively by their own hands.

Yes – blacks, Hispanics, and now Asians are going to vote against them – but if women split 60-40 against Republicans…

It’s over. Perhaps that is why President Obama isn’t sweating the election.

Anyway – Juan makes some good points…

How race may affect this year’s election

Last week several political strategists predicted to me that every racial button is going to get pushed hard in this fall’s presidential campaign. Their forecast is based on racial fears that are already being exposed. White Republican men form the strongest block of opposition to reelection of a black president — who, in turn, has near-unanimous support from blacks, and overwhelming backing from Hispanics and Asians.

Their predictions come against the backdrop of two white male political writers, Pat Buchanan and John Derbyshire, losing their jobs at MSNBC and National Review, respectively, after writing racially charged pieces. Buchanan lamented in a book that immigration and high Hispanic birthrates were leading to the “end of white America.” Derbyshire, writing in a small magazine, advised his children to avoid “concentrations of blacks,” and to not settle in any place run by black politicians.

The 2012 election comes at a time when the country is in the middle of a seismic shift in its demographics. Racial attitudes are also changing, for better or worse, with rising numbers of minorities and immigrants now more than 30 percent of the population. But in political terms, the GOP has failed to bring any substantial part of that growing population into its ranks. The heart of the party remains senior white voters who are resisting the loss of the America they grew up in 50 years ago.

A whole catalogue of racial fears was revealed during the Aspen Institute Symposium on Race in America, attended last week by a number of prominent experts and televised on C-SPAN:

— White fear of the increasing voting power of Hispanics, Asians and blacks. In the GOP primaries, the nation’s first black president was labeled as the “food stamp president.” He was charged with being a “socialist” and wanting to lead the country to become an “entitlement society.” This racially provocative language suggested hard-working white people being ripped off by lazy minorities. The experts see it a warning sign of the approaching racial storm. 

The New Jim Crow – Voter ID Vote Suppression

I cannot remember — even sitting in an Orangeburg County jail — when I had as much anxiety as I’m experiencing today. Back then, even when we were at the back of the bus and we were not able to sit down at lunch counters, we really felt strong that what’s happening to me here in Orangeburg, SC or Columbia, SC, ah, if I can get my plight before the United States Supreme Court, the promise of this country will be delivered for me. That’s what we felt, and I can remember our discussions in meetings — yeah, we’re going to jail now. We are going to be convicted. But we know that that conviction is going to be overturned by the United States Supreme Court.

I don’t feel that today.

Congressman Jim Clyburn (South Carolina)

The ‘Voter Fraud’ Fraud

As President Obama spoke about Representative Paul Ryan’s budget yesterday, Fox News broke away from the president’s remarks to cover “a stunning case in South Bend, Indiana.” The story covered an indictment by the St. Joseph County prosecutor’s office alleging that local Democratic officials forged signatures to get Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards on the Indiana Democratic Primary ballot in 2008. “Indiana State Police investigators identified a total of 22 petitions that appeared to be faked, yet sailed through the Voter Registration Board as legitimate documents,” Fox reported. Eric Shawn, of the Fox News Voter Fraud Unit, said that a local election worker was “ordered to forge presidential petitions for Barack Obama, illegally faking the names and signatures of unsuspecting voters to put the then-Illinois senator on the presidential primary ballot.”

The new report will no doubt underscore the belief among Fox News viewers that Obama was illegitimately elected in 2008. According to a 2009 poll by Public Policy Polling, “52% majority of GOP voters nationally think that ACORN stole the Presidential election for Barack Obama last year, with only 27% granting that he won it legitimately.” Conservative commenters are pointing to the indictment as further proof of rampant voter fraud and more evidence of the need for voter ID laws nationwide.

There are at least two major problems with this argument.

Mormons and Black Folk

Went to college in the West. One of the schools we played sports against every so often was Brigham Young. Starting in the mid-late 60′s, as a result of the Civil Rights movement, the pushback against the racist teachings of the Mormon Church historically and at that time became much more intense. While there certainly are Mormons who are racist, as there are in just about any other religion – Mormons weren’t really a part of the Southern racism which drove segregation and Jim Crow. It fell into the category of “other”…

Historically, the issue surrounded Church Founders views and “revelations”. Revelations which were not inconsistent with anti-abolition racial attitudes at the time of the founding of the Church.

BYU Choir - These Folks Can Sing!

Mormons were a bit thin on the ground here in Northern Virginia until the mid 60′s. I remember my parents always attending various social events for the Links, my Mother’s Sorority, and the black fraternities at the Marriott Key Bridges.  Bill Marriott, the founder of the Hotel Chain was probably the local area’s best know Mormon. I asked my Dad, why the various events were always at the Marriott – and he said “It’s because it’s the only major hotel in the area which will rent ballroom facilities to black folks.” Turns out, Marriott Hotels didn’t segregate, whereas every other hotel from the HoJos to the Hilton did in the South. Many black organizations were loyal to Marriott for a generation because of that.

You can’t regulate what someone thinks of you, but it is ultimately their actions towards you which really count.

Mormons, particularly those from the Wast – are about the “whitest” folks in America. I’m a big fan of the NBC show, “The Sing Off”, and have to confess that I love the sound of a Choir, whether Gospel or “traditional” (maybe because I can’t sing a lick). The Brigham Young University Choir is one of the best of the best from year to year, and this year the guys doing A Capella on the Sing Off were very good. BYU Choirs also compete against HBCUs in Gospel. One of the Sing Off segments involved singing traditional R&B this year, to which several of the singers had a laugh about some white boys from BYU trying to sing Soul Music coming from a background where not much beyond pops and country is played on the radio. Good sense of humor.

So, if Mitt Romney is the Republican Presidential candidate – will most black folks not be voting for him because he is a Mormon… Or because he is a Republican. I honestly think that Republican thing, and the bad racial freight attached to that is what counts, anymore.

Has the Mormon Church Truly Left Its Race Problems Behind?

The Mormon Cathedral in DC, euphemistically called "The Wizard of Oz Cathedral" by locals as it rises majestically above the Beltway

It’s looking more and more likely that Barack Obama will be facing Mitt Romney next November. According to recent polls, Romney’s much-debated “Mormon Problem”—considered by some to be a main roadblock to the Republican nomination in 2008—has decreased in salience among the white evangelicals on whom he’ll probably depend in both the primary and general elections. But one element of the Mormon problem that’s yet to be vetted will come into stark relief should this match-up take place: the Mormon Church’s troubling history of racial exclusion.

This history is a long one, stretching back to the inception of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) in the 1830s. Joseph Smith Jr., the founder of Mormonism, ran for president in 1844 as a moderate abolitionist; ordained a black man, Elijah Abel; and offered to adopt one young black convert, Jane Manning James, as his spiritual daughter. Yet earlier in his life, Smith wrote anti-abolitionist screeds replete with racist sentiment typical of Christian pro-slavery apologists of antebellum America. In one 1836 letter to missionaries in the South, Smith excoriated northern abolitionists as the instigators of discord among southern slaves who, he argued, were generally happy.

Other figures early in the Church’s history illustrated such prejudices as well. The Mormon Prophet Brigham Young stated in 1852, “Any man having one drop of the seed of [Cain] … in him cannot hold the priesthood.” Up until the mid-twentieth-century, some prophets perpetuated the idea that blacks were spiritually inferior, the permanently cursed descendants of Ham and Cain (a myth once popular in many American churches). In 1931, Church President Joseph Fielding Smith, the great-nephew of Joseph Smith Jr., wrote a widely distributed treatise—still available on Kindle—asserting that blacks were “fence-sitters” during a pre-mortal battle between God and Lucifer. When they were sent to Earth, according to Fielding Smith, blacks were marked with darkened skin as a permanent reminder of their perfidy. Until 1978, black men were forbidden from holding the Mormon priesthood, a sacred status that almost every Mormon male attains, and black couples could not marry in Mormon temples, a revered ceremony that Mormons believe unites the family for eternity.

This aspect of LDS history will probably prove less of a problem for Romney than for his Church, which is actively trying to change the dominant perception of Mormons as all but exclusively white. Romney’s presidential bid does not rely on the black vote, and he has put distance between himself and the history of racial exclusion once practiced by his church. On “Meet the Press” in 2007, Romney tearfully recalled the moment in 1978 when he heard that the Church had lifted the century-and-half-long ban on blacks holding the Mormon priesthood. “I was driving home from … law school. … I heard it on the radio and I pulled over and literally wept.” Since then, Romney has reached out to some black communities; a January 2008 Salt Lake Tribune article reported that Romney aided poor Massachusetts Haitians—using the French he acquired as a young missionary—while serving as the Church’s regional leader in Boston in the 1990s…

Read the rest here.

George Washington’s 100 Proof Votes…

One of the things they conveniently forget on the tour of Mount Vernon, the home of our First President George Washington, is that after serving as President he started one of the most successful distillery businesses in the new nation. Up until Prohibition, Rye Whiskey outsold all other formulations, and was the most popular strong alcoholic drink in the country.

When you needed to get out the votes in those days… Well “Brother” Rye was a reliable vote getter!

Seems to me to be a lot better excuse if a candidate didn’t work out than today – “I was drunk stupid when I voted for that Republican…

Instead of today – being  stupid enough to vote for him sober!”

George Washington Plied Voters with Booze

At $185 a Bottle, a Rare Whiskey Indeed...

It’s Election Day in Virginia, an event that back in George Washington’s day would have had the ex-president and his supporters seeing double. The reason: Voting day was a reason to binge in Colonial times, and the candidate who served up the most hooch often won.

Washington biographer Dennis Pogue, vice president of preservation at Washington’s home of Mount Vernon, reveals that the father of the nation lost his first campaign in 1755 to the House of Burgesses largely because he didn’t put on an alcohol-laden circus at the polls. That year, Washington got 40 votes. The winner, who plied voters with beer, whiskey, rum punch, and wine, got 271 votes.

A quick learner, Washington won three years later with the help of alcohol. “What do you know, he was successful and got 331 votes,” says Pogue, author of the new book Founding Spirits: George Washington and the Beginnings of the American Whiskey Industry. He spoke about his research Monday night at an event sponsored by the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States and the National Press Club.

Drinking around voting polls has long since been banned in the country.

Cornell Belcher Takes on Herman Cain’s Rhetoric on CNN

Cornell Belcher unloads on Herman Cain’s “brainwash” statement…

Bad quality – but the enitre broadcast segment. Good back and forth with Ari Fleischer.

Belcher hits the nail on the head – but I wish he had come at it a little differently. The real issue is WHO Cain is playing to and WHY. And why would that audience support Cain’s regurgitation of racist right wing talking points?

Tavis Smiley and Sheila Jackson Lee on Obama’s CBC Speech

No surprise here with Tavis having heartburn with the speech President Obama made before the Congressional Black Caucus. What is interesting is Sheila Jackson Lee’s response…

With 40 members in the House – seems to me the CBC could be quite effective at taking out some of the trash, in terms of tying the Tea Party Rethugs in knots. Why won’t they do that?

Hispanics Now Majority of Felony Convictions

Looks like Immigration “Enforcement” is doing for Hispanic communities what Drug “Enforcement” did to black communities.

Anything some folks can do to keep ‘em from voting.

More bad news for black conservatives, as how are they going to sell that black dysfunction pimp driving white fear, and assuaging white conservative guilt…

If black folks aren’t public enemy “number one”?

Looks like there will be a lot of job openings in the conservative “think tank” and “talking head” sphere for “Tio Thomas” lawn ornaments…

And some of the black stalwarts of the right…

Better start looking for honest jobs.

File this one under “Domestic Terrorism”.

Prisons - Now a Cheaper Labor source than in either China or India

Feds: Hispanics comprise majority of all people sent to federal prison for committing felonies

More than half of all people sent to federal prison for committing felony crimes so far this year were Hispanic, a major demographic shift swollen by immigration offenses, according to a new government report released Tuesday.

Hispanics already outnumber all other ethnic groups sentenced to serve time in prison for federal felonies.

Hispanics reached a new milestone for the first time this year, making up the majority of all federal felony offenders sentenced in the first nine months of fiscal year 2011, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

Hispanics comprised 50.3 percent of all people sentenced in that time period, blacks 19.7 percent and whites 26.4 percent.

In comparison, last year Hispanics made up just 16 percent of the whole U.S. population.

The commission’s statistics also reveal that sentences for felony immigration crimes _ which include illegal crossing and other crimes such as alien smuggling _ were responsible for most of the increase in the number of Hispanics sent to prison over the last decade.

The demographic change in who is being sent to federal prison has already prompted debate among commissioners and experts studying the impact of expedited court hearings along the border.

“Statistics like this have to start drawing attention to this country’s immigration policies and what we’re doing, if this is one of the results,” said Fordham University Law School professor Deborah Denno, an expert on racial disparities in the criminal justice system. “The implications for Hispanics are huge when you think of the number of families affected by having their breadwinners put away for what in some cases would be considered a non-violent offense.”

The New Jim Crow – The New Republican Poll Taxes and Minority Disenfranchisement

When you do the Math – the coalition of Minority Voters and 20-30% of white voters makes it difficult for Republicans to win elections. Indeed, George Bush owes his illegitimate  Presidencies to systemic voter disenfranchisement of minorities – in what has become The New Jim Crow.

As such, along with disbanding Unions, Republicans across the country are using every weapon in the legislative arsenal to eliminate the black vote. Whether through gerrymandering political districts, or though more heinous tricks such as Voter IDs and purged voter rolls.

Republicans, wed to the “Southern Strategy”, the racial dynamics of white victimhood, the reactionary and racist Tea Party, and anti-immigration from brown countries – have virtually no chance of increasing the number of black, Hispanic, or Asian voters in their party.

So their solution is to “disappear” Minority voters.

Bill Clinton – no longer a political candidate for office, speaks out…

Bill Clinton compares new voting laws to Jim Crow

Former President Bill Clinton compared efforts by Republicans to change voting laws across the country to Jim Crow laws and poll taxes that historically disenfranchised African American voters.

Speaking before a group of liberal youth activists Wednesday, Clinton said laws in states like Florida and New Hampshire are aimed at limiting voter turnout and keeping young people from the ballot box.

“There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the voter Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit a franchise that we see today,” Clinton said at Campus Progress’s annual conference in Washington.

Jim Crow laws, enacted between 1876 and 1965, included fees and laws historically used to keep African-Americans from voting. Clinton said Republican governors and legislators are now trying to “keep most of you [young people] from voting next time.”…

Clinton was critical of regulations preventing same-day registration and specifically referenced Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s move in March to overturn a law that allowed convicted felons to vote after they completed their probation.

“Why should we disenfranchise people forever once they’ve paid their price?” Clinton said. “Because most of them in Florida were African Americans and Hispanics and would tend to vote for Democrats, that’s why.”

Republican Try and Bring Back Jim Crow… Against College Students

How Republicans Plan to Stop the "Wrong People" From Voting

While Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and North Carolina Republicans are in the forefront of this effort to disenfranchise younger voters, and in North Carolina’s case, black voters – this is a battle which will likely rage in other states like Texas, which is rapidly moving to a majority minority population.  Republicans don’t want minorities and college kids to vote…

Simply because they tend to vote Democrat, and are progressive on issues.

This really does take on a lot of the aspects of the Civil Rights battles, the Poll Taxes, Literacy Tests, and outright intimidation through violence that the ideological forbears of today’s conservatives utilized to prevent minorities from voting in the South after Reconstruction – and until 1965.

The bottom line being – conservatism can’t win if everyone votes.

In states, parties clash over voting laws that call for IDs, limits on where college students can cast ballots

New Hampshire’s new Republican state House speaker is pretty clear about what he thinks of college kids and how they vote. They’re “foolish,” Speaker William O’Brien said in a recent speech to a tea party group.

“Voting as a liberal. That’s what kids do,” he added, his comments taped by a state Democratic Party staffer and posted on YouTube. Students lack “life experience,” and “they just vote their feelings.”

New Hampshire House Republicans are pushing for new laws that would prohibit many college students from voting in the state – and effectively keep some from voting at all.

SS Mikkie Sinking Fast

The vote tally for RNC Chair after three rounds: Priebus, 54 votes; Steele, 33 votes; Wagner, 32 votes; Cino, 28 votes and Anuzis, 21 votes.

 

UPDATE:   The SS Michael Steele has officially sunk,

GOP Chief Drops Out of Race for Re-Election