Letters to the Editor
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You want to know how Obama could get latino voters?
Bill Richardson for VP.
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Gee
How nice to introduce the topic of race and not be bashed for it, whereas the Clintons don't raise race and they catch hell. Funny how that works.
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Background music...
That was horrible. I was trying to figure out where the music was coming from for half the time. Then I realized it was your video. It sort of reminded me of the crazy music behind Tom Cruise in the Scientology video.
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I wish Obama would be the nominee...
but it's not going to happen. This race is already locked up. My prediction is that Edwards is going to give his delegates to Billary in exchange for getting the VP nod, a role he's already well rehearsed. On the Repugnant side, it's going to be a McCain-Giuliani ticket. The media loves McCain and they hate Billary, so guess who's going to win? And then may God help us--McCain is as much a lunatic as W is an imbecile.
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Hmmmmm
Not terribly compelling commentary, to be honest. I wish you would spend more time running Salon than trying to be a talking head, or devote yourself full-time to pundit-dom and let someone else do the important work at Salon. Also, can the background music - it's just plain annoying.
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Obama
Re: "I don't think it's mainly racial tension (although tension exists); I think it's a lack of familiarity."
Who told you that? All the Latinos who write for Salon? Oh, wait...
Obama is not doing better mostly because he refuses to discuss the economy or any other bread and butter issues in detail.
Journalists blame Obama's lagging numbers with Latinos by casting Latinos as racist, or by characterizing Latinos as "unfamiliar" with him, which is a nice way of saying that Latinos live in a bubble and have no idea what's going on. How patronizing.
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One thing to remember about California
Our prisons are racially segregated, and neither the conservatives or the progressives are bothered by that.
There's kind of like a double standard in this state. Segregation isn't tolerated in our educational system, but it's callously and consciously used as a means of control in our anti-educational system.
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Prison segregation
I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone is particularly purturbed by the segregation in prisons.... pretty obvious that racial strife, violence and rioting is why. I understand not wanting the governemt funding segregated wings... but, hell, exception circumstances.....
We're not going to push for gender integration in prisons either, even though we openly push for it in the workplace and schools.
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What do I think?
I think that your background music would be great in a porn flick.
At least it's clear why you gutted VideoDog and dropped AudioFile... to free up bandwidth for you TV career promos.
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Salon and One-Drop
The sub-headline for this article on the main page says, "With a new ad featuring an image of his white mother and a trip to her home state of Kansas, the Obama campaign is checking more than one racial box." Well, yeah, why shouldn't he check more than one box? Are you really criticizing his campaign for showing pictures of his mother in which she's *gasp* white? Is support for the "one-drop" rule one of Salon's new editorial changes? Gosh, it just gets better and better.
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Which candidate will butcher the Spanish language first in an attempt to pander to Hispanic voters?
As if watching Bush hopelessly mangle it to cheering throngs wasn't enough. Of course, I lived in a mostly Mexican-American neighborhood in East Austin during both Bush electoral victories, and he was popular there. Go figure.
Personally, I can't wait to see Obama and Hillary pander to the Latin vote. It should be good. There should be a point system put in place for every aspect of the pandering process. Do they pepper their speeches with Spanish? 5 points. (In Texas) do they try to pronounce their Spanish phrases in Nortena Spanish? 20 points. Are they eating Mexican food? 10 points. How did they pronounce enchillada? Did they fan themselves after eating the habanero salsa? -5 points. How about the pico? -20 points. How many times do they mention Cesar Chavez?
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The ad
Here's a link to the ad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yomK0Ss27GY
I have to agree, it's not bad.
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a very predictable (and predicted) move
There's nothing bold or fascinating about this move. Obama skillfully introduced race into the campaign after NH but before SC, when that suited him - see the carefully stoked fake outrage about (correct and innocuous) Hillary's King - Johnson remarks, or the interview of Obama's campaign co-chair Jesse Jackson Jr. hours after NH (available on YouTube).
Unfortunately for him, that painted him into a corner as a minority candidate, so now, after he milked racial tension for what it was worth for him, he needs to escape (24% of white vote doesn't get you far outside of SC)- hence his kind reaction to Bill Clinton's remarks about Jesse Jackson, and now this ad.
Sorry Barak, Clintons are as good at political fistfights as you are. I hope they'll be able to keep him in the corner he painted himself in, although that would be tough - he's a very slick character.
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Obama's appeal
The Latino/Working Class voting proclivities are not independent, and it is very misleading to ignore that distinction. The Clinton pollster, (still with the campaign), that floated the canard that Latinos wouldn't vote for a black man, even one as 'white' as Obama, set us all down a road it seems very few are willing to properly evaluate. A statistician could tell you that Hillary's lead amongst blue-collar Democrats will go a long way toward explaining the Latino gap, (as Latinos are substantially more likely to be blue collar than white voters), if not all the way, possibly even all the way and then some, I haven't worked nor seen any such numbers, (in other words, once you control for the effect affluence, Latinos break for Obama as often as white voters or more so- though this seems unlikely given the institutional support in the Latino communtiy for Hillary). So it is very misleading to read the polls the way the talking heads are, (and there were other more obvious reasons to question this wisdom laid out in a convincing Op-Ed in the LA Times a few days back).
If Obama is going to do well in a week's time, he will need to figure out a way to take some of the working class vote away from the Clintons. Skim All The Kings Men, pull a Romney and switch up from the suit, something. My guess is that the campaigns will just fall back on the obvious- look for plenty of fireworks in the debate...