Sitting a mere foot or two away from the eloquent challenger who has eclipsed her, Hillary Clinton reached back to her travels of the week to push forward policy points about health care and immigration.

Just the evening before her Austin debate with Barack Obama, Clinton made an impassioned plea for her candidacy at a boisterous Wednesday night rally at the University of Texas at Brownsville/Texas Southmost College. At the Austin debate, Clinton first spoke of a woman at the UT-Brownsville rally who had “pulled me aside” to speak of struggles to find adequate health care coverage. A few minutes later, she spoke of the lunacy of the federal government’s original border fence plan that would have put a portion of the UTB/TSC campus on the “Mexican” side of the fence.

It’s heady stuff for a mid-size U.S. community when a major presidential candidate mentions the city’s name twice in a nationally broadcast presidential debate. In fighting to keep her presidential bid alive, Clinton has made the South Texas rounds over the last week, with two stops in McAllen, one visit each to Brownsville, Robstown and then San Antonio, and then on to Laredo the morning of her Thursday debate with Obama. It is telling that other than traveling to Austin for the debate, Clinton has not ventured beyond South Texas in her Lone Star political travels leading up to the March 4 primary.

She surely knows that her struggling presidential bid depends heavily these days on a huge amount of support from Mexican-American voters in South Texas. Clinton’s husband, Bill, the former president, said this week while campaigning in Beaumont that his wife must win Texas on March 4, or face the likely inevitably of losing to Obama. It won’t happen for the Clintons without a strong South Texas showing.

But for all of the vaunted Clinton familiarity with the Rio Grande Valley and South Texas, how much of this vote will she actually get? Lots of it, to be sure, but not as much as was once thought, or so it seems to me. It would appear that the same sort of generational divide that has hurt Clinton nationally will take root here. Younger Mexican-Americans, say those between 18 and 35, are going to go for Obama in a major way. They have none of the historical ties and affections to the Clintons that hold sway with their elders. For younger South Texans, Bill Clinton is a guy who was president during their grade school and middle school years. Barack Obama is the now, a voice speaking to them.

“My wife and I support Hillary,” said Juan Ruiz, a retired 58-year-old firefighter who attended one of the Hillary rallies in McAllen. “But our kids are for Obama.”

Ruiz made those comments to the Chicago Tribune, one of the various national media species that has discovered the Valley and South Texas in search of the exotic Mexican-Americans they’ve heard so much about. One fact unearthed in all of the reporting is this: 40 percent of this state’s 8.5 million Hispanics are of the ages 18 to 40. In that Tribune article, one of the Valley’s Democratic Party gray beards, Juan Maldonado, the current Hidalgo County Demo chairman, spoke of days gone by.

“We are guilty to some degree in assuming that because the leadership leans one way, the rank-and-file are going to follow,” said Maldonado, whose roots in politics go back to the La Raza Unida days of the 1960s when young Mexican-Americans of his generation were making their mark in Texas politics. “But the old patron system where the boss would tell everyone how to vote, that’s gone.

“It’s obvious,” Maldonado went on to say, “that Obama is real attractive with a lot of the younger generation.”

So, for all of the breathless reporting on local TV about how all of the local Valley political officialdom is backing Hillary, here’s a simple push back: Who really cares? Surely, not the younger generation Maldonado speaks of. Congress people like Ruben Hinojosa and Solomon Ortiz and the local political types of their 50-plus age range are just talking to themselves when they yell on their microphones for Hillary.

On Friday morning, when Obama made his first Valley visit, bounding on stage at an outdoor rally at UT-Pan American in Edinburg, the kids went nuts. They got more than a glimpse of the future. Barack Obama represents the first wave of the sort of multi-racial candidate that will populate American politics for generations to come. Hillary put up a good fight, but it’s hard to fight a future that has arrived in the fierce urgency of the present, a candidate on the glide whose flight path is now beginning to cover South Texas.

Earvin “Magic” Johnson led many a fast break during his glory years with the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1990s, but even the gifted hoopster didn’t see the phenomenon of Barack Obama coming down full speed at his candidate, Hillary Clinton.

“None of us thought Obama would be able to do this much, this fast,” Johnson told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on one of the Sunday morning chat shows. “He has run an amazing campaign.”

Part of running a successful national campaign is bobbing and weaving down court,  just as Magic used to do when running the Lakers’ famed “Showtime” offense. Obama’s views on trade similarly go here-and-there, depending some on where he’s campaigning. In recent days, as Obama has barnstormed through the Rust Belt on his way to again laying a whopping on Hillary Clinton, Prince Barack has been the populist politican.

“One thing I do have to say about Sen. Clinton - she says speeches don’t put food on the table,” Obama said in Youngstown, Ohio this week, as cited in the New York Times. “Well, you know what? Nafta didn’t put food on the table either.”

That line wins wild applause in states like Ohio and Wisconsin, where economic anxieties run high and it’s easy to dump on trade with other countries as a chief culprit for the loss of manufacturing jobs. That view is so prevalent, in fact, that a recent Associated Press story cited a Wisconsin poll where 72 percent of respondents said trade takes more jobs than it creates.

No surprise then that both Obama and Clinton are channeling John Edwards this week in ripping trade and corporations for all that ails the economies of struggling Rust Belt states. The real reasons behind job losses, of course, run much deeper than dumping all of the blame on something like the North American Free Trade Agreement, but politicians can’t resist pandering to crowds for cheap applause lines.

Some of the Democratic Party’s chief constituencies, most notably labor unions, have always hated NAFTA and trade with other nations in general, preferring the U.S. impose protectionist policies and heavy government subsidies of struggling industries. According to this view, the U.S. should only trade with other countries if they enact the same sort of labor and wage rules and conditions that we have here. This would be quite a fantasy, obviously, if one expects the developing nations we do business with to immeadiately develop the same standard of living we enjoy in the U.S.

Trade in general, and NAFTA in particular, are easy whipping boys for TV and radio dopes like Lou Dobbs and Pat Buchanan, two aging white guys who are mad about many things, chief among them the changing demographics of America, which they lump with trade agreements as the ruin of the U.S. I’m a Wall Street Journal guy on this issue, believing as that newspaper advocates, “free markets and free people.”

It’s folly to think that goverment can protect the elimination of jobs in the private sector. The creation and elimination of jobs in various sectors of our economy is driven by ever changing market forces that are in turn influenced by improving technologies and the efficiencies they bring. There’s also the matter of changing lifestyles and the choices made by customers and how they combine to affect business, industries, and in turn, jobs.

Here’s an example.  I have a friend who moved to the Rio Grande Valley from Kentucky three years ago to help manage a small manufacuturing operation in Harlingen that supplies Matamoros maquilas with parts that are used in automobiles made by General Motors. Americans are buying fewer Chevrolets and Buicks and more Hondas and Toyotas, so demand for GM cars is down. Guess what? That small operation in Harlingen, with its parent company in Kentucky, has decided it can no longer justify its business enterprise here, so it’s closing down the local plant in a few months.

How would a President Obama or President Clinton stop that from happening? They couldn’t, of course, and the Democratic frontrunner has said as much when he’s speaking more honestly.

“Revolutions in communications and technology have made it easier for companies to send jobs wherever labor is cheapest, and that’s something that can’t be reversed,” Obama said this week in Ohio, in a moment of candor, as quoted in the NY Times. “So I’m not going to stand here and say that we can stop every job from going overseas. I don’t believe we can - or should - stop free trade.”

So, I’d say the candidate of hope shouldn’t give false hopes that, as president, he could substantially stem the forces of free markets and free people. He can’t and he ought to be honest about it and not allow himself to become a shill for the protectionists and demagogues of cable television.

- Joaquin Tijerina, Chisme Blogger

Hillary Clinton’s Texas firewall isn’t crumbling yet, but it may be showing some signs of wear-and-tear.

A CNN poll released Monday showed Clinton with a mere two-point percentage lead, (50%-48%), over Barack Obama. Other Texas polls are showing Clinton with a bigger lead, but still in single digits. The first polls out last week showed Clinton with leads of 15 to 20 percent over Obama, so the fresher polls showing a much leaner margin are troubling in Hillaryland with the Texas primary still two weeks away.

Obama hasn’t even shown up in Texas yet, and he’s already cutting into Clinton’s lead. History shows during this campaign season that the more time Obama spends in a state via personal visits, the higher his numbers climb. At least for now, Obama seems to be wearing well, while Hillary fades enough in the homestretch to now be 0-for-8 in the lastest round of voting around the country, (Virginia, Maryland, Washington state, Louisiana, etc.).

Wisconsin comes up today, (Tuesday), and Clinton is hanging close in the polls. It would be huge for her to pull off a Wisconsin win, giving her great momentum heading into March 4 votes in Texas and Ohio. She needs every bit of the big Mo that she can get. And she needs the Rio Grande Valley vote in a major way, which explains a return visit to the Valley this week after rallying the troops in McAllen a week ago.

Wednesday will be Valley day for the Clinton campaign, with stops scheduled in McAllen, Edinburg, and in Brownsville, where she will speak at UT-Brownsville. Obama is expected in our area by month’s end, so it all makes for exciting political news for those into such things. But for all of the hub-bub about Clinton’s support among Hispanics in South Texas, a Washington Post story pointed out yesterday, (Monday), “that convoluted delegate rules in Texas could water down the impact of strong support for her” in our region.

What worries the Clinton types is that even if their candidate does really well in targeted districts, “such as Democratic state Sen. Juan Hinojosa’s heavily Hispanic district in the Rio Grande Valley, Clinton could win an overwhelming majority of votes but gain only a small edge in delegates,” the Post story reports.

This is inside baseball stuff, but the Texas primary will be decided in two parts. One will be based on the popular vote and the other half to be determined by caucuses to be held on election night after the polls closed. Bottom-line, even if Clinton racks up significant vote totals over Obama in South Texas, it may not translate into a sweep of delegates, which Hillary badly needs since she trails Prince Barack by over 100 in pledged delegates thus far.

Oh well, at least we get the drama of visits by high-profile presidential candidates. It has been quite a while since we’ve been treated to such entertainment.

The much praised, on-the-ground organization of Barack Obama’s presidential campagin came calling on Thursday.

“Hello, this is Michelle Obama,” the recorded message said on my home phone. I didn’t take the call, but my 13-year-old daugther did, and after pressing “1” for yes to a couple of questions, (including the key question as to if she supported Obama’s candidacy), she hung up when questions about health care proved a little too complex for a teen who watches more Disney than CNN.

My daughter is obviously too young to vote, but her mother isn’t, and the daughter pushed “1” for yes because the mother is one woman who has ditched Hillary for Obama, and plans to vote that way on March 4 in the Texas primary. I’m guessing the Clinton campaign has similar calls going out in these parts, although my family hasn’t gotten one yet despite our usual Democratic Party leanings, (full disclosure: I voted for George W in the 2000 prez campaign and have voted for Sen. Kay Bailey as well).

Still, after reading many an article on how the Obama campaign has out-organized and outworked the Clinton campaign in nearly every state thus far, it’s not surprising my household would hear first from Barack. Indeed, it is rather amazing how a first time U.S. senator has appeared to outsmart and organize the Clintons in running a far more sound and solid presidential campaign.

Hillary keeps telling us she’s ready to be president from day one, but she appears to be having serious troubles running her national campaign for president. Clinton hasn’t been competitive in a number of states, including the most recent trouncings she absored from Obama in Maryland and Virginia. Obama has raised far more money than the Clintons, a truly astounding fact when you consider that Bill Clinton is the biggest Dem fundraiser around. Obama has also avoided the sort of crisises that have troubled not only the Hillary campaign, but the one of GOP nominee John McCain as well.

So, the guy with supposedly no experience, has been a far better CEO of his presidential campaign than have the far older candidacies fronted by Hillary and McCain. Maybe that doesn’t mean much, but then again, there’s voters like my spouse who asked the other day: “If they can’t run a presidential campaign well, how are they going to run the country?”

Back to our part of the country, I read a Newsweek article online this week where mega-rich McAllen developer Alonzo Cantu, a close bud of the Clintons, chided Obama for knowing nothing about the border, and for his lack of visits here. The Clintons, he said, have been to the Rio Grande Valley many times. True, Alonzo, but where exactly have they been? Have Bill and Hill seen much of the Valley beyond the inside of your mansion in north McAllen where you and your wealthy friends raise scads of dough for the Clintons.

Look, good for Cantu that he has earned the fortune he has amassed from modest beginnings, and he now owns more banks and hospitals than the little guy with the cute hat in the Monopoly game. But to portray the Clintons as the man and woman of the people in the Valley? Por favor. They’ve just come here for the dough, but now that they need the votes of Valley people, Hillary is coming back to our neck of the mesquite woods for a stadium rally in McAllen next week so Tia Juana and young professional Hispanic women named Ashley and Brittney can jump up and down with their Hillary! campaign signs.

That’s cool, nothing wrong it at all. Hillary will carry the Valley, that’s for sure. She better. A new statewide poll shows Clinton with only a single-digit lead in Texas over Obama. Better get Hillary back before Michelle makes too many more phone callls.

Give it up for Hillary! I thought her speech this morning in McAllen at a festive rally was quite good as Hillary speeches go. The Rio Grande Valley in general adores the Clintons and the crowd at the McAllen Civic Center was dishing out plenty of love for their candidate.

I’m guessing Sen. Clinton was feeling it because it seemed as if she spoke with more emotion and sincerity than is normally the case. It didn’t seem that Hillary refocused or honed her standard stump speech much from ones she has given for some weeks now. The pundits keep saying she needs to retool her message to catch up with the galloping Barack Obama, but it seemed like the usual lines today in McAllen, but they were said with a bit more oompfh.

Clinton did throw in a couple of Valley-oriented lines in her stumper today. She promised to bring a veterans’ hospital to the region, which is such a shop-worn pledge at this point that the locals just clap without thinking because we know that, yea, of course they have to promise the vets a hospital. It’s like a prez candidate going to south Florida and promising to boot Castro out of power.

The senator also promised to push immigration reform that would bring humanity for the undocumented, (but no drivers’ licenses, por favor), as well as added border security. Good, we’re all for that, so those are popular points to tout here. She went back in time a bit to recall her days as a young political organizer who registered voters in South Texas, (including McAllen, she said), for the 1972 presidential campaign of George McGovern. In fact, you know those “35 years of experience” Hillary is always promoting, well, one of those places where it all started was right here.

Anyway, watching the Hillary rally on TV was good fun, although you have to wonder how much structural reinforcement those event platforms need, what we all of the local politicos crammed like tamales in a cacerola to get on stage with the presidential candidate. Hey, I want to give a shout out to my Tio Polo the JP who somehow got a space up there behind Hilaria. I got so excited that I thought of calling my dear tio on his cell to confirm it was really him, but I refrained because it would be embarrasing, after all, to have someone lip read JP Polo saying, “Si, mijo, it’s me,” while Hillary talked about bringing universial health care to America.  

And how about Valley congressman Ruben Hinojosa, who shared mike time with Clinton. Rep. Ruben got so caught up in the moment that when he announced Hillary would be back in the Valley next week for an even bigger rally at the McAllen football stadium, he blurted out: “And we’re going to have 50,000 people there!”

What, we have the Rose Bowl here now? You know, back in the 1990s when I went to a huge Weslaco-Donna football game at the McAllen stadium and all the fans were crammed in there like tamales in a cacerola, I recall the attendance being announced at 15,000. Looks Rep. Ruben was only off by 35,000 or so in anticipating the McAllen stadium crowd next week for Hilaria.

It’s all in good fun. We await for The Obama to come to our neck of the mesquite woods by month’s end. Tiene que. Barack has his two slices of bread in the toaster warming up, but Hillary isn’t toast just yet, and won’t be unless Obama can get to around 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in Texas in the March 4 primary, and that ain’t happening unless his campaign tries bery, bery hard in the Balley.

Maybe Barack can do a rally at Brownsville’s Sams Stadium. I bet we can cram 50,000 people into that joint.

Joaquin Tijerina, Chisme Blogger

It’s crunch time, Rio Grande Valley, and Hillary Clinton is down to a few life lines to keep her presidential campaign from being Obama-ized.

With Barack Obama winning big over the weekend in primaries and caucuses in Washington (state), Nebraska, Louisiana and Maine, the Clinton campaign is gasping for air, even more so with Obama expected to score substantial victories Tuesday in primaries in Maryland and Virginia.

One of Hillary’s firewalls - and one she absolutely has to have - is deep South Texas, specifically the Valley. Both campaigns know it, with an Obama campaign memo obtained by Bloomberg news indicating that his campaign plans to work actively in the congressional district of U.S. Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, a Mercedes-based Democrat. The Obama memo indicates that his campaign expects Clinton to get upwards of 75 percent of the vote in Hinojosa’s Valley-based district, a level of support Hillary must surely achieve to score the kind of win she needs in Texas.

To no one’s surprise, Clinton’s campaign was quick to plan a Valley stop for Hillary with the Texas primary coming up on March 4. Clinton is scheduled to have a campaign rally on Wednesday at UT-Pan American, although local political run-run has the event being moved to the new civic center in McAllen to accomodate a larger crowd and more parking capacity. Meanwhile, political gossip also has Obama’s people scouting for a Valley event for their man, with Brownsville as the possible spot so the Illinois senator can outline his views on immigration.

Obama is sure to be on a major roll by March 4 as he keeps winning states and Hillary’s campaign begins to go into panic mode. The tonic for Clinton would be big wins on March 4, not only in Texas, but in Ohio as well. If she wins both of the big states by good margins, Clinton once again recaliberates the race. Si no, and Obama wins both, or even one of those two big states, it will be tough for the Clinton Machine to get to ultimate victory.

It’s something to hear the cable news talking heads who usually refer to Hispanics only when talking about illegal immigration to now be trumpeting the importance of Latinos in the Democratic race. Granted, they know nothing about Latinos anywhere, most certainly here in South Texas, so don’t expect to hear worthy insights in their yak-yaks about the Texas primary. It is clear that the Mexican-American vote in Texas will be contested in the next few weeks like never before when it comes to presidential politics.

A desperate Clinton campaign needs a huge turnout and support from Valley voters to carry Texas. Obama needs to avoid the sort of rout he suffered in California, where he drew only about 25 percent of the Hispanic vote in losing that state by a large margin.

 In Arizona, New Mexico, New Jersey and his home state of Illinois, Obama was able to get 40 percent or more of the Hispanic vote. Can he do the same in Texas? If he can’t, the Clinton campaign likely scores a big enough win in Texas to keep her campaign alive long enough to trudge on.

Get the mariachi bands lined up. Get a stage big enough to accomodate all of the Valley politicians and hangers-on who want to be been seen standing behind Clinton with their Hillary! signs. The Clinton Machine is coming back to the Valley, and this time it’s not for the usual private shing dig at Alonzo Cantu’s mega-mansion in north McAllen where you have to pay $5,000 to eat sushi and foofy finger food with Hillary. The Clintons have come down a bunch of times to raise cash at Alonzo’s, so we regular people never see Bill and Hill as they’re whisked in an out of Cantu’s gated neighorhood, where one house occupies the equivalent of an average-sized city block.

No, this time, raza, Hillary needs your votes, really, really bad. So, this time she’s going to pretend to like you, the common, arroz con pollo people who don’t live in big houses in north McAllen. She’ll put on that plastic smile and clap robotically to the tunes of marachis playing for her. And hey, don’t forget she’s married to Bill, who use to be the first black president, but now that he has been tossed from that commuity for trying to ghettoize Obama, we’ll take him because we’re friendly people.

Bill Clinton, the first Hispanic president who loves to inhale enchiladas on his visits to South Texas, and his wife, Hillary, the candidate we must save from that Obama guy. It’s now or never, gang. A strong RGV vote is one of the last roadblocks left between Obama and the Democratic presidential nomination.

Joaquin Tijerina, Chisme Blogger

Sitting high on their political perches in Washington, right-leaning Republicans egged on by the yakkers of conservative talk radio have no idea of the havoc their border fence will have on our South Texas communities.

I’m not sure that they much care about our community sensibilities and histories - in fact they likely care not one whit about such things given the urgency to protect their version of the American identity from excessive immigration, especially from Mexico. Right-wing Republicans pushed through their border fence project with the approval of a president who had previously spoken out against it, (that would be George W. Bush), because of their own biases and simplistic notions of what can secure a border.

And so now those of us who live here, and who have had families that have lived here for generations in many cases, will be forced to put up with this mess and the indignity of the federal goverment shoving this thing down our collective throats. Most of us in the Rio Grande Valley community aren’t against additional border security in the way of more Border Patrol agents, or improving ports of entry with more Customs agents and better bridge facilities to boost inspections. Barriers of some sort in short intervals around the bridges and/or certain heavily used crossing points may make sense in providing a bit better security.

But the notion of hundreds of miles of a border fence, some of it in fairly remote stretches, will be neither effective or cost-efficient, not to mention the tens of millions of dollars in maintenance it will take in yearly upkeep. Beyond the efficiencies, there are other practical realities that politicians in Washington would not have a clue about.

In Rio Grande City, for example, the feds are considering a fence map that would extend in some fashion into or around a historic 130-year-old military fort, as well as adjacent land that houses four school campuses, the local school district’s administrative offices, and a football stadium. In Brownsville, the fed’s first map had the fence running across the northside of a nearby levee, leaving UTB-TSC’s International Technology, Education and Commerce Campus on the other side of the fence with Mexico.

The feds backed off that notion after UTB’s leadership pointed out that, uh, it’d be nice to have part of our campus located in the United States. The latest is that feds via the Department of Homeland Security want access from the levees to the heart of the campus in an area near the Student Union and the Life and Health Sciences Building. So, rightly, UTB leadership wonders: How far will this fence cut into our campus?

UTB-TSC President Juliet Garcia has thus far refused to grant the feds access, saying giving the feds the access they want would jeoparadize campus security, and saying the building of an 18-foot fence on the edge of the UT System campus would “directly contravene our mission and destroy the campus climate that has been so painstakingly and carefully created.”

On Wednesday, the UT Board of Regents backed up Garcia’s position in urging the federal government to work cooperatively with the UT System “to identify solutions that will ensure border security and allow UTB-TSC to fulfill its education mission.”

Given that nearly half of this nation’s illegal immigrants entered this country legally and then became illegal by overstaying their visas, one wonders where all of the passion and heat is from the political right in going after this aspect of the immigration issue. But, of course, the heat and missives of the angry right is aimed at the southern border in its ongoing battle to protect America from multiculturalism and the Balkanization of this country that they’re always freaked out about.

And so, for that, let’s hope kids in Rio Grande City don’t have to go through a fence checkpoint to get to their classes, or students at UTB don’t have to sip their Coca-Colas at their student center while looking up at an 18-foot fence built to satisfy the wishes of Americans who are frightfully worried about too many Mexicans finding their way to Iowa.

If you’re part of the Hillary Clinton political machine, there has to be one thought running through the collective brain - thank goodness Mexicans found their way to California eons ago.

On Super Tuesday, the descendants of those Mexicanos voted for Hillary - big time - and kept her head above the Obama wave. Barack Obama took 13 states on Super Tuesday compared to Clinton’s eight, but one of those eight was California. Had Hill lost California, it would have been adios to Bill and Hill’s excellent adventure to give America a second Clinton presidency.

Billary in good part owes its political survival to the astonishing Latino support that Clinton Inc., garnered in California. Billary took 69 percent of the Latino vote in Kali-for-nay, as Gov. Arnold would say, with Barack managing to get a puny 29 percent. Good try Oprah in making a splashy campaign stop for your man Barack on the eve of the Calfornia primary, pero, not even the mighty Oprah can shake Mexican-Americans from the Clintons.

Bad news for the Clintons: The next series of primaries and caucuses in February, (Virginia, Maryland, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Washington state), are places where not many Latinos live, so Hillary will have to look elsewhere to see who can bail her out. With that in mind, the Clintonistas need Texas in a major way when our state’s primary rolls around on March 4. Good news there, of course, for Hill and Bill since we have lots of Mexicans in these parts, with Hispanics making up roughly 25 percent of the Democratic primary electorate.

And there’s no doubt Lone Star Mex-Americans will be there for Hillary. It’s just a matter of how big they’ll back her up. In California, they went ga-ga for Hill. Nearly 30 percent of the California Demo electorate on Super Tuesday was made up of Latinos. In the 2004 Demo primary, California Latinos made up only 16 percent of the state’s Demo electorate.

You think Tejano Dems won’t turn out in droves to save their girl Hill from Barack? Are you kidding? Of course, they will. Mex-Americans in Texas love the Clintons, especially Bill. I’m not sure why there’s such a depth of amor for Bill and Hill, but it’s there, so no use trying to fight it, not even Oprah and her book club could put a dent in this love affair.

So, is it only admiration for the Clintons that explains the ties between Mex-Americans and Billary, or is there something to the theory that some Mex-Americans just can’t bring themselves to vote for a major presidential candidate who happens to be African-American? I think it’s both, more of the first, but some of the later. Sad but true, boys and girls, in putting it like it is.

So get ready, Rio Grande Valley, here comes the Clintons. They need you with Barack closing in on putting an end to their dream of a Clinton Restoration. As Hillary put it at a California rally, “Si se pueda.”

OK, she needs to work on her Spanish, but that’s fine. Hill is our girl. Winter, spring, summer or fall, Hillary, when you call, we’ll come running. You’ve got a friend, oh yes you do, as you’ll find out on March 4.   

- Joaquin Tijerina, Chisme Blogger

Today’s issue of the New York Times, (Feb. 5),  has a wide array of articles about the Super Tuesday round of national voting, including a story with this headline: “Issues Start Rush to Citizenship by Hispanics.”

The story details the crush of new Latino voters in key states voting today - nearly all of which is inspired by the urgency these voters feel in making their voices heard amid the chatter about the contentious immigration issue. After hearing the endless put downs from the political right and their talking head allies on conservative radio, hundreds of thousands of Hispanics have responded by applying for citizenship.

The NY Times article put it this way: “Latinos are gearing up for Tuesday’s voting with an eye toward making Hispanics a decisive voting bloc nationwide in November.”

It would appear this growing group of voters is already making a difference in the primary voting season. Take last week’s Republican primary in Florida where John McCain and Mitty Romney were essentially even among white voters, (34% to 33%, advantage Mitty), but Latinos favored McCain by a whopping 54% to 14% margin, giving him the state, and a huge win in his likely path to the GOP nomination.

McCain, you will recall, has been ripped by the political right and the radio talking heads for his previous support of an immigration bill that would have given some illegal immigrants a long path to possible citizenship. And so, ironically, it may well be that McCain’s more centrist views on immigration could have been the tipping point in his critical win in Florida in attracting the voters that put him over the top.

In the Democratic dream matchup  between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Latinos are sure to play a key role as well in the Super Tuesday voting. The 24 states voting on Super Tuesday include nearly 60 percent of the nation’s Hispanic electorate, with states like California, Arizona, New Mexico and New York participating in what amounts to a national primary.

That bodes well for Clinton, who is benefitting from the leftover appeal her husband, former President Bill, has among Hispanics. One poll has Billary leading Obama among Hispanics in California by a huge margin, 52% to 19%, although the challenger to the Clinton Machine is doing much better in Arizona, where another poll has him over Billary among Hispanics by a 53% to 37% margin.

All trends show Hispanics being a growth industry for Democrats, with 57% of registered Hispanic voters identifying themselves as Demos as compared to 23% for the Republicans. It was only four years ago that George W. Bush pulled over 40% of the Hispanic vote in the 2004 presidential election, but that was before right-wing Republicans went bonkers on the immigration issue.

“The hard-line rhetoric on immigration is turning off all Latinos,” said Lionel Sosa, a Republican advertising executive in San Antonio who has handled Hispanic outreach for the presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan and both President Bushes. “When people talk about building a wall and sending those Mexicans back, it comes off as anti-Latino. We say: `You’re talking about my family, and I don’t like it.’ ”

Sosa, in making those comments to the NY Times, is speaking to the truth in the numbers seen in the rush to citzenship. For the fiscal year ending October 2007, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services received 1.4 million applications for naturalization from green card holders, the vast majority of whom are Latino. The Wall Street Journal reports that those 1.4 million applications are nearly double the volume received the previous fiscal year.

All of this points to bad news for the Republican Party, the talk show nation, and all the angry gueritos who have Hispanic-phobia and see the Balkanization of America when a new panaderia pops up in some little town in Iowa.

Ni modo, gang, America has never been a stagnant place. Ya es hora, as the Hispanic media campaign for citizenship put it, and the hour has arrived where Latino voters may play a big role in shaping the 2008 presidential race. 

 - Joaquin Tijerina, Chisme Blogger

Hillary Clinton’s lead in California is evaporating by the day, with her once mighty edge in the kingpin of states in tomorrow’s Super Tuesday vote now down to a statistical dead heat with Barack Obama.

Just a week ago, Clinton was leading Obama by double figures in just about every reputable poll. Now, one of those polls, a Zogby-Reuters-C Span poll, has Obama up by six points, and tomorrow’s vote can’t come soon enough for Clinton.

With just about every age and voting group trending Obama’s way, Clinton does have one group her campaign is desperately hoping can save her in California. It’s Latino voters, which make up about a quarter of that state’s electorate, and it amounts to Hillary’s firewall in California, along with older white women. Obama appears to be swamping Clinton just about everywhere else.

For reasons I don’t entirely understand, other than Clinton and her husband are Democratic Party icons, the Clintons have historically enjoyed a wide swath of popularity with Hispanics, especially Mexican-Americans. But, really, what special affinity does Hillary Clinton have for Hispanics? It’s just another group of voters she can pretend to like so she can rule over them. The glow of support Hillary has felt from Hispanics is nearly all emanating from the popularity of her husband, Bill, with Latinos.

If Hillary pulls off a narrow win in California over Obama in tomorrow’s voting, it will likely be Latinos that carry her over the finish line. For months, national polls have shown Clinton with a two-to-one edge over Obama among Hispanics, but the challenger and his campaign are now actively campaigning in California Latino communities and neighborhoods, racking up some big endorsements from leaders in that community which may prove helpful. And then, on Saturday, La Opinion, the largest Spanish daily in Los Angeles, endorsed Obama, even though the newspaper has historically stayed neutral in primaries.

As it did in South Carolina, the Clinton campaign and some of its surrogates are playing the race card in California, suggesting that Latinos have historically not supported African-American candidates, (i.e. Obama in this case). This is the way The American Prospect put it recently in an online article: “Hillary Clinton pollster Sergio Bendixen, an expert on the Latino electorate, made headlines during the run-up to the Nevada (caucus) vote when he suggested Obama’s deficit could be attributed to Latino antipathy toward African-Americans.”

Is that true or is it simply the matter of Hispanics being more familiar with the Clinton name brand in the Democratic Party? If there is a slice of truth to supposed hostilities between blacks and Hispanics in urban areas like LA, Clinton and her campaign are working to exploit it, as she did during the Demo’s most recent debate when Hillary said she could understand why some African-Americans are frustrated by immigrants supposedly taking jobs from blacks in some job sectors.

Obama flatly rejected that notion in the debate, saying losses in the black community started long before more immigrants came to the U.S., adding that more recent immigrants were being used as scapegoats by some in this country who have economic worries.

Here’s what will happen after Tuesday’s big votes in California and over 20 other states. The next big prizes will be primary votes in Texas and Ohio in early March, meaning get ready to see the Barack and Hillary show in the Rio Grande Valley and other parts of  the state which are key to the Democratic primary vote.

Texas in its history has never had a high-profile African-American candidate. So, will voters in the predominately Democratic and Hispanic Rio Grande Valley give Obama a look, or have Demos in this area long ago drank the Clinton Kool-Aid, and will support Hill and Bill no matter what?

With the closeness of the Obama-Clinton race we’ll find out. The Si Se Puede line is sure to get a good workout in the weeks ahead.