Clip from a Chicago news station showing the emotional reaction among Hispanics to President Obamas executive actions on immigration. If the 2016 election comes to be seen among Latino voters as a threat to the president’s moratorium on deportation of their undocumented parents and friends, the Democrats will be able to nominate Genghis Kahn for president and win with no trouble. And a perception of Republican hostility to the moratorium on deportation is a certainty given the mad dash to xenophobia and veiled racism that characterizes GOP presidential primaries nowadays. This is especially dangerous for the GOP since Latino voters substantially undervote other groups of voters. In 2012, an election in which Hispanics favored President Obama over Mitt Romney an unbelievable 71-27, only 48 percent of eligible Hispanics turned out to vote. That compares to percentages in mid-sixties for black and non-Hispanic white voters. The potential for a spike in Latino voting is substantial. Nevada, where President Obama meets today with some of the Dreamer youth he protected from deportation two years ago, is a good example of the national dynamic. In 2010, GOP nomination of a rabid xenophobe in a Tea Party upset caused Hispanics to turn out in such large numbers during a Republican wave year that unpopular Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid managed to avoid what was otherwise certain defeat. In 2012, because presidential election years usually bring out minority voters, the state voted Obama. In the 2014 midterms, which usually see reduced minority turnout, as expected, Hispanics did not show up to vote in large numbers and the GOP won every statewide office and the Nevada House. The lesson for many Hispanics going forward, assuming Republicans continue their spiral of immigration self-immolation, will be stark. Let Republicans win and risk your parents, your aunts, and your uncles, or the parents, aunts, and uncles of your friends, being shipped back to a country they may not have seen in 20 years. Hispanic voters will have two long years to think about that possibility as Republican politicians rave about the president as tyrant and the need to “take our country back”
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 18:41:12 +0000
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