Hispanic Fanatic

We’ve never been more obsessed with bottoming out.

Every day brings a fresh prayer that the economy has gotten has bad as its going to get – not only for this recession but for the rest of our lives – and a fervent, dry-mouthed wish that tomorrow will see prosperity’s inevitable return. But so far, all that praying has been as useful as a cowboy hat on a toad (as my father-in-law would say).

The gasping economy has hit Latinos particularly hard. Up until a few months ago, we Hispanics had been making great strides toward economic equality. The day when Latinos were no longer assumed to be members of the lower class was fast approaching. But then the chasm opened up on the capitalist freeway, and Latinos hit the brakes with both feet.

Currently, we’re more likely than any other group to lose our homes, and we’re more likely than most to be unemployed. Hispanic Business reports that “by the end of 2008 the general Hispanic jobless rate had spiked at 9.2 percent, almost 2 percent higher than the rate for the entire U.S. population.” The overall rate is now closing in on 9%, and one presumes that Latinos will continue to lead the dismal pack. Hispanic males, in particular, are stuck with an ungodly 11% unemployment rate.

Furthermore, the Pew Hispanic Center notes that “76% of Latinos, and 84% of foreign-born Latinos, say their current personal finances are in either fair or poor shape, while 63% of the general U.S. population says the same.”

So as bad as it is for America right now, it’s even worse for Latinos. And as I indicated in a previous post, there’s the extra indignity that Hispanics are subtly being blamed for this mess. 

Many discussions of the subprime mortgage fiasco – the catalyst for this chaos – include the insinuation that too many Hispanics bought too many houses that they couldn’t afford.

Of course, many Americans will be delighted that our anorexic economy has stemmed the flow of illegal immigrants. After all, given the choice between being poor in their native country or being poor in the United States, a lot of potential immigrants will skip the border crossing and opt for poverty at home. Hell, many immigrants are actually moving back, which might cause some conservatives to rejoice, even as a dark thought crosses the right-wing mind: The USA is simply not so attractive anymore. 

So is there any good news in this flood of pessimism? Well, some reports indicate that the group hitting bottom the quickest may be the very same one that jumpstarts the economy. Yes, Latinos are the potential salvation to this financial cataclysm.

A remarkably optimistic article from MSNBC claims that Hispanics “remain a thriving, even booming, market that’s expected to grow by 48 percent in the next four years.”

The report goes on the say that “marketers now see that the Hispanic market in the U.S. is a great business opportunity” and that “businesses and cultural institutions… are chasing Hispanics aggressively, because that’s where the money is.” Hispanic Business adds that “Hispanics will likely supply valuable labor and sustain the U.S. economy far into the 21st century.”

Well, that’s more like it.

There are several reasons for our newfound clout. For starters, we tend to be younger than other demographics and thus eager to spend money on fun non-essentials such as downloading ringtones or hitting the movies. Another reason is that the strong focus on the family (Latinos tend to have more children) means that we’re signing more credit-card receipts for baby carseats and the like. Finally, there are just a whole bunch of us, and as I’m sure you know, we’re now the largest minority in America.

We Latinos apparently sense our potential for helping out the nation. The Pew Hispanic Center reports that, despite the fact that the economic disaster has hit us harder, “Latinos are more optimistic than others about the future: 67% expect that their financial circumstances will improve over the next year; just 56% of the general population feels the same way.”

Perhaps our optimism comes from the same drive that fuels so many of us to take a chance on a new life in a new country. Maybe the traditionally strong spiritual base that many of us possess helps to guide us through troubled times. Or maybe we’re just used to having less and don’t get worried about losing things. In any case, we seem poised to stimulate the economy.

If that’s true, however, what is a social conservative to do? Latinos have been attacked as scourges on the economy for so long that it’s cultural whiplash to claim that now America really, really, really needs us. The irony is rich, even if the country is not.

As a result of this new status, perhaps young Latinos wandering around stores will no longer be tailed by suspicious proprietors who assume that any group of Hispanics are there to empty the cash register and pistol-whip the owner. Maybe these young  people will be recognized for who there are and what they represent: the very salvation of the global economy.

That would be so damn cool.

My wise old grandmother used to invoke the Spanish phrase, “When money is tight, a nickel isn’t worth a dime.”

Actually, that’s not a phrase in Spanish (I think it’s Yogi Berra). And my grandmother has never passed along anything resembling sage-like insight. She’s much more likely to complain that young people don’t wear enough clothes.

The point is that we Latinos don’t have any special wisdom for dealing with this economic disaster, which has become (say it with me) the worst crisis since the Great Depression. In fact, the statistics indicate that Hispanics are ill-suited to weather this financial maelstrom.

Looking at one specific economic indicator, the almost laughably bad housing market, we see that Latinos have the highest foreclosure rate of any ethnic group in the country, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. In addition, Latinos tend to spend more of their income on housing than other demographics do, and we are more likely to have firsthand experience with the horrific phrase “subprime mortgage,” which has supplanted “Bush-Cheney administration” as the scariest word combo in America.

The Pew Hispanic Center goes on to say that over a third of all Hispanic homeowners are worried that their house may go into foreclosure, and that over half of foreign-born Latino homeowners share this fear. The Wall Street Journal adds that “In U.S. counties where Hispanics account for more than 25% of the population, banks have taken back 6.7 homes per 1,000 residents since Jan. 1, 2006, compared with 4.6 per 1,000 residents in all counties.”

Of course, the collapse of the housing market has become the prominent symbol, main indicator, and root cause/boogyman for the financial shitstorm raining down upon the nation. As a Latino who bought a house near the peak of the boom (my first house, thank you very much), I was surprised to learn that my home has dropped little in value since I signed on the dotted line. Nevertheless, at this point, I’m calling for a cyber show of hands from all those who miss their old apartments.

In any case, besides carrying the brunt of the economic blowback, Hispanics also have the burden of getting blamed for this mess. That same Wall Street Journal article points out that “in 2005 alone, mortgages to Hispanics jumped by 29%, with expensive nonprime mortgages soaring 169%.” The article goes on to present statistical and anecdotal evidence that Latinos, more than other groups, got in way over their heads with houses they had no hopes of affording. They then apparently dragged down the market in several regions by indulging in their pesky habit of getting foreclosed on.

To its credit, the Wall Street Journal does not explicitly claim that too many Latinos buying too many houses caused the market to collapse. After all, doing so would be both morally dubious and an extremely shaky economic hypothesis. But some obvious questions arise.

Who was soliciting all those optimistic dreamers, who were often less educated individuals or recent immigrants unclear on the concepts of their new country’s system? Who thrust documents at people who had been fed the American Dream, telling them that despite their rational hesitations, everything was going to be fine because trained professionals said that they could afford the house? More specifically, who marketed housing materials in Spanish, then performed the closing in English?

The answer ranges from sixth-generation Americans with a lot of money to Latino politicians trying to score some cheap points. Of course, some flat-out greedy Hispanic homeowners share the blame. But the bottom line is that Hispanics, as a group, are more likely to be kicked to the curb (possibly in a literal sense) because of system-wide epic stupidity engineered by people who should have known better.

The details of the Obama plan to help homeowners are still being worked out, so it remains to be seen if more Latinos can hold on to their houses. The only thing we know for certain is that once this plunge bottoms out – and it will eventually – many Hispanics will hesitate before applying for mortgages. They will wonder if they once again being lied to, and they may decide that the ideal of owning a home is some absurd fantasy that they would be better off ignoring.

How can that possibly be good for them, or for America?

At this point, Barack Obama has been president for about nine hours. Surprisingly, everything is not all better just yet.

That’s because regardless of one’s political leanings, religious beliefs, or philosophical affiliations, only a deluded optimist would insist that Obama has inherited a good situation. The last eight years have been a nonstop, unending, it-can’t-get-any-worse-but-it-has cavalcade of disaster.

I don’t mean that the Bush years were just bad for Hispanics. It’s true that, in the last decade, Latinos have become the top victims of hate crimes based on ethnicity. It’s also true that the economic wipeout has affected the lower classes more, of which Hispanics make up a disproportionate percentage. And it’s ultimately true that Latinos are currently being blamed for everything from the increase in petty crime to the housing crisis to the country’s apparent moral collapse (this latter disaster seems to happen every few years).

But we do not hold a monopoly on the suffering.

The past decade has been catastrophic for whites, blacks, people of Middle Eastern descent, intellectuals, scientists, union laborers, New Orleans residents, civil libertarians, gays, moderate conservatives, atheists, middle-class office managers, stay-at-home moms, rugged farmers, diabetic stock brokers, one-eyed dentists, and “Battlestar Galactica” freaks – in short, just about everybody in America.

As I say goodbye to President Bush, I’m trying to imagine any administration in history having even one of the following as its legacy:

• Two botched wars (including the worst foreign-policy decision since Vietnam)
• Two recessions (including the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression)
• The worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil in history (the mastermind behind it is still at large)
• The most inept handling of a major natural disaster in U.S. history (we basically lost the city of New Orleans to mud and water moccasins)
• An unprecedented, massive backsliding of civil rights (historians will be amazed that we put up with this fear-mongering)
• Overt, criminal corruption at the Justice Department (at least in the same league as Watergate)
• An incredibly tarnished image abroad (and yes, it does matter if we want to claim that we lead the free world).

 That’s just the big stuff. I know I’m forgetting a lot.

Any one of those top three items is sufficient to end discussion about Bush’s competence. Put them all together and pile on other major catastrophes and some lesser disasters and… well… really, I’m still trying to comprehend how all this happened under the watch of one guy. This much chaos usually gets spread around over a half-century or so.

Some commentators say that Bush’s reputation will be repaired as time goes on. I agree, in the sense that it can’t get any worse… then again, I’ve said that phrase many times over the last eight years.

Will Obama be a fresh start and the beginning of a bold new era of greatness and American strength? Or will he be our second dud in a row?

I’m optimistic that he will be a good president, even if I’ve never quite bought into the whole “Obama as Lincoln/Roosevelt/savior” thing. Hell, I’ll settle for basic competency at this point.

In any case, I join all Americans – Hispanic, white, black, Asian, and purple –  in wishing the new president well. Hopefully, we can get back on track.

It’s not like we’re due for some good news or anything.

Here at Fanatic worldwide headquarters, we all want to know what the Obama administration will mean to Latinos. My guess is that it will mean roughly the same thing that it means to everyone else (eg, change, hope, cries of “socialism!” etc), with an extra tint of pride beyond what most white people feel – but which still falls short of the absolute joy that African Americans feel.

The first detail to address is the makeup of his administration. We’re talking about a biracial liberal whose candidacy attracted voters of every conceivable race, creed, and demographic. He’s more or less promised to rehabilitate the term “diversity” and transform it, Cinderella style, into a beautiful princess, instead of leaving it to toil in the social conservatives’ kitchen.

Specifically, there is some talk (possibly scurrilous, because there’s nothing better than “scurrilous talk”) of Bill Richardson getting to call his Cabinet post. Besides being well-qualified for just about any administration gig, this high-profile Latino did help Obama score New Mexico. So a Richardson appointment would be both political payback and good for the country, and we know how rare that combination is after the abject cronyism of the Bush administration, where competence was a humorous afterthought compared to loyalty and ideology.

Next, we have to ponder those issues that resonate most with Hispanics. Conveniently, most of these issues are also big guns with the general population. After all, Latinos are not any more or less obsessed with jobs, health care, and education than white people are – it’s just that Hispanics have grown weary of receiving the poorest quality in all of these areas. Any Obama policies that move Latinos closer to the standards enjoyed by the general population will receive a resounding “Si, se puede!”

Already, Obama’s transition team has identified hundreds of executive orders that the new president will overturn, amend, or just bury in the White House backyard. In addition, Obama’s ideas on taxation – and his drive to reform the previously mentioned problem areas of education and health care – may have a direct impact on the Latino standard of living. Much depends on whether the minority party (an ironic moniker under the circumstances) decides to pick a fight over what constitutes “socialism.”

The most pressing topic that appeals specifically to Hispanics, of course, is immigration. This tends to be true regardless of whether one is illegal or a third-generation citizen. For Obama, this issue gets dicey, because Bush and McCain were actually at odds with their own party’s hard-line stance, meaning that the president-elect would have to be even more open about immigration to differentiate himself from his opponents.

So one has to ponder if guest-worker programs will move forward. Also, will there be a nationwide American Dream Act, or is this piece of equitable legislation fated to be battled over in state after state? And what will happen to those so-called amnesty provisions?

In all likelihood, the answer is that not much will come of the new president’s apparently sincere desire to make this country a better place for immigrants. There simply isn’t the bandwidth. Obama will be so swamped trying to dig the economy out of the toilet and dealing with two floundering wars that I doubt any serious movement on immigration will happen before, say, 2012.

And just think, at that point, all this fun starts again.

The dancing in the streets has subsided since Tuesday. Of course, I remain stunned that we had dancing in the streets at all. Seriously, does anyone remember this kind of orgiastic response over election results? Before this, the standard imagery was supporters in ballrooms laughing and waving signs, but now we see impromptu parades and ecstatic outbursts on street corners and strangers hugging each other in every city in the world. But maybe it just overwhelms in comparison with recent history, because the last two elections provoked either muffled wailing or smug insinuations that God had spoken.

Among last week’s celebrants were Hispanics. Anyone tuning in to more than twelve minutes of television coverage heard how the Latino vote was key to Obama’s win. We even got more air time and credit than the fabled youth vote.

The facts are that Hispanics favored Obama by more than two to one over McCain (67 percent to 31 percent, according to MSNBC). Looking at it another way, Latino voters accounted for 11 percent of Obama’s vote and 6 percent of McCain’s total.

In addition to crunching the raw numbers, MSNBC ran an analysis under the particularly ominous headline “What if there were no Latino voters?” (Indeed, many Republicans are probably muttering that exact phrase).

The analysis found that the Hispanic vote was the difference in New Mexico and Indiana, which means that in a Latino-free world, Obama would have still won the electoral vote but in less decisive fashion. However, being the swing group in two states is pretty cool, and Hispanics continue to exert their prominence in places such as California and Texas.

More interesting still is the fact that the biggest percentage increases in Latino voters happened in Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada – all battleground states and all now freshly blue. As the GOP well knows, those states are getting more Hispanic, and those Hispanics are getting more Democratic, especially the younger generation.

Speaking of younger Latinos, they helped Florida become Obama country this year. Our new president won 57 percent of the Hispanic vote in that state, which is astonishing when one considers that the large Cuban American population there has been, in the past, so hardcore Republican that they make Rupert Murdoch look like a gay vegan folksinger in comparison.

Perhaps second- and third-generation Cuban Americans are tired of hearing how voting for the GOP is the only way to stick it to Fidel. They either don’t believe it (Castro is hanging on to power with his last, frenzied breaths and will only be removed through a natural death) or they simply have more pressing concerns, like job losses and collapsing education systems and shoddy health care and a thousand other American issues that have nothing to do with the unresolved, dusty battles of their grandparents.

One final bit of intriguing news comes courtesy of the Pew Hispanic Center. They found that 8 percent of this year’s voters were of the brown-skinned variety. Truthfully, this could have been better, considering that we make up about 14 percent of the population.

Regardless, it’s clear that Latinos, like just about every other demographic except for white evangelicals, were caught up in Obama frenzy this year. The long-term implications for Republicans look grim, as we get younger, more numerous, and more liberal.

And now that we have our first minority president, isn’t it just a matter of time before someone whose last name ends in Z takes the oath of office? It may be years away, but it’s coming.

In an earlier post, I talked about Barack Obama’s apparently insurmountable lead among Hispanic voters. This is a bitter pill for Republicans, who have eyed this key constituency the same way Homer Simpson drools over doughnuts. Conservatives know that a McCain administration, already an unlikely possibility, is impossible if Obama’s nearly three-to-one advantage among Latinos in the polls is an accurate indicator of Election Day.

It’s looking good for Obama, whose chief appeal is that he is an inspiring, charismatic Democrat who has the added bonus of being a racial minority. For Hispanics, what’s not to love about that combination?

Even the backlash from bitter supporters of Hillary Clinton, who is big among Hispanics, has not materialized. By the way, I have personally never understood the woman’s superhero appeal to my fellow Latinos. I think she’d be a fine president, but how did this upper-class white lady become such a rallying point for La Raza? Feel free to enlighten me.

Also helping Obama is the fact that he hasn’t completely taken the Hispanic vote for granted, as so many Democrats have done. Thus far, he doesn’t seem to be ignoring us – for that kind of treatment, we would have to be Muslim.

As for McCain, his appeal to Hispanics is that he doesn’t come off as a Minuteman on immigration, and he has built up a positive reputation among Latinos in his home state of Arizona.

His negatives include the fact that he is carrying the Republican banner – which is even less popular among Hispanics than it is with the general population – and the perception that he looks like that old crusty sheriff from a small town who will pull you over for a busted taillight and, even if you’re a citizen, end up calling la migra on you.

Stacked up side to side, it’s clear that Obama has a more complicated relationship with Hispanic voters than McCain does. The dynamic between Latinos and African Americans has always been intriguing, and I will address this in a future post.

But in all likelihood, Obama will still win our vote in a couple of weeks, and commentators will trip over themselves explaining how the Latino population was the deciding factor in the election.

Regardless of who wins, of course, we expect thank-you notes and invitations to the inaugural ball.

First, thanks to Gigi for her passionate comment on my post “Dogma Vs. Cheese.”

Second, let me return to the subject of my previous post, in which I advocated for amending the U.S. Constitution. I argued that being born in America should not be sufficient for citizenship. My idea is that people who want to be citizens should have to pass a test, just like naturalized immigrants do. One’s birthplace or family history would have nothing to do with it.

The piece was also published on the Huffington Post. There, I received dozens of comments, ranging from the thoughtful to the shrill. Joining the fray were conservatives who thought I was joking and liberals who said I supported literacy tests for voting. Because I pissed off individuals across the political spectrum, I figure that I must be on to something.

As an addendum to that post, let me point out that the U.S. government has recently reformatted the citizenship test. Now it’s less of a hodgepodge of rote and trivial questions, such as “How many stars are on the flag?”

There’s more of an emphasis on content, with questions like “What is one responsibility that is only for United States citizens?” In essence, you have to think a little more now.

It’s impossible to know how effective the test is unless one actually takes it. And nobody is going to devote the time, money, and stress to do that unless they absolutely have to. But there are a number of online study guides that give us a taste of what immigrants have to master.

For example, here’s the government’s official guidance on becoming an American.

Sadly, it doesn’t include tips on maintaining a hostile relationship with your next-door neighbor, or which flatscreen television you should buy that you can’t possibly afford. Clearly, there are some all-American concepts that immigrants will just have to learn on their own.

But my main argument stands: Immigrants have to learn about our country and prove their worthiness to stay, so we native-born citizens should have to as well.

In any case, if you’re so smart and bursting with patriotic vigor, let’s see how you would do on the new citizenship exam. Here’s a sample of the test.

Give it a shot, and try to imagine that your entire future rests on how well you perform on this exam.

You don’t have to tell me your score. 

First, let me thank Evenshine for his/her thoughtful reply to my post “Dogma Vs. Cheese.” 

Second, let me give thanks in general that this election season is almost over.

One of the odder moments in this incessant campaign was when John McCain’s status as a real American became a question. I don’t mean that anyone doubted his patriotism or citizenship or anything like that. I’m referring to the skepticism expressed over whether his birthplace (a military base in the Panama Canal zone) fulfills the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that the president be a “natural-born citizen.”

It would indeed be a soul-crusher for Republicans if the guy pulls an upset in November, only to be ruled ineligible come Inauguration Day. Either scenario, by the way, is highly unlikely.

In any case, conservatives want to change the Constitution (that non-living document) by adding the “Schwarzenegger amendment,” so that any naturalized citizen can become president. But while they’re at it, they also want to amend the Constitution so that being born in America is not sufficient for citizenship.

The thinking here is that too many pregnant Hispanic women are dragging their huge bellies across the border, just so they can spit out a little nino or nina on U.S. soil. Doing so, of course, ensures American citizenship for their offspring.

I happen to agree with these proposed changes, especially amending the Constitution so that people born in America are not automatically made U.S. citizens. In fact, my compliant with this proposal is not that it is unfair or radical, but that it doesn’t go far enough.

So if we’re going to do this, let’s do it correctly:

Amend the Constitution so that no one can become a citizen until he/she passes a basic test. I mean nobody gets citizenship by virtue of where they’re born or their parents’ status. Everybody has to earn it.

This is where most conservatives pull back. They just want Diego and Maria denied rights because their parents don’t speak English. They certainly aren’t talking about limiting the status of their own ninth-generation offspring.

It’s not just selfishness. We have this mindset that people whose roots go back farther are better Americans. But individuals whose ancestors fought at Valley Forge are not inherently more patriotic than immigrants. In fact, I would argue that people who spend time, money, and effort to study our culture – then prove they know what they’re talking about – are more committed to, and knowledgeable about our nation than the millions of Americans who slept though high school history.

To be fair, I have a bias. Several members of my family have had to pass the test. I was born here, so I didn’t have to put myself on the line. But my mother, aunt, and several cousins have had to step up and say, “Hell yeah, I had to work for this.” And don’t we always appreciate things that we have earned more than gifts that are just handed to us?

And what’s so intimidating about a basic test, anyway? I’m not talking about forcing people to answer questions like “Explain U.S. monetary policy on a macroeconomic level.” The citizenship test, as I understand it, asks people things like “Why do some states have more representatives in Congress?” I find it difficult to believe that this is a harmful thing for citizens to know.

If we had informed citizens – people who really strived to be active members of this country – maybe America wouldn’t elect leaders based on how cute they are or, Lord help us, whether the majority wanted to have an imaginary beer with them.

An objection to this idea is the status of children. Are we to educate every child with the knowledge that come adulthood, many of them will be, at best, legal residents and never become citizens? Well, that’s hardly scary, because we do that now. Furthermore, I would argue for the intrinsic benefit of putting all kids on an even playing field – one where every child is a future potential president –rather than subdividing children into “natural-born citizens” and interlopers.

So what are the objections to this idea? Are they based on the principles of fairness and history, on the norms of our culture? Or perhaps we react negatively because of fear, the itchy suspicion that many of us have no idea what all those stars and stripes on the flag actually symbolize.

Let me draw your attention to my previous post (see below), in which I said that pandering to Hispanic voters was no more egregious than what other has been done for other groups for decades. And then a few days later, McCain picks Palin to be his running mate, in what is surely one of the most obvious ploys to pick up a voting block (ie, pissed-off women) in modern history. So my point stands.

All this leads to a natural question that has, no doubt, been vexing Americans of all creeds and beliefs for lo these many weeks: Who will receive the Hispanic Fanatic’s endorsement for president?

Yes, the media is breathless with anticipation. After all, the highly coveted Latino vote apparently depends on which Hispanics come out swinging for the candidate of their choice.

Obama has picked up the Latino seal of approval of everyone from Bill Richardson to J. Lo. Meanwhile, Daddy Yankee made waves recently by endorsing McCain, thus becoming the first Republican Latino rapper… which he will probably remain for all time.

Daddy Yankee is getting a lot of, shall we say, negative feedback for his choice. The dreaded “sell-out” label has been thrown his way, and his very status as an authentic Latino has been called into question.

This is beyond sad. It’s insulting and counterproductive.

While I certainly don’t share Daddy Yankee’s enthusiasm for the establishment, his political leanings don’t cancel out his status as Hispanic. One would think that Latinos would learn to avoid this type of baiting after seeing African Americans tear themselves apart over whether black Republicans were Uncle Toms or not. All that debate did was entrench people further into their ideological trenches and fray bonds among whole communities.

The stats show that Hispanics tend to vote Democratic, but this is no longer the iron-clad lock that it used to be. Even Latino liberals should view this development as a good thing. At some point, Democrats will stop assuming they have this segment of the population wrapped up, and they will address us more directly. It’s already happening in this election (hence the charge of pandering).

Of course, let me point out that Obama has picked up at least one more significant Latino endorsement. The Vatosaurus is all for him:

First, let me offer belated thanks to Profe for commenting on my post “We’re Number Juan” and to Promethestherebel for his response to my post “Who Are You?”

Second, please remember that my pieces on the Huffington Post are also open to comments. In fact, despite the generous feedback I have received there, I have yet to see any truly deranged comments, so somebody out there is falling down on the job. Let’s get with it, people!

Speaking of Huffington, I want to address the odd linking that my post “Loving the Latino Voter” received there. Some organization named the Illinois Review excerpted the piece with the tagline “Liberal argues that Hispanics vote for whichever candidate panders to them the most.”

I’m not sure that was my argument, and the tone is definitely bitchy. But let’s look at that pandering charge anyway. It stems from my point that, so far, the Democratic platform has appealed to Hispanic voters more than the Republican platform has.

The Democrats’ approach, ergo, is pandering. How this is much different than candidates promising the moon and sun to Soccer Moms or Nascar Dads or blue-collar unionists or anti-tax small-business owners or NRA members or ACLU activists is beyond me.

The difference between pandering and “good campaign skills” looks to be negligible. Specifically, McCain reneging on his criticisms of the Religious Right is not pandering to Christian conservatives. Obama refraining from the smallest criticism of the Israeli government is not pandering to Jewish voters.

But addressing some issues that Latinos tend to value is pandering of the highest degree.

Now we’re all clear.

Sorry, but it seems that many people are uncomfortable with the fact that Hispanics (long the also-ran demographic of the voting population) are finally exercising some clout. This charge is especially prevalent among conservatives because they are – and there is no delicate way to put this – losing.

So if Democrats continue to win over Latinos, expect to see a lot more of that self-righteous j’accuse tone flying around. The fact, however, is that the attention Latinos are enjoying is no different from what majority-culture voters have demanded and received for decades. Indeed, Juan Carlos Lopez has argued that pandering to Hispanics is inevitable and long overdue.

So to my friends at the Illinois Review, I would say, “Yeah, Hispanics are indeed more likely to vote for the guy who panders to them the most… just like everybody else.”