Posted: Feb 22, 2008
As the Democratic presidential race heads into the crucial primaries in Texas and Ohio, analysts say New York Sen. Hillary Clinton has to win almost 60 percent of all remaining delegates to claim the party’s nomination.
Her rival, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, has now claimed 11 consecutive contests, including big wins this week in Wisconsin and Hawaii.
Clinton is banking heavily on Texas, where she is relying on the Latino vote.The race between Obama and Clinton now seems destined to end at the Democratic National Convention in August.
Even the old race, gender and income framework that journalists and pundits have used to predict outcomes hasn’t played out in the races.
Obama is Black, yet White states have voted for him in surprising numbers. African Americans, who up to last year seemed to be firmly in the Clinton camp, began voting for the “Black” candidate in large numbers after impressive showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, states with few Black voters.
Now, Obama appears to be chipping away at Clinton’s base among lower-income workers, White women and seniors, making prognostication even more difficult.
This year, a new element has been injected into the Democratic race, the increasingly powerful Latino vote, which so far has tilted towards Clinton. The trend, some analysts say, can be explained by a new race politics, a so-called “Black-Brown divide.”
“Yes there is a divide,” said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, a Los Angeles-syndicated columnist and analyst. “We don’t even have to speculate about it. There are some Latinos that will not vote for an African American simply because of fear, suspicion and wariness. So, just like in the old days when Whites would not vote for African Americans, no matter what, sight unseen, there are some Latinos who feel the same.”
Arrests of Latino gang members for targeting African Americans in Los Angeles and grumbling by Blacks about Latinos overtaking African Americans as the largest minority have fueled the issue in California.
Hutchinson, author of The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House, said many Hispanic immigrants import their racial and cultural prejudices.
“In Latin American countries there is gradation,” he said. “People of lighter skin have dominance over those with darker skin, and they bring those attitudes with them to this country.”
But that explanation flies in the face of statistics that show Latinos’ support for the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s presidential runs in 1984 and ’88, said New American Media writer Roberto Lovato.
Additionally, Latinos have voted Black mayors, congressmen or other officials into office and numerous cities, including New York City, Chicago, and even a state senator named Obama in Illinois.
The media’s use of racism as an explanation is too simplistic, he said.
“I think the media’s perspective of the Latino vote has gone from tragic to comic to tragicomic,” he said. “The Black-Brown divide is a construction of the media that has no existence in fact. There is tension between some African Americans and some Latinos in some parts of the country. To go from these specific situations to these massive generalizations is just silly.”
The Latino vote, analysts say, will be a decisive factor in this year’s presidential election.
“We’ve reached a critical mass of people that are going to represent swing votes in many states,” said Iván Román, executive director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. “Politicians will be taking the Latino vote and Latinos more seriously than it has in the past.”
So far, Clinton has drawn a higher percentage of Hispanic voters in states like New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada and California, where she trumped Obama 69 percent to 29 percent.
In the March 4 Texas primary, too, Clinton is expected to prevail among Latino voters, who may be her last bulwark against the Obama onslaught.
“Hillary will win Texas and she will win it with the Latino vote,” Hutchinson predicted.
But explaining that preference as a Black-Brown divide is “a false framing of the issue,” Román said, “because most of what is going to affect the Latino vote is not race, that’s not even on their radar, especially for new immigrants. What factors for them is what you are going to do about jobs and education.”
Clinton has been more forthcoming about her plans to solve these problems, Roman said, while Obama’s popular and inspiring rhetoric about hope and change has not connected with all Latinos.
There are very few Hispanic voters who understand that Clinton’s and Obama’s domestic policies are virtually on par and so many, especially new and older immigrants, base their decision on familiarity, Roman and others said.
“They clearly remember the Clintons (during former President Bill Clinton’s administration) with a romanticized vision,” said Steven Ochoa of the William Velasquez Institute, which researches Latino voting trends. It was a time when the economy was booming and when the Latino political establishment was fostered.
Among these groups “the idea of ‘Buy one Clinton, get one free’” is very attractive, Ochoa said.
Still, Román warned, the Latino vote is not monolithic, and Obama has been cutting a wider swathe into the electorate. According to a Feb. 15 poll by the American Research Group, Clinton leads among Latino voters in Texas by a mere 44 percent to 42 percent.
“Young Latinos who are not recent immigrants follow the same attitudes of most college-educated kids in this country,” he said. “They are voting for Obama.”
That may give Obama an edge as Texas’ colleges may prove “fertile ground” for his message, Román said.
Though somewhat late, Obama ratcheted up his efforts to introduce himself to Latinos before the tsunami of primaries on Feb. 5. In Texas, he established several offices, deployed thousands of volunteers and Latino surrogates, released Spanish-language ads and made personal appearances.
The outreach netted a 53 to 47 win among Latinos in Virginia on Feb. 12.
He’s doing well among Latinos for only having been introduced to them in the last few months,” Lovato said. “The trend right now is towards Obama. Who knows what can happen. He had a four tone disadvantage going in, he’s now at three to two.”
