Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Cracks in Obama's Hispanic Support?

Cracks, not a collapse, but cracks usually indicate some kind of hidden weakness, some type of pressure building behind the wall:

President Barack Obama's once solid support among Hispanics is showing a few cracks, a troubling sign for Democrats desperate to get this critical constituency excited about helping the party hold onto Congress this fall.

For a group that supported Obama so heavily in 2008 and in his first year in office, only 43 percent of Hispanics surveyed said Obama is adequately addressing their needs, with the economy a major concern. Another 32 percent were on the fence, while 21 percent said he'd done a poor job.

That's somewhat understandable, given that far more Hispanics have faced job losses and financial stress than the U.S. population in general.

An unfulfilled promise to overhaul the nation's patchwork immigration system, which Hispanics overwhelmingly want to see fixed, also may be to blame. That's despite the fact that Obama is challenging an Arizona law that requires police, while enforcing other laws, to question a person's immigration status if officers have a reasonable suspicion he or she is in the country illegally.

Still, 57 percent of Hispanics approve of the president's overall job performance compared with 44 percent among the general population in the latest AP national polling.


57% ain't 67%, the amount of the Hispanic vote that Obama took in 2008. The question is, will it erode even further? Hispanic economic suffering is a direct result of the Obama/Democratic financial policies - impending taxes on businesses have thwarting hiring, and hikes in the minimum wage has resulted in businesses cutting back on entry-level employees, especially during this particular recession.

The HuffPost also blames a lack of action in "comprehensive immigration reform" for the loss of Hispanic support, and notes this is "despite" Obama's challenge to Arizona's new immigration laws.

This is the standard thought process among folks who do not deal with everyday Hispanics, or only deal with the representatives of large Hispanic lobbying groups, who are of course anxious to add as many to their rolls as possible. Perhaps their is another view within the community itself?

Obama and his cadres, whose primary interaction with Hispanics is with lobbyists for ethnic identity groups, fails to see the concern within the Hispanic communities over illegal immigration.

I work with many Hispanics, we talk about it all the time. Illegals flock to their communities as to blend in; parents fear for their children as the two-bedroom apartment next door becomes host to a dozen illegals or more - are they hard workers or career criminals? Nobody knows, and with a president advocating a "don't ask, don't tell" policy towards illegals, it is the American Hispanic population that is becoming scared, victimized, and terrorized, while being politically patronized.

Think this could be a factor behind some of the cracks forming in Obama's "wall" of Hispanic support? It doesn't fit the narrative, so it won't even enter into the discussion.

And yet - Obama's poll numbers among Hispanics keeps falling, falling...

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