A Miami Herald piece this weekend strikes a similar chord: As one of the first Latinos in the nation to endorse Barack Obama, Democratic state Sen. Gilbert Cedillo of Los Angeles campaigned hard for the president, but he's disappointed now.
The reason: Obama has yet to do anything on a comprehensive overhaul of immigration laws, as he promised to do when he ran for president. "I think he's in danger of breaking the spirit of solidarity and hope," Cedillo said. "More than a broken promise, it's the danger of breaking people's sense of hope in the Latino community." Yes, promises were made. And if this week's (Spanish) headlines and recent Latino polling are any indication, failure to keep promises will likely have consequences with Latino voters. Even in the mid-terms. Last week my organization released a new report entitled, "The Power of the Latino Vote in America: They Tipped Elections in 2008; Where Will they be in 2010?" It's a thorough analysis that spotlights Latino voting trends, expains why the issue of immigration reform will affect turnout, and identifies key races in 11 states (Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia) where Latino voters have an impact. To put it bluntly, if Latinos don’t have a reason to vote in the mid-terms some 40 close races – including 8 Senate seats – could end up red and not blue. But don’t Latinos prioritize the economy over immigration? Yes, just like all Americans. But what every political operative needs to understand is that while immigration might not be the top issue for most Latino voters, it is a defining one. Their closeness to the immigrant experience and the fact that many live in “mixed status” families – made up of citizens, permanent residents, and undocumented immigrants – makes immigration reform a threshold issue for a majority of Latino voters. That threshold wasn’t met under a Republican-controlled Congress and Presidency and Latinos turned on them with a vengeance. To date, it’s not been met under Democratic control. In the wake of the election of Scott Brown, Democrats on Capitol Hill appear to be cowering instead of leading. Yesterday’s announcement from Evan Bayh will probably make this disturbing trend even worse. It shouldn’t. According to Sam Stein of the Huffington Post, Democratic strategists from across the spectrum are urging Democrats to buckle down and deliver: Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the blog Daily Kos, said that the best way for Democrats to salvage the fate of the party before the 2010 elections is clear: "Deliver on their campaign promises." "No one is asking them to go out on a limb and do something they didn't first run by the American people," Moulitsas said, in an email to the Huffington Post. "The Dems are where they are because they got elected promising to be a party able to govern, and then spent the last year proving themselves wrong." On the opposite end of the Democratic Party spectrum, Lanny Davis, a longtime Clinton confidant and purveyor of the politics of compromise, offered a similar diagnosis. There’s a simple, strong message for Washington Democrats coming in both Spanish and English: deliver on campaign promises. Immigration reform, which both mobilizes a large group of new voters and promises some degree of bipartisanship, is a prime candidate for doing just that. Cross-Posted at Huffington Post and America's Voice. |
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