Obama has played what seems to be a fairly smart chess game with the Republicans. His latest gambit-- an executive order affecting four to five million immigrants puts the Republicans in a position that I think is very difficult.
it is highly likely that the do-nothing embracing teaparty wing will prevent any meaningful legislation from passing in the house. That means Latinos will be depending upon Obama's executive order for their relief and their futures.
it is also highly likely that any Republican candidate, to win in the 2016 Presidential GOP primary, will have to threaten to repeal Obama's executive order. It's a bind that I don't see a way around. That will push Latinos to vote Democratic in the 2016 election.
That sets up an interesting dynamic for the 2016 Democratic primary. Latinos could play a very powerful role. Hillary is not off to a great start, as Reuben Navarette Jr., reports in his Daily Beast article,
Hillary's Latino Problem:
"... the relationship between the all-but-certain 2016 presidential candidate and America's largest minority--and arguably its most important group of swing voters--was made even more complicated recently when Clinton stampeded into the delicate immigration debate.
In an exchange that likely made many of her Latino supporters wince, Clinton wound up showing more sympathy toward President Obama for finding new and creative ways to deport 2 million people in five and a half years than she did toward the tens of thousands of Central American children who have, since 2011, streamed across the U.S.-Mexico border trying to escape gang violence back home and hoping to obtain the equivalent of Willie Wonka's golden ticket..."
Navarette concludes, after reporting that Hillary did pretty well in the 2008 primaries with Latinos, "On the immigration issue, the Clintons have never been part of solution. They've been too busy being part of the problem."
If people like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are going to run in the primary, they'll need to build strong connections to the Latino community. Warren had support from 86% of Latino voters in defeating Scott Brown in 2012, NBCLatino reported. Bernie Sanders is proposing making election day a holiday, which could encourage greater turnout, since the Latino turnout earlier this month was very low.
Smart talk and efforts this year and next could build loyalty and support that make the difference when the primaries roll around.
Of course, the Democrats are geniuses at screwing things up, so anything is possible.
Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.
Check out his platform at RobKall.com
He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity
He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com
more detailed bio:
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, (more...)