Democrat slams Kerry on Hispanic outreach

[quaoar]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Hispanics%20Kerry

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON -- A Democrat whose organization spent about $6 million to get out the Hispanic vote for Sen. John Kerry criticized the campaign's effort on Tuesday and warned that Democrats risk becoming a permanent minority if they don't do a better job.

"John Kerry did not compete adequately for Hispanic votes, period," said Simon Rosenberg, founder and president of the centrist New Democrat Network. "If we don't reverse the gains that President Bush made, we can forget our hope of being a majority party again."

Exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks showed Bush winning 44 percent of the Hispanic vote, up from 35 percent in 2000. Kerry won 53 percent, down from 62 percent four years ago for Democrat Al Gore.

Rosenberg, 41, is considering a bid for chairman of the Democratic National Committee, but said the DNC and the Kerry campaign mistakenly assumed Hispanics would be part of their base vote, while the fast-growing Hispanic community is increasingly a swing voter group.

[legally blonde]

1. I thought that exit polls

weren't reliable. :shrug:
I'm getting tired of our Democrat leaders turning on each other. It's annoying and self-destructive. It's in the past--what's done is done. Pointing fingers isn't going to help.

[Fenris]

2. Simon Rosenberg

Hispanic name?

[NewYorkerfromMass]

3. Bullshit. The Willie C. Velazquez Institute says those numbers are wrong

Some exit polls showed Hispanic support for Bush rising from 35 percent in 2000 to 44 percent this year, prompting proclamations that they had become a swing vote.

But a Hispanic think tank is challenging that view.

"We want to set the record straight," Antonio Gonzalez, president of the Willie C. Velazquez Institute, said yesterday. "I think it's good for Latinos to be able to leverage both parties, but that should be based on the facts."

He presented figures showing Bush received 34.2 percent of the Hispanic vote, while Sen. John Kerry received 64.6 percent....

http://signonsandiego.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=SignOnSanDiego.com+%3E+News+%3E+Politics+--+Polls+at+odds+over+whether+Latinos+were+swing+vote+for+Bush&expire=&urlID=12252371&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.signonsandiego.com%2Fnews%2Fpolitics%2F20041111-9999-1n11hispanic.html&partnerID=621

[blm]

4. This is GOP generated SPIN that Dems shouldn't fall for.

A Hispanic polling firm said that those figures were suspect and did their own poll which concluded that Kerry won about 65% of the Hispanic vote.

The GOP is putting out their numbers so that the media spins every demographic story AGAINST Kerry and the Democrats. That is what they DO. It's their first step to shape the storylines for the media for 2006.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

6. Looks like they are blacklisting that story in the media (unfortunately)

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d&q=Willie+C.+Velazquez+Institute&btnG=Search+News

[Cha]

15. If the "exit polls" were so damn

accurate then Kerry won. Which he did!

Fuckers!

[sonicx]

5. but but but...i thought the exit polls were inaccurate?

oh right, just the parts that are good for kerry.

:eyes:

[pmbryant]

7. He's got the right idea, but I hope he doesn't believe those numbers

Aggressively courting the "Hispanic vote", whatever that means, is certainly a worthy tactic on the surface. And I think it's true that Kerry didn't have a clear message in that direction.

But I do hope that Rosenberg doesn't buy those exit poll numbers. That's the same exit poll that showed Kerry winning, and the internals are all messed up. They're simply not believable.

Basing tactics on unreliable numbers is also not a recipe for victory.

--Peter

[sandnsea]

8. Abortion & gay marriage

Sorry Simon, we can't appeal to Catholic Latinos who vote on those two issues without alienating a bunch more people. The Latino community is going to have to talk to the Latino community about why there's a separation of church and state, the truth about the medical necessity of abortion, the truth about legislating religion, the truth about civil rights, and convince them this is a country based on the Constitution not the Catechism.

[Jack_DeLeon]

9. "the truth about the medical necessity of abortion"

I dont think the majority of Catholic Hispanics have a problem with abortion when its a medical necessity.

I think they have a problem with abortion when it is not a medical necessity.

[Old and In the Way]

11. But who should define what constitutes a medical emergency?

I think the obvious answer is the woman and her doctor.

[Jack_DeLeon]

23. So are you claiming...

that all abortions that are being done are all medical emergencies?

[sonicx]

24. the point is...

it's up to them to decide, not a politician.

the so-called 'partial birth abortion' bill had no exceptions for the mother's health. Repukes don't care about the health of a pregnant woman.

[Jack_DeLeon]

27. So its okay for a doctor to refuse to perform an abortion...

if he doesnt think its a medical necessity?

Would you agree with that? No new laws or anything, just that if a doctor thinks an abortion isnt a medical necessity he could refuse to perform it?

I would be fine with that.

[Old and In the Way]

34. He shouldn't be forced to conduct an abortion.

Nor should a woman be forced to endure a pregancy/childbirth that she does not want. And I'm sure there are other doctors who can and should accept that women's definition of a medical emergency and provide the necessary medical procedures to deal with the pregnancy termination.

[Old and In the Way]

35. To the woman having one it is.

[sandnsea]

21. I think

They don't know the difference because "partial birth" is only done when it's medically necessary. And Catholicism only approves of abortion if a mother is absolutely dying. No abortion only to protect the mother's health or prevent future problems. Not even birth control that may create the loss of a blastocyst.

[Old and In the Way]

10. Exactly right sandnsea.......nt

[joelogan]

12. oh joy! More divisive racial spoils politics!

How about first the Democratic party worry about stopping the rich people and corporations from robbing us blind, and THEN, AFTERWARDS, deal with racial issues?

[Cha]

13. Is that why Kerry went to Pueblo, Colorado

and all over Colorado with Ken Salazar because he wasn't "reaching out" to Hispanics?

Is that why Kerry had the ads in Espanol because he wasn't reaching out? And speaking Espanol on the trail?

The Pope put out a damn edict that said it was okay to vote for someone who was pro-choice..I take it the Pope didn't want the idiot in again.

And, furthermore I don't believe a damn word put out by fucking "networks and AP".

Simon needs to keep up!

[Julien Sorel]

14. The NDN did a good job with their commercials.

And whatever the truth about the polls, I think this guy has a valid point: a huge key for our future success is attracting the Hispanic vote, which is only going to swell with time. If we're going to win in states like Arizona and New Mexico and Texas, it will largely be because we did a better job of holding the allegiance of hispanics.

[Cha]

16. I just remember reading that the Hispanics

will be the numbero uno race in America one day. So, in the future there will be an Hispanic President, no doubt.

I don't know how the freak Kerry could have appealed to the Hispanics anymore when he was for the People and NOT corporations or for their Whores!

[Blue_Tires]

31. they've already passed by the african-americans

population-wise....as an AA, i've been feeling more and more marginalized politically these last few years

[Jack_DeLeon]

33. Why are you feeling marginalized?

Your not implying that its because of Hispanics, right?

[Blue_Tires]

36. no, not because of them

just because it seems like politicians (rightly so i guess) now look at them as the juicier target of a minority vote...even the Dems have gotten kind of complacent and just accepted it as a given that they have the black vote en masse...

[seafey]

17. I don't know about national, but locally, this is totally true...

I met a Hispanic man who told me all the Hispanic community that he knows is voting for Bush because they thought Kerry had a bill lined up that would have them all deported. I immediately told him it was false, and after I'd done some research called him back and explained what Kerry's policy was (basically the OPPOSITE). You can go read about it on the Kerry website if you want to know more.

I relayed this story to our local Dem party, and they did NOTHING to try to refute this rumor. I never saw ANY outreach going on in the Hispanic community here, even though I repeatedly asked for Spanish-language flyers. I asked the Dem Party, I asked the AFL-CIO- it was like pulling teeth to get these flyers in Spanish. I work in a place where I can go downstairs and leave stacks of flyers for people on the sly. But access to Spanish-language flyers was -I guess- low priority because they assume they've got the Hispanic community in their pockets. They were wrong.

[Tangledog]

30. What could the local party do?

First, I'm absolutely not blaming you for either doing what you did or for telling about it here, but I'd ask a couple of questions. Was this guy telling the truth? He may have thought he was telling the truth. Or he may have had his own psychological reasons for spreading the love.

Unfortunately, the idea that John Kerry is going to round up every Hispanic in the country is so patently wacked that you can't refute it. People believe wacked stuff for a variety of reasons, but none of those reasons have a lot to do with things that can be proven or disproven. If this rumor is that pervasive in the Las Vegas Hispanic community....

But I suspect it isn't. I suspect that this rumor was a plant by someone who wanted a little more attention from the Democratic organization, whether because of his/her own needs or by proxy for the community s/he hopes to represent.

Either way, it may be be why the local party organization didn't take it seriously. Either this variety of brain fungus was incurable or it wasn't actually widespread enough to be worth the risk of countering (and legitimizing).

In a way, I think that's what Simon Rosenthal, the guy who started this thread, is all about. I read all statements of that nature as: "If you'd given my family a few more photo ops or my friends a few more cushy jobs or blown a bit more smoke up my ass, I could have delivered it all." Now, Mr. Rosenthal may be completely sincere. But there are so many of these people around (and I've snarked at them before, so I beg the forgiveness of anyone who pays attention to my opinions) that I just shut down on all of them.

[seafey]

38. Ok, this was my *yard* guy.

Not someone with an agenda. He wasn't educated on the issues. There was nothing promoted in the community about Kerry's stand on immigration. If there had been, he and his friends that he told me about would have at least tried to figure out the truth. But there wasn't anything out there to contradict the possibility of these kinds of rumors being floated around. I know because I work with a lot of Hispanics (who are regular citizens, not people looking for attention) and I asked them.

As to what they could have done- for starters, I got a LOAD of mail from all sorts of groups out there: ACT, MoveOn, AFLCIO, WOrking Families, etc, etc. There could have been flyers mailed to this demographic about Kerry's stand on immigration. There weren't, that I know of. And again, I polled a few people and that's by no means scientific, but I also happen to know there are other people frustrated with what the local party didn't do as well, it was not just me screaming about the sky falling down.

[Tangledog]

43. Thanks for the explanation

I didn't think you were screaming about "the sky falling down", not at all. And, given some of my own recent experiences, I can empathize about frosty local organizations.

I hope that the Democratic organization in your state can see their way through to what is and isn't working for them.

And, btw, :hi: welcome to DU :hi: !

[AP]

18. Ruy Texiera says that the APs Hispanic voting polls were wrong. He

cites another polling firm that found Kerry's polling among hispanics as good as Gore's

[Teaser]

19. Even if its not true...acting like it is is useful.

Even if Rosenberg is wrong here (and I'm inclined to think he is a little bit wrong) the Dems could use a little scare put in them on this issue.

[Democat]

20. Ignorning California and Texas is not a good strategy to reach Hispanics

How many Mexican-Americans have some ties to California and Texas, either to family there or historically?

If Democratic presidential candidates continue to ignore California, it will come back and hurt us.

[DoveTurnedHawk]

22. Obviously, All Polls Are Wrong If We Disagree With Them

:eyes:

DTH

[sonicx]

25. actually, the media themselves said the exit polls were crap...

The Republican Party wants them banned.

...so why does the media use em every chance they get to slam Kerry?

[GRLMGC]

26. Seriously

You can't have it both ways.

[Leilani]

28. I wouldn't be surprised if those are accurate numbers

Saw a panel on C-Span, also some interviews with Latino groups...a lot of them said they couldn't "relate" to Kerry.

Remember, Shrub is a good ole boy from Texas. Jeb is married to a Mexican American, & they did loads of outreach...Jeb's son, etc.

Latinos tend to be more culturally conservative as a whole, & represent a HUGE number in the military, in terms of their population.
And the military voters tend to be more conservative.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

29. This is the kind of crap that keeps Democrats down

Why, oh, why, do these bullshit artists/turncoats have to start in so instantly and publicly denouncing the candidate for what he did or didn't do? Why does this purging have to be done in full view of the whole world?

No wonder the Republicans make fun of us Democrats. We act like a bunch of wankers when someone does something like this. It's not bad enough that the Swift Boats and RovianThugs were on Kerry's ass for the first, but now his own have to start chewing on his ass.

This is where I'm starting to think that it's time, after a lifetime of political involvement and donations that could have sent a couple of kids to Ivy League schools (a guess, but a good one), for me to drop out of all of it, and just sit back and watch these goofs who fashion themselves "Democrats" gnaw each other to death while the Republicans seize everything and have a good laugh at us.

[politicasista]

37. If Kerry had won, things would be different.

Bush speaks Spanish, Jeb is married to a Mexican-American. It's unfortunate that the campaign didn't do more to help the Latino vote.

[GRLMGC]

39. He does not speak Spanish

He speaks some horrible, abominational version of the language. He shouldn't even try, its so awful.

[bullimiami]

32. the hispanic vote was stronger for kerry than

for gore. he did fine.
mr rosenburg, shut up.

[Dr Fate]

40. So exit polls are RIGHT then?

Is that the message here?

[oasis]

41. The Bush admin. has been no friend to latinos. They knew it and

voted accordingly. The exit polls are as fraudulent as the election results.

[NVMojo]

42. well if my local dem central committee group is a reflection of the

big picture here, this guy is correct. These idiots wouldn't even think of the people who are members of the silent majority of low paid workers in my town.