Most Hispanics Still In Obama's Camp

As most people know, the Republican Party is almost pure white. And that fact hurt them in the 2008 election. They won the majority of votes in only one demographic -- white men. If they want to do better in the 2012 election, they're going to have to appeal to a wider demographic that that. They will need to seriously cut into the Democratic majorities of either women, African-Americans, or Hispanics.

Some on the right thought they would appeal to women because it looked like they would have a couple of female candidates -- Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. That hasn't worked out for them. Sarah Palin not only didn't appeal to anywhere near a majority of women, but finally decided not to run at all. And while Michele Bachmann looked good to Republicans for a nanosecond, her fringe craziness has not only run off most women, but even the teabaggers no longer consider her a viable candidate.

I think some right-wingers hoped that Herman Cain, being an African-American, could peel off a significant portion of the African-American vote. Cain is nothing more than a "token" who's views are aimed at rich whites. He has put forward nothing except a tax plan that would hurt workers, an opposition to job creation efforts (even though unemployment has hit the African-American community hardest of all), and plans to give rich whites guys huge tax cuts. He has even called other African-Americans slaves on the Democratic "plantation". I don't think there's any way he could convince  a significant portion of African-Americans to support him instead of President Obama.


That leaves Hispanics. The Republicans badly need to win a huge segment of the Hispanic vote -- much more than the 31% McCain got in 2008. And toward that goal, many on the right are putting forward the name of Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) as a possible candidate for the vice-presidential slot on their party's ticket. I think it's going to take a lot more than that (especially since his honesty has recently been called into question -- about when his family came to the U.S.).

The fact is that the Republicans have put forward no policies that would help American Hispanics, and they've backed a lot that would hurt them. They have opposed efforts at job creation, even though Hispanic joblessness is second only to that of African-Americans. They have also pushed anti-immigrant laws across the nation aimed against Hispanics -- laws that virtually mandate the racial profiling of all Hispanics, including American citizens. Add to that the Republican desire to slash funds for social programs and education (the route to the American Dream for Hispanics and others), and one can see that there is very little in Republican policies to appeal to Hispanics.

And a recent poll shows that most Hispanics know this. The poll was done by Univision (one of the Spanish-language networks in America), and it shows that the current leaders in the race to the Republican presidential nomination are doing even worse than McCain did in 2008. It seems that the huge majority of Hispanics remain supporters of President Obama. Here are the numbers for Obama versus the leading Republican contenders:

Obama...............67%
Romney...............24%

Obama...............65%
Cain...............22%

Obama...............68%
Perry...............21%

Those are some really bad numbers. It shows that Hispanics prefer President Obama over Romney by 43 points, over Cain by 43 points, and over Perry by 47 points. And there's no reason at all to believe that any of the other Republican candidates could do even that well. Obviously, the Republicans have a long way to go to win over a significant part of the Hispanic vote -- and it's going to take a lot more than nominating Rubio for vice-president to do that.

Right now, the only real hope the Republicans have of beating President Obama is for white progressives to stay home, vote third party, or refuse to work for the Democrats in a GOTV effort. And even that slim hope seems to be disappearing now that the president has found his backbone and decided to fight the Republicans over jobs and taxes. If he keeps that up, his chances of re-election are very good.