Look at the picture above. One of them is running for the presidency of the United States and, if you guessed it was the Charytin look-alike, you get a prize!Why, yes! That's Hillary Clinton - looking tanner than I have ever seen her - and her adopted familia! Not that wrapping yourself around a whole Mexican-American familia doesn't help anyone get some votes, mind you, but still a bit cringe-worthy to yours truly who 'gets' the concept of familia and Latinos but still think it's a crass move by la Hillary (specially with that orange skin tone).
It also screams - at least to me - that all Latinos are alike when - also at least to me - the image pitches a Mexican-American / California type of Latino familia that fails to reflect other Latino communities. Particularly in the North East. Not that Mexican-American's are not part of the United States Latino community but it does seem as if the campaign feels that as long as they include some Latino faces on their campaign materials - regardless of their ethnicity or national background - we will all respond equally to the pitch (Note to the Clinton campaign: Ask New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on how to pitch to the Latinos, as masterful as he was at it during his mayoral campaigns).
Today everyone's talking about Latino voters and how they came through big time for Clinton in New York and California.
A more nuanced view by Robert Lovato over at The Huffington Post shows that, despite the fact that Latinos did go big for Clinton, nationwide they also reflected the general pro-Barack Obama trend of the past couple of weeks:
"Obama succeeded in dropping Clinton's Latino advantage from 4-1 - 68% to 17% according to a CNN poll conducted last week- to 3-2 last night," he says, "And in almost every Latino-heavy state that voted Super Tuesday, Obama received more than the 26 percent of the Latino vote he got in Nevada just 2 weeks ago."
Call it spin but it certainly matches the overall national trend.
By all accounts, the Democratic race for the presidential nomination is too close to call with some saying that Obama won both the top number of states and the top number of delegates last night and others saying that the upcoming primaries and caucuses bode well for Obama.
Me thinks that, when it comes to the Latino vote and if it proves to be the deciding factor, we will have to wait until Texas in March.
One thing that I agree with is that the Obama camp needs to step up it's Latino outreach and pronto. They might be surprised by how many of us out there might be willing to help out.
I mean, the latest Gallup poll has Clinton opening up the lead (h/t Andrew Sullivan).
Previously:
- Obama on the black-brown divide and immigration (Jan. 31, 2008)
- From and undecided Latino gay voter: Barack Obama and LGBT rights (Jan. 28, 2008)
Posts
4 comments:
I love how you call her La Hillary, it cracks me up.
Wow, all this trashing of Hillery. Does anyone have a reason to vote for Obama other then they don't like the tone of her face in a print add? or because she plays politics to get elected? Not that Obama would ever do any thing for political reasons; now why didn't he want to be seen with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom?
Listen, I like both Obama and Hillery and playing politics IS the game they have to play, but a lot of you are starting to sound like the Republicans when they were trashing Bill Clinton in his first term. It seems like we hear very little from the Obama side on real policy reasons to support him.
The post fails to mention where the photo in question comes from. Was it distributed or promoted by the Clinton campaign?
Looks like a bad Photoshop job to me.
The photo in question was scanned from campaign literature being handed out near Times Square in New York on Friday night. Bad photoshop job courtesy of the campaign.
Hillary Clinton is not going to lose or win the election based on my comments on how tan she looks in this image. And as far as'trashing her campiagn' this is pretty mild and, I thought, sorta humorous.
But considering the debates on immigration and the Latino vote, and recent 'politics' by the Clinton campaign seeking to put a wedge between black and Latino voters, I thought the image was noteworthy - hence the post.
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