That’s hardly a news flash, but how about this: In the deep red state of Indiana, a Spanish-language radio station is handing out pan dulce at get-out-the-vote rallies for Hispanics, reports Politico.com. Indiana is more purple than red this year in presidential politics with Barack Obama and John McCain in a vrtual tie as calculated by many polls. With Obama holding huge leads over McCain amongst Latino voters, (so says every major reputable poll), who knows, the pan dulce get-togethers may help to give the Democrat an edge in Indiana.

It wouldn’t be the only state. Chuck Todd, NBC’s political director, and one of the foremost czars of political forecasting, is now stating that Obama’s growing strength with Latino voters “could be putting him over the top” in giving the Democrat the key western battleground states of Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico. The same could be true, Todd says, in the states of North Carolina, Virginia and Florida, where “the growing Hispanic population…could be the tipping voting group in those three states.” 

I’d venture a guess that Republican VP candidate Palin, Sarah, has likely never wandered into a panaderia, and if she did, the hot guv would likely not see it as being part of “the real America” she’s been declaring in her campaign travels. Politico.com columnist Gebe Martinez wrote this week of another slice of America that is probably foreign to Palin, Sarah.

“The truth is, the real America - the whole America - will be seen on Election Day, when the millions of votes by `new Americans’ are counted,” writes Martinez, a Del Rio native, who lives in Washington D.C., and formerly worked for the Houston Chronicle and Washington Post.  

Rest easy, dittoheads, we’re not talking about voters harvested by ACORN, but of real Americans that happen to be naturalized immigrants, mostly Hispanic, and whom will be voting in record numbers this year. National voter registration has risen 11 percent in recent years. Politico reports that “the new American” sign-up rate has jumped almost 60 percent - and two-thirds of this group is registered to vote.”

Martinez writes that these new immigrants are especially motivated to vote this year for two key reasons: One, they want to enjoy their new right to vote, and two, “they feel the intense heat generated by conservatives in the immigration debate.” Todd of NBC News sees the same reasoning, writing that “the Republican brand has been tainted, potentially for the long-term, due to the negative tone of the immigration debate that took place on conservative talk radio and in the (GOP) presidential primaries.”

So while the dittoheads and the talking heads they so admire were rejoicing in their denunciations of immigrants in general, and Latinos in particular, legal immigrants got busy in becoming citizens so they could express their voices in the next presidential election, which is now upon us. The backlash to the harsh rightie rhetoric from these new Americans/voters is such that Todd estimates “anything 65 percent or above (from Hispanics) for Obama probably locks in the three western battlegrounds of Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, narrowing McCain’s path to 270 (electoral votes) that much more.”

Obama’s polling strength among Latinos nationwide is in the low-to-mid 60s, so the Democrat is just about at the line where Todd believes the tipping point may come in those three key western states. Texas may be lining up the same way over the next eight years. If Texas’ growing Hispanic population votes 70-30 or better for Dems statewide, Todd writes that “Democrats could start to see Texas within reach by 2016.”

It’s possible. If Republicans do lose big on Nov. 4, the party will likely go into some form of meltdown, and inevitably move even further to the right, pushing Latinos further away from their ranks. Meanwhile, the context of “Real America” will continue to change and broaden in scope, giving way to people eating pan dulce in Indiana.

“I’m not sure what they (Palin & Co.), mean by `real Americans,’ but I am sure that new Americans - naturalized immigrants plus their U.S.-born kids are acting very American,” said Angela Kelly, director of the Immigration Policy Center, in Martinez’s story in Politico. “What’s more American than making America your own plus participating in her great democracy?”

In today’s America, it all points to handing out pan dulce at voter registration drives in Indiana, or as Martinez puts it, “yes, in crimson-red Indiana,” a changing heartland in the new America.

Ditto that, Rushbo.

- R.D. Cavazos

Post from: The Daily Chisme