“For the first time in US history, the Latino vote can plausibly claim to be nationally decisive,” Stanford University university professor Gary Segura, who conducted the study, told reporters.
According to Segura, the Latino vote provided Obama with 5.4 percent of his margin over Romney, well more than his overall lead in the popular vote. Had Romney managed even 35 percent of the Latino vote, he said, the results may have flipped nationally.
The effect was at least as dramatic in swing states, most notably in Colorado, which Obama won on Tuesday. There Latinos went for the president by an astounding 87-10 margin, an edge not far from the near-monolithic support he received from African American voters. In Ohio, with a smaller but still significant Latino population, Obama won by an 82-17 margin.
Obama even had a slight margin over Romney among Cubans.
dmsilev
Don’t worry, keen intellect Erick of the House of Erick is on the job:
Oh Erick honey. It’s not that your party *sounds* like it hates brown people, it’s that your party by and large *does* hate brown people.
Betty Cracker
I’m not all that surprised about the shift in the Cuban American vote. From what I’ve seen, the hardcore Republican contingent is the older generation, and the younger ones don’t give a rat’s ass about Castro, who is another doddering old fart. Maybe we can finally have a sane policy about Cuba now? Hahahahaha! I kill me…
cathyx
And if the Democrats were smart, they would pass the dream act and stop the deportations.
El Cid
If only more Republicans had worn big sombreros and taken campaign photos in front of cactuses and Mexican restaurants, they wouldn’t have been so out of touch with this demographic.
anonymous
Not sure I believe it, but one Muslim blogger claimed that Romney got 4% of the Muslim vote.
Bobby Thomson
@cathyx:
Fixed.
Raven
@cathyx: Be smarter to propose it and have the pukes shoot it down.
hueyplong
The point about young people not caring about historical artifact Castro seems logical. There is probably more to it, and it’s in the nature of the GOP just being offensive.
It’s possible that there is a synergistic effect from the combination of GOP rhetoric and the stop-people-because-they’re-brown law in Arizona.
My limited interaction with people who trace themselves to Cuba is that they’re very conscious of a distinction between themselves and everyone else lumped in the category “Latino.” Everything the GOP has done and said makes it seem like they see all “brown” people as an indistinguishable “other” suited only for harassment and scapegoating. This would seem to be a slap at Cuban Americans on several levels. It’s the kind of thing you’d be willing to overlook only if you’ve been hardwired by enthusiastically voting GOP for a half dozen or so election cycles.
barath
@El Cid:
Romney had that covered – he went to Chipotle:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/wp/2012/10/02/mitt-romney-and-rob-portman-eat-chipotle-burrito-bowls/
Kane
What was once a reliable voting bloc for Republicans is now gone as the younger generation of American-born Cubans outnumber the older Cuban-born generation. Romney’s ridiculous Spanish-language ad attempting to tie Obama to Chavez and Castro just doesn’t resonate with the second and third generation.
RK
Glad to see Romney paid for his pandering.
Suffern ACE
@Kane: maybe because as 2nd and 3rd generation, they expect to be reached in English? Or can understand what you’re saying when you’re not speaking Spanish?
amk
So basically, the browns and the blacks painted the town blue ?
NotMax
Remember the award-winning former UPS slogan?
What Can Brown Do For You?
Also too (can’t find the reference right this second), read on a credible site that Obama/Biden scored over 50% of the Catholic vote nationally as well.
ant
who are the two point something million people that voted for Mclame, but didn’t turn out for Rmoney?
Sarah, Proud and Tall
It’s obvious that Latinos are the real racists.
NotMax
@ant
Not all of them, but a hefty slice of ’em are deceased.
Elizabelle
In my experience, you know who else came through for President Obama bigtime?
The Afghani-American voters in our area. They were beyond marvelous, and very enthusiastic.
And a Bangladeshi-American family met in the last 2 hours of canvassing? Six votes in that household, and the parents called the last son not heard from on a cell phone, while I was on their doorstep, to remind him to get over and vote. They were just lovely.
Also met a four-year old girl (Caucasian) whose parents assured me she loved Barack Obama. When asked why, she said “because he cares about poor people.”
Ben Franklin
The Rubes, despite the whoop-ass, true to form are doubling down. What vacuous energy propels them?
At some point, optimism looks more like delusion.
Elizabelle
@amk:
“So basically, the browns and the blacks painted the town blue ?”
Yep, and their voting will benefit whites, even the dumber ones who would vote against their own interests (and that of their own white kids).
It’s a caramel-colored future, and most likely a better one.
El Cid
Obama just helped the diversity of the Republican Party — they’re a lot more black and blue now.
Emma
@hueyplong: Not only Cubans. Most people descended from Central and South Americans and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean do not consider themselves Latinos. That’s the American way of referring to us. I am a Cuban-American. My friend next door is Argentinian-American. My friends two floors down is Salvadorean-American. We represent very different cultures that even have language shifts that confuse the heck out of us when trying to communicate. So we’re not a voting monolith.
This election, I suspect, went the way it did because Republicans made it their mission to be offensive in general about people other than their own tight little white circle.
Mark S.
So, what lessons did Republicans take from this loss?
In other news, the sun rose from the east today.
Anya
@anonymous: He’ll get the gay hating vote. Muslims are not worked up about abortion but the religious nuts are hard core homophobes, just like their evangelical brethren.
Violet
Wow, that is amazing. The Cuban thing is interesting. I have read that younger Cubans aren’t as staunch Republicans as their parents and grandparents. Interesting to see it show up.
GOP: Party of white people.
jibeaux
Somewhere, years ago, I read a compilation of quotes someone had put together of politicians talking about immigrants, particularly undocumented immigrants, that used analogies to animals or terms that relate to animals (like “infestation” and “stampede” and “breed”). There were a LOT of them, and they were very chilling. Most of them would probably be things the MSM wouldn’t report on much, they don’t get the same kind of play that something like “legitimate rape” does. But I’m conversant in Spanish and have picked up the freebie Spanish newspapers before, and they DO pay attention to what politicians say about immigrants. Republicans need to be aware that it might have been some nobody sheriff or county commissioner in another state, but people will remember the story and they’ll remember that it was a Republican, and then it will happen again.
Mark S.
@Sarah, Proud and Tall:
If only they could be like the enlightened white people who don’t see color.
PaulW
The Republicans now have a hard choice: stick to their harsh anti-immigrant platform that reeks of racism towards ALL Hispanics (which is why they’re losing the Cuban vote now), or lighten up and make serious immigration reforms that could piss off the hard-core but aging white voting base they’ve relied on since Nixon’s Southern Strategy. Not to mention lightening up on social programs like healthcare reform which are popular with Hispanics. Which voting bloc becomes most important to the current GOP…?
It’s not enough to put up officials like Marco Rubio as “representative” of the GOP Hispanic vote. People look to the policy platforms as well, and the current Republican platform is VERY anti-Hispanic across the board.
Violet
Get ready for the Republicans to decide that the way to fix this problem is to have a Latino at the top of the ticket, or at the very least in the VP position, next time. Tokenism is always the solution, just like when they ran Palin it won them women’s votes.
NotMax
@Elizabelle
Well-intentioned correction:
Afghan-Americans.
Afghani is the unit of currency of Afghanistan.
Afghan refers to the people.
Kane
I’m curious if anyone has seen a breakdown of how the military voted.
RedKitten
@PaulW: They’ll go with option #1, but add 50% more transparent pandering by picking a Hispanic VP, hoping that it’ll be enough window dressing to fool people into thinking that they actually give a damn about that voter bloc.
jonas
The nutters will conclude one thing from this: Latinos are obviously lazier, more self-entitled and dependent on the government than they previously thought. If they’re even here legally, that is.
RedKitten
@Violet: Jinx. ;)
NotMax
@PaulW
Hmm.
Jeb’s wife is a naturalized Mexican-American.
And their son George Prescott Garnica Bush will be 40 in 2016.
Elizabelle
@NotMax:
Whoa! Thank you.
Shawn in ShowMe
@RedKitten:
Yeah, you can pencil in Susanna Martinez for VP right now. Actual empathy for Latino families? Not so much.
PaulW
@Violet:
Especially since Fidel Castro retired. A lot of the passion was focused on him in particular. Most Miamians for what I’ve seen are more upset now with the failing baseball team than with getting Fidel.
If Cuba keeps undergoing the reforms they’ve started in the past few years (especially if they allow open elections) and bring in younger, truly honest leadership focused on normalizing relations, we should be able to see after 50 years (!) an easing up of the embargo/sanctions we’ve enforced between the U.S. and Cuba and hopefully see a peaceful settlement of the issue over seized property (the major stumbling block I know of) to an end of
the Federation/Klingon Neutral Zoneuh the Cold War once and for all.RedKitten
@Shawn in ShowMe:
Fixed for accuracy. After all, when have they shown empathy towards ANYBODY who they don’t consider their equal or their better?
Ash Can
@Betty Cracker:
Actually, demographic shifts like this are often enough to bring about exactly that kind of change. It may not happen overnight, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see America’s Cuba policy evolve appreciably in the upcoming years, especially if and when Fidel shuffles off this mortal coil and it all falls to Raoul (c.f. Bill and Rocky Wirtz and what happened to the Chicago Blackhawks).
Suffern ACE
@jonas: yep. And if you were one of them who happened to be born here, question whether or not your parents had you for the right reasons. You could be one of those abnormal anchor babies that Hispanics have for nefarious Hispanic reasons and therefore ought to be denied things.
jibeaux
@PaulW: IIRC, Obama has already eased the travel and remittances restrictions. In his second term, he has nothing to lose by easing the rest of it. Some American farmers are apparently quite interested in dealing with Cuba; I once read that dark meat chicken, for example, which is nearly worthless here, is loved by Cubans and the farmers think they’d actually do better selling it there. You know, FREE TRADE.
Ash Can
@Violet:
I would feel comfortable betting my entire fucking house on this, since I saw a GOP operative on TV last night saying exactly this. She said that the GOP’s answer to this situation was the Ted Cruzes and Marco Rubios and Susanna Martinezes in the party who would play prominent roles in electoral politics in upcoming years.
These people really, really don’t get it.
GregB
We can also give a big huzzah to the Native-American votes which I am sure helped put the Democrats over the top in the ND Senate seat and the Governor’s seat in Montana.
RedKitten
@Ash Can: Nope. And they still don’t understand why so many women were insulted by their choice of Palin as VP. There were enough Republican women out there who are smart and accomplished, but they just figured that anybody with a vagina would do nicely, and that American women are stupid enough that they’d be easily mollified by that.
Alex S.
It’s amazing how Obama won by sheer demographic power. Is it Romney’s fault or the racism of the GOP? I know that the Mormon church has its racial problems – doesn’t a more diverse America threaten the validity of Mormonism?
GregB
P.S.
Has anyone told Glenn Beck and his followers that we surround them now?
Kane
@Ash Can: The predictable GOP knee-jerk reaction. Michael Steele, Herman Cain and Mia Love.
Ash Can
@RedKitten:
@Kane:
It makes me think of that delightful little video Rosie Perez made after Mitt Romney was caught saying, “Yeah, it’d be much easier for me to get elected if I were Latino.” At the end of her snarky takedown of this idiocy she became completely serious and said, “No, Mitt. It’s not because you aren’t Latino. Latinos aren’t voting for you because your policies suck.“
beltane
@Alex S.: It’s a combination of the racism of the GOP and the very apparent elitism of Mitt Romney. While Romney is not the type of uncouth, loudmouthed racist who would ever utter the N word, his disdain for anyone who was not a rich, white Mormon was very obvious to anyone who was looking.
This new Democratic party we have is very much like the old Democratic juggernaut of the 1930s, a coalition of various groups who have been excluded by the GOP’s exclusive WASP identity cult. The one important difference is that we do not have southern working class whites with us this time as they seem to have decided they’d rather starve than vote against their race..
Cacti
@Alex S.:
While the Mormon church has few African Americans, it has a fairly substantial percentage of South and Central American members.
Accordingly, immigration policy is one area where it is actually to the left of the GOP and Romney in particular. It supports humane treatment of undocumented immigrants, and legislative solutions that allow them “to square themselves with the law and continue to work”.
jonas
@Violet: Absolutely — and remember how Herman Cain’s candidacy was so inspiring for African Americans who all suddenly came over to the GOP to support him?
Republicans (via ridiculous levels of projection) figure that the only reason Latinos or Blacks support Obama is because he’s brown. So if they just put up some brown candidate….profit!!1
beltane
@GregB: I was thinking that same thing last night. Of course, all the bravado of “We Surround You” was nothing more than a paranoid projection of conservative white America’s inability to deal with a changing reality. These people are guilty of treating minorities badly so what they fear the most is becoming a minority themselves.
Trakker
It will be interesting to see how the Republicans respond to this. I’m certain of one thing, it will be both hilarious and cringe-inducing.
Josie
There was a section of the 47% speech that raised my hackles and probably was noticed in the Latino community.”
As a nation? What in hell does that mean?
Cacti
@Josie:
It means the blacks and browns aren’t really part of the nation.
They exist here at the sufferance of white guys.
gene108
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t think it can happen until Fidel Castro dies and the healing process can finally begin for America’s Cuban population.
Also, too reparations to the U.S. businesses Fidel Castro nationalized that led to President Eisenhower slapping a trade embargo on Cuba, which is interestingly enough before our current President was born.
GregB
@beltane:
In general they seem to live in fear that others will treat them they way they have treated others.
Brian R.
@Josie:
That was bad, but there was also Mitt joking in that speech about how much easier his political career would’ve been if his parents had been Mexicans. Yukitty-yuk.
gene108
@amk:
You’re welcome whitey! /snark
pk
I may be wrong, but it sounds like the republicans are getting it that they need more diversity. But they don’t get why they need it. All I hear is that “we need to explain our ideas better to the non-whites and the MSM is getting in the way”. Unless they figure out “it’s the ideas stupid”, there is no hope for them. I predict more dark skinned faces along the lines of Malkin, Alan West etc spouting the same nonsense. They really think the problem is that minorities have not heard their message. Some are suggesting Rubio for 2016. Democrats should sit back and say “please proceed”.
EconWatcher
Would someone do a front-page post on the meeting Rove is apparently having today, in which he is being called to the carpet by billionaire donors? It might scare up some recon from one of our commenters here. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/07/republican-reckoning-defeat_n_2090510.html
The schadenfreude is of course delicious, but my fear is that in a cycle or two, they’re going to figure out how to really work thei advantage under Citizens United. This year, they just squandered it. But they’ll get better.
Lurking Canadian
Gosh, you mean that if you run a campaign based entirely on stirring up nativist resentment in racists, brown people don’t vote for you, and might even cote for your opponent? That’s shocking! No wonder the Romney campaign couldn’t figure out such a complex and baffling strategic issue!
Next you’ll probably claim that calling rape a blessing from God is not a good way to attract women voters. Politicking sure is complicated.
Josie
@Brian R.: Yes. Interesting that that the pundits heard the “47%” but completely missed the insults to Latinos in that speech and the possible consequences.
Odie Hugh Manatee
President-Elect Rmoney was all dressed up for the dance but nobody came to pick him up for it.
The modern day “Dewey defeats Truman”?
piratedan
@GregB: they were most likely a factor in AZ-CD1 too
grandpa john
@amk:breakdown of percentages for Obama;; Black 93%,Asian 73%, Hispanic 71%, Women 54%
AxelFoley
@Ben Franklin:
Dark matter?
grandpa john
@Emma: to the repubs , all of you are simply those people, you are not true americans,
The Moar You Know
They should have asked a California Republican about how well bashing Mexicans worked out for them. Been almost 25 years since Prop 187 and California has been blue ever since.
The last nail in their coffin was hammered yesterday, when Dems got supermajorities in both Houses. That, combined with our ownership of the governor’s mansion, means that the Republican party in California is officially dead.
Thank you Pete Wilson! Your legacy lives on!
grandpa john
@Mark S.: I made a comment that sort of involves evolution . Looking back in history all things evolve including political parties. they either change or they become extinct. In other words adapt or die, and this includes the GOP, Now frankly it is fine with me if they choose to become extinct, but that is the choice they have, adapt or die.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Speaking of Latinos and Republican outreach to them, Erick, Son of Erick, has a post up talking about it and civil war is breaking out in the comments. The right-wing racists are doing their best to drag the party into the grave.
Please, proceed!
BC
@Cacti: I think it means that if the black and brown people run things, this nation will just go down the tubes. They aren’t as competent as their white overlords, y’know.
catclub
@Raven: Obama has no taste for losing any vote. Giving the GOP a ‘victory’ of defeating a democratic bill is not the way he goes about it.
He never whines that he has no second term agenda because the mean ole house will kill anything he tries. He just says nothing.
catclub
80/20 rules are da bomb, by the way.
Once you see one, they are everywhere.
grandpa john
@RedKitten: That’s O’liely’s recommendation as to what Romney should have done and everything would have been fine. what a fucking condescending arrogant piece of shit. So all of Hispanics are too dumb to realize when they are being played for fools?
For the Reps it is getting to crunch time either adapt or die as a party. God, I hope they decide to die, and make this world a better place to live.
hueyplong
The GOP is the party of money. It will never die (unless the monied elements either switch to the Dems or choose a third way).
But so long as their hateful fringe keeps dictating to them, the Democrats can get results like those of this past Tuesday.
If inclined to concern troll, I’d worry aloud about whether the Obama campaigning and GOTV machine is going to dissolve now instead of becoming an institutionalized piece of the party. My memories of 2010 aren’t misty watercolored ones. And to note one small example, the Dems have a lot of time now to get everyone in PA one of those voter IDs. Are they going to do that, or is that problem going to kick in and cause serious trouble in 2014?
[The above is based on the perhaps mistaken impression that implementation of the PA voter ID law has merely been delayed, as opposed to foreclosed.]
catclub
@gene108: “Also, too reparations to the U.S. businesses”
It must have been an Onion article that Obama was insisting his second term would be all about reparations to blacks
(frequent boogeyman that Limbaugh wheels out).
Just remember, the tail end of the 14th amendment is the part they _real_ old conservatives want to repeal. A different kind of reparations related to slavery.
RedKitten
@jonas:
Exactly. I mean, former Presidents Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton could have told you that Dems are the real racists who will happily vote for any black guy, based solely on the fact that he’s black.
dead existentialist
Guess we should refer to Obama as El Presidente from now on.
grandpa john
@jonas: that was O’Rielly’s excuse, all those brown and black people just want something and Obama is the one who will give it to them. So yes the arrogant, condescending assholes of the white peoples party are still just as ignorant as ever and continue or the road to extinction, It can’t happen soon enough.
RedKitten
@pk:
Quoted for truth. If they ever stop and do some actual reflection on their ideas and the validity of those ideas, I will eat my hat.
catclub
Slightly OT: Mississippi voted much less strongly for Romney than it did for McCain. I am guessing the Mormon factor was unstated, but not unimportant.
Which is to say that Obama did better in 2012 here than in 2008.
Schlemizel
@Violet:
You bet – they will learn a few Spanish phrases & find some uncle Tomasos to run in various places then bitch that Latinos are voting against their best interests like the blahs do.
Remember this groups big answer to Obama winning in 08 was “Hey! We gots us a colored fella too!” Mike Steele for chairman
Blue in Brownbackistan
Hey, Balloon Juice, long-time first-time….
Unless you enjoy continuous disappointment enough to be a fan of the Kansas City Royals, you probably haven’t seen this, a Muslim perspective on the GOP from a second-generation Syrian-American.
Rany’s a great read on baseball, too.
Frankensteinbeck
@Emma:
The Republicans only got the votes they got because of that mission. They beat the racism drum, and it worked – on both sides of that divide.
@EconWatcher:
A pipe dream. The system that gives them freedom to spend the money renders them defenseless from grifts, and just as importantly the rich guys willing to spend that much are either bubble sheltered dumbasses like Romney, insane fucks like the Kochs, or both like Adelson. Failure is built into the system – thank goodness! We should still get CU overturned.
@Josie:
For once, not actually quite as bad as it sounds. Remember, in their magic land a safety net CAUSES poverty, taxing rich people destroys the economy, and civil rights is preventing equality. He doesn’t mean more brown people destroys the nation, just that liberal causes do. Of course, ‘being nice to brown people’ is one of those bad liberal policies…
Paul in KY
@anonymous: There are rich Muslims, you know.
johnny aquitard
@NotMax:
Not surprised. I have some in-laws who are very catholic. They voted for obama, even canvassed for him. They liked his message that we have a responsibility as citizens to our community and to each other. They were horrified by the Ryan Plan. I think for them Obama’s message resonated with catholic teachings, and I was told by these family members that Ryan’s was against what the church taught about the poor and the needy.
The Ryan Plan philosophy of ‘Comforting the rich and afflicting the poor’ really disturbed them, it was totally antagonistic to the core of their beliefs. This was when I first learned that there was something they held even deeper and to be more important than the abortion issue.
Paul in KY
@RedKitten: Seems that ever since Pres. Reagan was almost killed, the Repubs in particular have tried to ensure the VP was even more extreme than the Pres. Sort of a ‘Go ahead & assasinate GWB, you’ll get Darth Cheney’ kind of thing.
I think Sarah! was one of those. What they didn’t realize was that she was more nuts/unstable than even Cheney.
japa21
@catclub: In fact, in much of the Southern tier of states Obama did better than he did in the mountain west states like ID, MT, WY or the Dakotas.
fuddmain
@Paul in KY:
My Dad’s take was they needed to get someone dumber than McCain, so they found Palin. Then they needed to get someone dumber than Palin, so they found Joe the Plumber.
Liberty60
@Betty Cracker:
Its like that here in Orange County, CA, with the Vietnamese vote.
The older generation are fervent Republicans, but the younger generation doesn’t have firsthand memories of the war or diaspora, and are keenly aware of which group of older white people are always bitching about having to press 1 for English”.
Between the growth of the Latino vote and the Vietnamese, we expect the home of Reagan Republicans to switch blue within 10 years.
catclub
@japa21: Indeed, and note the black population of southern states compared with those.
The Red Pen
You know what kinda sucks about post-racial America? The racists.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2956889/posts
catclub
@johnny aquitard: Comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted.
Or:
“Mr President, all the defense contractors are here.”
“Tell them they can help themselves.”
“Mr, President, a group of poor people is here.”
“Tell them they need to help themselves.”
japa21
@johnny aquitard: What the Republicans forget is that there is a difference between the thinking of what many of the Catholics who sit in the pews and the Catholic leadership see as important.
catclub
@ant: I am guessing Baptists who forgot to forget that Romney is a Mormon, and sat out.
Patricia Kayden
@Mark S.: So isn’t the question why didn’t the Repubs vote for a “true conservative”? Is it Romneybot’s fault that he won the primary?
Bachman, Santorum, Cain, Perry, Paul, etc. were certainly “true conservatives”. Why didn’t Repubs pick one of them to run against our President?
I love their foolishness because it will keep Dems in the White House in 2016 and beyond.
Democrat Partisan Asshole
@japa21: I did not see any Southern state with a more than a 20% margin. That can be overcome.
Wyoming and Idaho had 40+ percent margins. That can’t be overcome. Fortunately, not a lot of folks live there.
elmo
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
What’s that I see in the upper left corner of Romney’s transition website? “Office of the President-Elect.” Wait a minute – I thought there was no such thing, and that was an arrogant – dare I say uppity – invention of the blackity-black-black Kenyan Muslim Sockyalist Usurper! What’s going on here?
The Red Pen
Freeper comment of the day:
Stalinist purge of social moderates in 3… 2… 1…
RedKitten
@The Red Pen: Yup. I think the major schism within the Republican party is starting. Steve Latourette of Ohio certainly didn’t mince words:
Odie Hugh Manatee
@elmo:
Nah, it’s OK when white Republicans do it. They only go insane when a dark Democrat does it.
It’s the “Republican good, DEMONcRAT BAD!!” bit.
gene108
@Democrat Partisan Asshole:
Not a lot of people live there, but as long as Republicans can win 20+ states in a Presidential election, you end up with Republicans thinking an election can be reduce to Ohio, Florida and a couple of other states and they can pull out wins like Bush, Jr. did in 2004.
Obama won because he had strong support and a strong organization that had been working to get him re-elected ever since the primary season began, when the Republicans were trying to figure out who would be the best not-Mitt to be President.
I’m not so optimistic about 2016 right now, but a lot depends on the popularity of Obamacare.
Viva BrisVegas
@gene108:
Does that include the mafia?
ericblair
@Democrat Partisan Asshole:
The mountain West states seem to be rotton boroughs now. They’ve got very little population and are enormously overrepresented in the Senate, which means that any outside interest can come in and buy up the state. Then the couple of Senators can totally gum up the entire Senate. Not fucking good. Long term, the Senate really has to change to deal with this. It was one thing when the worst imbalance was Virginia versus Rhode Island or whatever, but now it’s California on one side and Wyoming on the other, which is close to 70:1.
fuckwit
And Puerto Rico voted to become the 51st state on Tuesday!
Let’s see Boner and the teabaggers try to stop that. The entire Latino population is watching.
NotMax
One thing unmentioned thus far is the impact of Obama’s successful nomination of Justice Sotomayor.
Roger Moore
@The Moar You Know:
I think you’re misunderstanding the real story of Prop 187. Wilson proposed it* because the Republicans were afraid that the demographics were already shifting against them. They needed to get the racist white vote fired up, or they were going to lose the election, and Prop 187 was the trick he used to motivate the base. Maybe Wilson could have been a bolder visionary and tried to win Latino votes, but he was not the originator of the California Republican Party’s problems with Latinos, and nobody in the party has done any better than him to try to reverse the trend in the years since he retired.
*In 1994, so less than 20 years ago, not nearly 25.
Roger Moore
@Democrat Partisan Asshole:
I think the final statement points out the falsehood of the previous one. The way you swing a state like Wyoming or Idaho is to have enough net migration to swamp the existing political order. Californication is a big part of what’s turned Colorado light blue, and I assume migration from out of state is why Montana is now purple. There’s no particular reason the same thing couldn’t happen in Idaho and Wyoming.
El Cid
@Viva BrisVegas: Do we pro-rate the value of those appropriated businesses based on value lost when we began bombing civilian and commercial targets immediately after the Revolution and long before the Bay of Pigs?
Yukoner
@RedKitten: I heard part of a discussion on CBC Radio this morning. There were two conservative women on. One was http://conservativeblackchick.com/ and the other a woman (Latina?) from the Tea Party. They kept saying that the Right just needs to explain its positions better to black people and Latino people and all will be well. (And Susan Martinez and Nikki Haley so there!). An African American man (worked for Bush I think) then responded with “It’s not your oh so reasonable explanations that are important, it’s all the rest of what you say and do!” The two women were outraged.
Full Metal Wingnut
@Emma: also a Cuban America living in Miami. Although I’m white as milk and I don’t have an accent. And while I love my people’s food and eat it all the time, I’m not involved in the culture or the community. Proud two time Obama voter.
Paul in KY
@fuddmain: That is also a plausible scenario.
Paul in KY
@Viva BrisVegas: Reperations will not happen. When Castro nationalized the businesses, he paid them the value they were stating in their Cuban tax returns.
Problem was, the businesses were grossly underreporting their values to avoid paying taxes. Those businesses would have to admit (IMO) they were commiting tax fraud, before the Cuban government would ever consider paying them more for their property.
Paul in KY
@fuckwit: They will. Puerto Rico will not become a state until Idaho becomes 2 states.
The Repubs see PR as an automatic 2 Demo Senate seats. They will fight tooth & nail to not allow them in as a state. If another Repub place could be found to come in, then they might agree.