Sunday, February 10, 2008

El Interceptor Aerodinámico (politica)

I was reading an article in the Economist this morning about the Democratic primary in California. What struck me was that:

"...the racial divide seems to have trumped the age divide: Mr Obama won 62% of whites aged 18-29 but Mrs Clinton won 67% of Latinos in the same age group."

Then I recalled that George W. Bush won his elections by winning over Latino voters. So really, for me, the Latino vote is the spoiler vote (thus the literal translation of the title). It was responsible for George W. Bush and if Hillary Clinton wins the nomination, it will be responsible for her too. Take it one step further and I think Clinton will lose against McCain, making the Latino vote responsible for three Republican presidential victories in a row. Yes, it's a stretch, but the logic follows.

So no, it's not about whether whites will vote for a black man, because they clearly will, especially the young and well educated (latte liberals as the Clinton campaign calls them), it's whether Hispanics will vote for a black candidate.

Oh yeah, and as an independent, if super-delegates select Clinton over Obama with Obama getting the popular vote for delegates, I'm supporting McCain. I'll even dip into my latte budget to send a check.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming....

3 comments:

  1. Catholic hispanics and evangelicals will sometimes vote for a candidate solely based on their stance against abortion.
    This was a key sales point for GWB when targeting latino voters in 2004.

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  2. I would also vote for McCain over Clinton. However, I voted Obama in the primary, and will probably do so in November if it is Obama v. McCain and McCain hasn't corrected his course on a number of issues.

    I'm not a latte drinker, nor am I a liberal - how does my Obama vote get explained?

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  3. You and I are both out of the standard Obama demographic because of our age. The "Latte Liberal" thing was from the Clinton campaign. The Economist calls it "the dismissive phrase Mrs Clinton's operatives, most of whom seem to have Starbucks cups firmly in hand as they say it).

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