What if the Hispanic Vote stays Home?

Disaster but with a Hispanic Congressional Caucus that is leaderless and with lethargic members, the 2010 elections without enthusiasm and direction are lost!
Mexican Americans Agree Republicans are Racist and this Includes Cuban Hispanic Republicans

Marco Rubio and Rick Sanchez formerly with CNN who never had a kind word for Mexican Americans and constantly rebuked "illegals." Editorial coming Monday
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Ed Pastor Masquerading as U.S. Congressman
What do Velแzquez & BP have in Common?
For 2012, Hispanics need to borrow the model of the Tea Cup movement to forge a Hispanic revolution to promote Immigration Reform that has the best interest of Hispanics and not punitive Immigration Reform as proposed by Congressman Gutierrez and Senator Menendez. Immigration Reform must include health care as is available for all Americans, the elimination of ICE and 287(g), driver's licenses for undocumented mandating states can not withhold issuance and a path to citizenship without punitive fines plus credit for all Social Security contributions.
Hispanic Lawmakers Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Ed Pastor Sacrifice Hispanic Students to Profit School University of Phoenix

Another huge blunder of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus that supports diploma mills as schools of choice for Hispanic students.

Career colleges and some minority lawmakers are charging that a proposal by Education Secretary Arne Duncan to restrict federal aid to for-profit career schools amounts to discrimination, harming blacks and Latinos who disproportionately use those schools to get ahead.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Hispanic Caucus have sent several letters telling Duncan his plan would hamstring low-income, minority students who rely on the federal loans and need the flexibility of vocational programs.

Hispanic News believes this is rubbish and to promote diploma mills in lieu of community colleges is a disservice to Hispanics.

Duncan says students, egged on by diploma mills take on too much debt and graduate ill-equipped to land a well-paying job. The colleges - schools with on-line campuses, such as Strayer University and the University of Phoenix, as well as programs that train in forensics, truck driving or computer repair - have recruited African American leaders like Jesse Jackson, hired lobbying firms, and set up an aggressive letter-writing campaign to make their case.

What if the Hispanic Vote stays Home?
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WASHINGTON (By Edward Schumacher-Matos, Washington Post) October 7, 2010 — At least one key group ― Hispanics ― will probably vote heavily Democratic in November. But the party will have only itself to blame if not many Hispanics turn out.

Two authoritative polls released this week show the Hispanic vote may hit historical high marks for the Democrats. The Pew Hispanic Center gave the party a 65 percent to 22 percent lead over the Republicans among registered Hispanic voters. Hispanic Decisions, a weekly tracking poll by Matt Barreto of the University of Washington and Gary Segura of Stanford, put the breakdown at 58 percent to 19 percent.

If the undecided stay home or break proportionally under either projection, the Democrats could surpass the 67 percent of the Hispanic vote won by Barack Obama in 2008. The GOP may do worse than John McCain's dismal 31 percent.

That's the good news for the Democrats. The bad news is a high percentage of a few votes doesn't help much. Though many Democratic candidates are up against the wall, both polls find limited Hispanic enthusiasm to come out and save them.

 

Only half of the respondents told Pew they were "absolutely certain" to vote, a full 19 points behind all registered voters. Hispanic Decisions found voting intent is rising a little, yet just 41 percent of respondents said they were "very enthusiastic" to turn out. In 2008, Hispanic participation was high, swinging many elections.

These two polls are crucial because they are about the only ones that regularly focus on Hispanics and use bilingual interviewers. What both show is how poor a job Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress have done of reaching out to Hispanics.

To be sure, the Republicans have done worse. They have fallen far since the days when simpatico Hispanophiles such as George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan could get nearly half the Hispanic vote by stressing family and immigrant work values. Today's Republicans too often demonize immigrants and, by extension, tar all Hispanics.

But as Barreto said to me of Democrats, slamming Republicans isn't enough to get the vote out. "The Democrats have to do something positive, and that is what has been missing," he said.

Only in recent weeks have the Democrats taken on immigration reform, haphazardly introducing a last-minute amendment to a military bill to legalize undocumented young people who enlist in the armed forces or go to college. It failed. Even in health-care reform, the Democrats ignored Hispanic pleas to extend the benefits to more legal immigrants as well to offer bilingual services.

Obama and Congress obviously were sidetracked by the economic crisis, but only a quarter of Hispanics polled told Pew the administration's overall policies have been "helpful" to them.

Hispanics make up more than 15 percent of the population, and they were 7.4 percent of 2008 voters. But more important politically is their especially large role in heavily populated states such as California, Texas and Florida and swing ones such as Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico.

 

In California, the races between Barbara Boxer and Carly Fiorina for the Senate and Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman for governor are essentially tied among non-Hispanic voters, according to a poll by the Los Angeles Times, Hispanic Decisions and the University of Southern California. Democrats Boxer and Brown, however, were leading overall, and the difference was almost entirely due to Hispanics. They make up 19 percent of California's electorate.

But Brown's race is tight, reflecting what the Democrats do wrong. Brown has invested almost nothing in Hispanic media, while Whitman, who has a Hispanic running mate, pumps out the Spanish-language TV ads.

Of course, she has to. The Spanish media have been beating her up over how she callously fired her longtime maid, an unauthorized immigrant, as Whitman prepared to run for office.

The number of Hispanic undecideds in that race is so high and the Hispanic support for Brown so shallow ― 15 points lower than Democratic affiliation ― that the Whitman ads might be enough to keep many Hispanics from voting for either of them. She would benefit.

As Barreto said, "The vote is there for the Democrats, but Hispanics aren't going to turn out for the Democrats just because."