Poor Lou Dobbs: Latino Immigrants Will Decide Our Next President

After months and months of spewing out hate speech against Hispanics and undocumented workers, Lou Dobbs is having a fit.

On his recent CNN nightly news shows, Dobbs has been beside himself with the awful realization that out of the four remaining candidates, three are in favor of the unthinkable: a path to citizenship, amnesty and driver's licenses for undocumented workers.

And the only one left, Romney, is probably lying about what he really thinks - based on his record as Massachusetts governor.

Dobbs certainly had a good run for a while. His jingoist, nightly rantings inflamed a whole nation with hate speech and a pogrom-like assault - aimed at the deportation of 12 million working, undocumented workers and their families.

This as a classic pattern. When societies feel themselves in peril, inevitably a demogogue arises with scapegoats to blame.

Dobbs' hate speech led directly to midnight raids against tens of thousands of parents, who were separated from their children, fired from their jobs, and thrown in jail. After a recent Massachusetts factory raid, one baby, a legal citizen, who was being breast-fed, had to be hospitalized for dehydration because her undocumented mother remained in detention.

Dobbs pandered to our baser instincts.

At one point last fall, Politico.com noted that Dobbs may be the most important person in the 2008 presidential election, aside from the candidates themselves, because of this issue.

"The bundle of concerns that Dobbs and his audience have about globalization, trade, diminished American sovereignty and immigration will be ignored by politicians at their own peril."

Dobbs' venom poisoned the political landscape. During one CNN debate, Rudy Giuliani basically said to Mitt Romney: Why didn't you turn in your illegal gardener?

Even NPR's Steve Inskeep fueled the flames of venomous vigilantism when he essentially asked the Democratic presidential hopefuls on December 4th: Why don't you report illegal immigrants?

The question of the day seemed to be: How many illegal aliens did you turn in today? Shades of Anne Frank.

For weeks even liberal politicians seemed to be falling all over themselves for fear of ending up on the wrong side of this inflammatory issue.

But Poor Lou Dobbs.

That is all gone now. Illegal immigration, acccord to a recent CNN poll, is all the way down to number 7 on the list of voter concerns after the economy, Iraq, terrorism, health care, gas prices, and Iran.

But most importantly, Latinos - America's largest minority, with 44 million people - are the swing voters in this election, both in the primaries and in the general election. Blacks are more loyal Democrats and will not desert.

In California this coming Tuesday, up to 25 percent of the Democratic Party vote may be Latino.

Will Latinos vote for a black candidate? Conventional wisdom and past practices do not support this. With both groups at the bottom of the economic ladder, Blacks and Latinos have long jockeyed for economic crumbs and influence.

In Nevada - the first nominating contest with a large number of Hispanic voters - Hillary Clinton won 64 percent of their vote. In Florida, Clinton won the Hispanic vote by a nearly three to one margin. Most savvy political analysts expect Clinton to take the Hispanic vote on Super Tuesday. Campaign staffers say Hispanics are Clinton's firewall, after the Blacks defected. A recent Field Poll of California, Latino voters has Clinton leading 59 percent to 19 percent.

"The Hispanic voter - and I want to say this very carefully - has not shown a lot of willingness...to support black candidates," according to Clinton Pollster Sergio Bendixen, in the New Yorker Magazine.

"For now, it (Hispanics) is our No. 1 group."

Obama is not giving up and his campaign is planning to flood the zone of Hispanic media this week. His strong stance on driver's licenses, in contrast to Clinton's waffling on the same issue, will help.

What is certain in the general election, is that no candidate is going to win the Presidency without taking many of the heavily Hispanic swing states: California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and Florida.

In the last two elections, Republicans (George Bush) made historic inroads with the Hispanic community; for example, Bush won more than 80% of the Cuban-American vote in 2000.

But this year, the Republicans seem to have blown their Latino goodwill with their fierce anti-immigrant stance, goaded by Lou's populist rantings.

So all politicians - Democrats and Republicans alike - will be wooing the newly empowered Latino voter, who has been so turned off by Lou Dobbs' craven exploitation of the immigration issue.

Thanks Lou.

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Comments

[clr2]

All ILLEGAL ALIENS no matter where they come from should be deported. This isn't a Nazi tactic - that is what the law says. ILLEGAL ALIENS are costing us BILLIONS. We need to use this money on our own citizens. All ILLEGAL ALIENS need to be deported, those who hire ILLEGALS should be heavily fined, and we should return to the original intent of the 14th amendment and do away with anchor babies

[clr2]

All ILLEGAL ALIENS no matter where they come from should be deported. This isn't a Nazi tactic - that is what the law says. ILLEGAL ALIENS are costing us BILLIONS. We need to use this money on our own citizens. All ILLEGAL ALIENS need to be deported, those who hire ILLEGALS should be heavily fined, and we should return to the original intent of the 14th amendment and do away with anchor babies.

[JennyP]

I'm sorry, but the more I read the willing indifference and yes, HATE that has become the norm, it no longer surprises me that the left has been painted as extremist..

How dare anyone infer that illegal aliens being subject to deportation is even slightly comparable to the Holocaust, or what Anne Frank and her family went through. As someone who knows New Bedford, has friends who live there, whose family's jobs started being outsourced from there in the '80s, and where there is NO WORKER SHORTAGE, especially among leather stitchers (the jobs at the Michael Bianco factory were leather stitchers, not that an over pampered elite like Fleetwood would have the first clue what that means).

So here's a little edjamacashun on the realities of New Bedford.. and they should remember that these realities are shared by towns all over the country.

New Bedford was a mill town. It's factories (mills) provided good paying jobs to the majority of the citizens of the area. The factories manufactured clothing, all kinds, including woolens, they made shoes, boots, sneakers, and so many other products. Good, hard wearing, well made products that were not expensive. The citizens of the area are of many races and ethnic backgrounds, including black, Portuguese (including Cape Verdean), Puerto Rican, Native American (mostly Wampanoag) Korean and Chinese and of course others of European descent. Many of these people's families had come as legal immigrant in the '30s through the '50s. The mills helped provide them and their families with a means to earn a living, and to give their families a start in life. Other industries like construction and related trades provided higher incomes, allowing people to lift themselves out of poverty. People also worked as janitors, cleaners, and all the other jobs one would expect to find, and people still did and want to do those jobs. They don't have any other option.. no matter how inconvenient elites seem to find those facts.

[JennyP]

When outsourcing started in the '80s, it took away the only means of livelihood for the majority of the citizens in the area. They got what other work they could, when they could, but it was mostly minimum wage and part time from that point on. People lost their homes, and struggled to hang on. Many didn't make it through.. but to this day there are plenty of citizens in the area who are trained to do whatever factory job that came along would require.

Now, unemployment in the New Bedford area (among citizens) when the raid happened, was 26%, the poverty rate in New Bedford was 71%. Homelessness, hunger and privation isn't an abstract concept to those human beings.. perhaps to someone who equates an illegal alien being returned to for example one of the wealthiest countries in the world, Mexico, where they have to earn less wages, but also pay dramatically less for the cost of living, where deportation means they can't afford an SUV, or a big screen tv, or they won't be able to build a huge house in their village, with Anne Frank being sent to Auschwitz, and to the nightmare of the torture, starvation and death, isn't capable of grasping the realities???

Citizens of the US pay first world prices, no one is paying a lobbyist to threaten social services to bend the rules to subsidize them. When they were already struggling along, and told their factory jobs weren't going to come back, then along comes a factory with a government contract to make items for our troops in Iraq, and they think their ship has come in, they have hope for the first time in ages, only to be denied those jobs.. because they are American citizens and that would mean paying them a wage standard, paying taxes and other things. Illegal aliens were given those jobs, and those same illegals called their relatives and friends back in their home countries and told them to come up to get work.

[JennyP]

No one forced them to come, and then knowing full well they were illegal, and could face deportation, to start having children hand over fist.. and at the same time they were working, using forged and stolen documents to collect welfare and other subsidies illegally. They were buying SUV's, big screen tv's and luxury items that even a citizen's factory wage couldn't afford.. but that was because they didn't have to pay rent while benefiting from Section 8 illegally, and welfare, food stamps and medicaid took care of the rest. Whatever earnings they made, they pocketed.. it was all gravy. The corporate interest profited, and the illegals profited too. The citizens who were long term unemployed/underemployed were discriminated against on the job, but were told they had to subsidize the illegal aliens. It's corporate welfare, and the illegals are compicit in the scam. They find it highly amusing to hurt poor citizens. Not much compassion to them, they scream for their rights, but do not believe that American citizens, black, brown and white have human rights considerations.. but then I'm sure the likes fo Blake Fleetwood doesn't either.

Those illegal aliens children weren't left on their own either. No child had to become dehydrated.. perhaps the illegal alien caring for it didn't feed it a bottle, hoping a sick child might be good for effect? Even breast fed babies are fed with bottles, especially when the mother is working. Also, those illegal aliens could have taken their children back to their home countries. If they didn't they are guilty of abandonment. Nor does the claim that the children are citizens, mean those kids had to stay. They wouldn't have lost citizenship if they returned to Brazil, Mexico or other countries with their parents.

[JennyP]

Not once have I read any articles from the much as she's claimed to (that was years ago, hMSM or even the so called "alternative" media reporting the realities of poor American citizens. Even after Katrina it couldn't be bothered, though that poverty exists across the country. It was content to believe the corproate lies about "jobs Americans won't do" or then that Americans are too lazy, etc..

Nor have I read any articles other than a rare few, about illegal alien gangs committing ethnic cleansing against black Americans in Los Angeles and across the country. The latest victim was a 14 year old girl, walking home from school. The biggest case was Anthony Prudhomme, who was a musician, not a gang member, who had just moved into an apartment in Highland Park, and was targeted by illegal aliens merely because he was black, and they wanted to chase any black person out of "their" neighborhood. I felt I had to go into some detail, because knowing how closet racists like Fleetwood might try to dismiss those crimes, by blaming the victim. After all, in his narrow world view, Anne Frank wasn't subjected to anything more harrowing than having to go home.

[ceu]

It seems that every election cycle the Republicans need a "cause", a group to hate or, at the very least, a group to focus on in order to divert the rank & file members from the real problems & issues. In 2004, the issue was gay marriage (as if what goes on between two people in a loving relationship can be any one else's business - how did so many people not see that??) If everyone was talking about how bad it would be to allow two people of the same sex to marry & have legal rights, no one was talking about the catastrophe of Iraq or the atrocities in Darfur or the shredding of the Constitution by the incumbent administration. Illegal immigration is 2008's gay marriage. And, once again, no one is pointing out the obvious - none of the 9/11 terrorists were here illegally!!

[Clinton]

And to trivialize the holocaust with this rhetoric is asinine.

[Clinton]

Pogrom-like? Shades of Ann Frank? You must be joking! Illegal immigrants are not Jews, they are illegal immigrants. Nor is it genocide to point this out ( a common tactic). If this is a nation of laws, then shouldn't they be enforced?