I have been doing my own fact finding on the latest blantant race baiting from the Cocktail sipping MSM that LATINOS WON'T VOTE FOR BLACKS This junk has been spewed around TV, Newspaper, and the internet as if it's fact. It is becoming conventional wisdom, but is it based on facts? No, I will show you actually results that show this to be BULLSHIT! Thank you Gregory Rodriguez in todays LA TIMES The Clinton campaign's assertion that Latinos historically haven't voted for black candidates is divisive -- and false.
If Latinos won't vote for Blacks you would think it would show up in, past electoral results correct. But if you look at past elections what pattern will you find? University of Washington political scientist Matt Barreto has compiled a list of black big-city mayors who have received broad Latino support over the last several decades.
In 1983, Harold Washington pulled 80% of the Latino in Chicago. David Dinkins won 73% in New York in 1989. And Denver's Wellington Webb garnered more than 70% in 1991, as did Ron Kirk in Dallas in 1995 and then again in 1997 and 1999.
He could have also added that longtime Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley won a healthy chunk of the Latino vote in 1973 and then the clear majority in his mayoral reelection campaigns of 1977, 1981, 1985 and 1989.
Here in L.A., all three black members of Congress represent heavily Latino districts and ultimately couldn't survive without significant Latino support. Five other black House members represent districts that are more than 25% Latino -- including New York's Charles Rangel and Texan Al Green -- and are also heavily dependent on Latino voters.
As an aside, in one of those races following the death of a California Black congress person (who names slips me), in the primary there was a clear racial break down. But in the general election Latino voted overwhelmingly for the Black candidate. Also if their was a clear reluctance of Latino to vote for Black candidates, why hasn't the GOP run Latino candidates in these ditricts. They have and they have lost resoundly. It reminds me of how the GOp thought Blacks in Maryland would flock to Michael Steele because he was Black only to find out that it didn't matter much.
Now I know readers here at Daily Kos have grown tired of the lazy media refusual to ever look at facts but come on enough is enough. This is race baiting. By the way Gov. Duval Patric won the Latino vote in Massachusetts. But Rodriguez goes on to score some more major points.
So, given all this evidence, why did this notion get repeated so nonchalantly? For one, despite the focus on demographic changes in America, journalists' ignorance of the aspirations of Latino America is pretty remarkable. They just don't know much about the biggest minority in the nation. And two, no Latino organizations function in the way that, say, the Anti-Defamation League does for Jewish Americans. In other words, you can pretty much say whatever you want about Latinos without suffering any political repercussions.
Unlike merely "exuberant" supporters, whose mushy grasp of facts Clinton has explained by saying they can sometimes be "uncontrollable," pollsters such as Bendixen most certainly work -- and speak -- at the whim and in the pay of the candidate.
So what would the Clinton campaign have to gain from spreading this misinformation? It helps undermine one of Obama's central selling points, that he can build bridges and unite Americans of all types, and it jibes with the Clinton strategy of pigeon-holing Obama as the "black candidate." (Witness Bill Clinton's statement last week that his wife might lose South Carolina because of Obama's growing black support.)
But the social costs of the Clintons' strategy might end up being higher than the country is willing to pay. According to Stanford Law professor Richard Thompson Ford, who just published "The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse,"
Gregory Rodriguez made another great point when he wrote this.
If a hillary clinton campaign official told a reporter that white voters never support black candidates, would the media have swallowed the message whole? What if a campaign pollster began whispering that Jews don't have an "affinity" for African American politicians? Would the pundits have accepted the premise unquestioningly?
Before people think I'm Hillary bashing without proof, this story entered the zeitgeist after the following was said on national TV
Sergio Bendixen, a Clinton pollster and Latino expert, publicly articulated what campaign officials appear to have been whispering for months. In an interview with Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker, Bendixen explained that "the Hispanic voter -- and I want to say this very carefully -- has not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates."
After he has said this, for the last several weeks, it's been on the TV and Radio (Tucker Carlson, "Hardball," NPR), repeated constantly as if it were conventional wisdom. I know once spin starts to enter "conventional wisdom" it is hard to fight it, but please get these fact out. Read the whole editorial at Clinton's Latino spin