Forget about Karl Rove’s purported Deus-ex-machina intervention: Latinos have — as Ricky Ricardo would say — “some ‘splainin’ to do” for being widely seen as having been instrumental in electing George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004.
If history has it right, it was the Latino vote for Bush — or apathy, or lack of Latino support for Al Gore and John Kerry — that put Bush over the edge. Many of them, in 2000, felt he represented best their Christian values, felt he had a stronger moral compass than that of outgoing President Bill Clinton, and because — silliest of all — they felt the mangled Spanish Bush spoke showed his “connection” to the culture. In 2004, it was Bush’s façade of strength during wartime that, yet again, won their vote.
It was, it is my belief, Latinos’ tilt to the right in 2000 and 2004 that helped the Republican Party gain power, and it is they who will — with a tilt to the left — bring the Democratic Party again to the highest office in the USA. For this and the following reasons, Latinos in
Reason #1: Obama, unlike John McCain and Sara Palin, will not have a problem meeting face to face with some of our Latin American leaders that have been deemed “dictators” by the Republican far right. If you have seen McCain’s recent “Ladies and Gentleman” television ad, you’ll see that Hugo Chavez makes a cameo and is considered by the McCain camp as one of the folks that would “test the mettle” of Obama in his first six months in office. How can we truly know what makes Chavez and Castro (by way of his brother Raúl) tick if the
I don’t know what you think, but I don’t see it as extremely manly to shy away from meeting with “the enemy.” Wasn’t it Sun Tzu, in “The Art of War,” who said “Keep your friends close, but your enemies even closer”? Obama’s powerful stance says: “I’ll meet with those who disagree with us because only through dialogue can we understand who our friends and enemies are.” Furthermore, it is hypocritical to criticize Obama for, in someway, following Henry Kissinger’s suggestion to meet with “dictatorial” or “axis of evil” world leaders without preconditions, when even McCain met with one much in the same way.
As MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” showed on the Oct. 25, 2008, broadcast, McCain met with Chile’s dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1985 — responsible for the disappearance of more than 3,000 innocent Chileans — without, can you guess it — preconditions. So, if McCain is already guilty of meeting with “dictators” without preconditions, why is he making such a big deal out of Obama’s stance that he’ll meet with leaders like Fidel Castro to try to discuss unresolved issues between the
Reason #2: Obama’s openness to resolve the 46-year-old conflict with
I think that after 46 years of embargo insanity, it’s time that someone came up with a new way to deal with
Reason #3: Obama promises a common sense approach to the problem of illegal immigration. Bush’s politics toward the topic were compromised from the word “go”: on the one hand, he promised to protect the borders, and on the other, his business friends needed the ridiculously cheap labor force to do everything from work in the fields, to construction work, etc. McCain is no better when it comes to illegal immigration, flip-flopping between the idea of amnesty, to the harsher stance during the Republican primaries, to his current — I must admit — semi-balanced take on the issue of “border security” on his Web site.
After reading Obama’s thoughts on the matter, one gets the impression that there are no real points of contention between the two. The main problem with McCain and the Republican agenda is the fear-mongering that “terrorists will cross the border between
The fact is, the 9/11 terrorists entered the
Republicans groups like TNRTP not only want to pull the wool over your eyes, they want to demonize all illegal immigrants, judging them a threat to U.S. national security by comparing them to the 9/11 terrorists. What sheer fabrication! Why would terrorists need to come here illegally, when they are being allowed to enter the
While some in the
The amount of money that would remain in the U.S. rather than being wired abroad would be astronomical. Furthermore, could you imagine 25 million illegals buying cars? Perhaps the American auto industry would not be undergoing such turmoil and impeding death, as many experts are predicting. If the politics of demonization and backwards thinking continue, then illegal aliens — a majority of them Latinos — are facing a never-ending battle for respect and acceptance. Obama offers hope that, with wholly inclusive and holistic perspective, age-old problems will be resolved, sooner rather than later.
These are just some of the many reasons why Latinos (aka “Hispanics”) must realize that supporting McCain is just a continuation of the same failed policies of Bush — ones that some may also associate with previous Republican and Democratic presidents — and that only a new vision will lead all of us out of the dark and into the light. It’s becoming evident that Latinos understand the power they wield over the 2008 election. As NBC political analyst Chuck Todd stated on a recent interview: “It’s Hispanic voters that could do in John McCain, because the entire West could be gone” [i.e. vote for Obama].
So, once it’s all said and done, are Mexican-Americans (in California, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Texas, and Utah), Cuban Americans (in Florida), Puerto Ricans (in New York and Cleveland), and all other Latin Americans living in the U.S. going to sit idle this time? Are we going to elect someone whose policies represent more of the same or are we going to elect a man who has more in common with us than Bush or McCain? Obama understands us; he knows where we’re coming from. This time Latinos must vote for the right candidate. This time Latinos must vote for Barack Obama.
Dr. Gerardo T. Cummings is graduate of Wayne State University and an Assistant Professor of Spanish and Latin American literature and culture at Indiana State University in Terre Haute, Ind.
