Obama and the Latino Vote
At a training session for Spanish-speaking volunteers here last month in a community theater in a predominantly Latino northeast city neighborhood, a senior official of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign mentioned a poll that had the Democratic nominee winning two-thirds of Latino voters in Colorado.
“Do you think this is hard support?” the official asked the room.
“No,” answered the crowd of volunteers, a bit wearily.
The official nodded: “A lot of us think that it’s soft support too.”
For all the media fretting about whether Obama can close the deal with white voters in rural and exurban parts of the Rust Belt, the soft underbelly of Obama’s impressive campaign may be the predominantly Latino precincts of Mountain West, in hotly contested states such as Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado.
Obama is almost certain to win the Latino vote here and around the country. But he needs more than a positive margin among Latinos in Colorado and in other red states from Nevada to Florida. He needs to bring out Latinos in unprecedented numbers.
We Just Don’t Seem to Remember…
It was just under 19 years ago that the Berlin Wall came down and the last official vestiges of Soviet-led communism seemed to disappear. Even Maoist China began to open its doors and markets to trade, signaling the final defeat of this blight on the world’s history. The world, and Americans, thought that victory was in reach. But something happened on the way to the final victory—we forgot.
We have forgotten that government is not the best arbitrator of the complex negotiations necessary to allow fair exchanges between individuals.
We have forgotten the discipline of putting community and the nation ahead of ourselves and our rights in order to show down evil. We have forgotten that government redistribution creates perverse incentives that undermine opportunity and freedom and eventually the very framework of social order. We have forgotten that rights, such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion, come at a price and a sacrifice.
Most critically, we have forgotten that Karl Marx’s words “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” became the rallying cry to a regime and government that killed tens of millions of its own citizens and imprisoned many more—a government that bankrupted its people in order to spread, through military force, its corruption and influence around the globe.
Go Vote
With the help of the Internet, a few thoughts on voting as you head to the polls this Election Day——
“People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote – a very different thing.”
Walter H. Judd, Congressman
“Hell, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against.”
W. C. Fields, American Comic and Actor
“Democrats are the only reason to vote for Republicans”
Will Rogers American entertainer
“Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.”
George Jean Nathan, American Drama Critic
Adios October – Via Con Dios
October 2008, the nightmare month that will live on in many memories has now officially ended. Finally. To say October was an eventful month for the financial markets and the world economy is right up there with asking Mrs. Lincoln: “Well, aside from that little unpleasantness, how did you enjoy the play?”
The financial events of October 2008 have thrown economics textbooks out the window. Utter devastation has tested the patience and souls of everybody from the wage earner who is afraid to open his or her 401k statements, which are piling up like newspapers while on vacation, to the true titans of Capitalism like Maurice R. "Hank" Greenberg, former Chief Honcho of AIG, who saw his 15.8 billion dollars worth of AIG stock melt down like so many lumps of sugar left out in the rain over the gut-wrenching span of one single, horrific week.