No one could have predicted (via Ben Smith, whose insane Drudgite readers followed the link to the comments, I see):
When we polled Colorado in early March Michael Bennet and Jane Norton were tied. Last week we found Bennet with a 3 point lead. One of the biggest reasons for that shift? Bennet went from leading Norton by 12 points with Hispanic voters to a 21 point advantage. That large shift in a Democratic direction among Hispanics mirrors what we saw in our Arizona Senate polling last month- Rodney Glassman went from trailing John McCain by 17 points with them in September to now holding a 17 point lead.
But Chris Matthews’ cranky uncle likes the law, polls show a majority of Americans support it, never underestimate white backlash, blah blah blah.
This thing is a goldmine for western Democrats.
TR
This really is a big fucking deal.
JGabriel
From Ben Smith’s Comment Section:
One can almost hear, silently appended, “Just like Jews!”
GOPer’s just can’t stop themselves from overgeneralizing on racial / ethnic / cultural grounds.
.
Alex S.
Bennet, Boxer and Reid will get re-elected because of this (well not only this, but it’s an important part). This reduces the number of endangered democratic seats down to about 5.
Anya
“Chris Matthews’ cranky uncle”, is probably, a senile version of Chris Matthews.
Wag
Here in Colorado the GOP is ready ti implode. The anointed GOP candidate, Gayle Norton, is being challanged from the right, and she brought in Barbie Spice this past weekend to try and burnish her “outsider” cred. It will be amusing to follow what happens. I think Bennett (the probable Dem nominee) has an excellent shot at re-election
geg6
Bwahahahahahahaha!
Bring on immigration reform!
Boots Day
It’s very popular among people who were already going to vote Republican, which means it doesn’t make any difference to the GOP in the long run. Among people for whom this is such a big deal that it makes them want to change their vote, it’s hugely unpopular.
licensed to kill time
Anybody see this tourism ad from Sonora, Mexico that’s got Sheriff Joe’s pink panties in a twist?
Clambone
Oh, sure, well, if you’re gonna count Hispanic voters…
Midnight Marauder
This is why I keep calling nonsense on all the people predicting doom and gloom for the Democratic Party in November. We are just in the opening stages of seeing how this law will impact the political landscape, and all evidence so far would seem to indicate that it will strengthen the Democratic Party’s hand while sending the Republican Party into a self-destructive conniption of epic proportions.
And having whackjobs like Rand Paul and Sue Lowden/Sharron Angle on the campaign trail for a gaffetastic 6 months certainly won’t help the GOP at all.
The grave is only going to get deeper for these clowns.
Dave L
The Hispanic voting bloc was contestable at some point. The Republicans had some advantages, in particular the appeal they could make to religious and traditional values.
But they deliberately threw it away for a little nativist populism, and now it’s hard to see how you persuade people you’ve been demonizing to vote for you. And not only are Hispanics already a large share of the electorate, they are the fastest-growing one.
I don’t know, sometimes I think Republicans (and I’m talking about the operatives, not the Tea Party yahoos) are just not very bright. It’s almost as if they think rural and southern whites are growing constituencies, are that they can vote twice by pulling that lever hard. Regardless, I think they’re doomed. They’ll do pretty well this November, and Obama will be smiling: the GOP will argue that their lunatic scare-mongering is working, they’ll nominate a disastrous candidate in 2012 and Obama will win easily.
Anya
@Wag: Didn’t Bennett lose the Dem party nomination?
beltane
@licensed to kill time: Arpaio’s response is hilarious. He is steaming mad at the merest suggestion that Mexicans would racially profile Arizonans. It’s like he feels he owns the copyright on racial profiling.
TR
@Anya:
Yeah, I thought the state convention picked the former House speaker — Romanoff maybe?
Sentient Puddle
@Anya: He lost at the convention, but there’s still a general primary later on (I forget when). Him losing pretty much just means Romanoff’s name appears above his on the ballot.
I also have no idea who is actually favored to win the primary, but seems to me that this is good news for either of them, really.
licensed to kill time
@beltane: Yeah, it cracked me up. Turnabout is fair play! Doesn’t feel too hot, huh Sheriff Joe?
MNPundit
Benett was also just beaten at the convention by Romanoff.
Violet
Sat next to a gentleman on the plane today who is from Colorado. He’s also of Mexican ancestry, but a US citizen. We had a great political discussion and he said that outside Colorado people seem to think that Colorado is all like the evangelical Christians in Colorado Springs. But it’s not. “There are more of us than them,” he said, adding, “And in 2008, we stood up!” He was proud that Colorado elected Obama. He also refuses to go to Arizona.
Anti-Arpaio Sane
@licensed to kill time
Love the ad, anything that get Sheriff Joe’s pink panties in a bunch is fine by me. They adore him in Sun City, I just don’t get it….
Wag
Bennett lost at the convention, bitbwill prevail in the august primary, which is the contest that determines the nominee.
T.R. Donoghue
@Wag: Gayle Norton is a completely different person. The nominee is Jane Norton.
Bennet lost at the convention but that only means that Romanoff gets top line on the primary ballot in August.
TooFunnyToBePresident
I’ve said this before, but the Democratic 2010 election strategy really should have three parts: 1. introduce immigration reform in Congress. 2. Give Republicans plenty of time to talk. 3. Make sure the cameras are rolling.
Republicans are trying to sneak one last electoral majority through a rapidly shrinking window of time before demographics make the current conservative coalition totally unelectable. I’m delighted to see them trying to keep the window jammed open by doubling down on older white voters in the midterms.
demkat620
@Anya: No he lost the caucus.
bago
Is this how re-alignments happen?
Wag
I stand corrected, it is Jane Norton. I stand by everything else I said above.
the Reverend boy
Slightly off topic, the majority of Americans are probably indifferent to the law as opposed to supporting it because it really doesn’t affect them.
wrb
Dunno.
The west is varied. In the parts that are like where I live, where there aren’t yet a lot of Hispanic voters, but there is a lot of unemployment and a lot of fear of illegals taking jobs, I suspect it will be a gold mine for Republicans.
An immigration reform bill that includes an amnesty would be their diamond mine.
beltane
During the early to mid twentieth century, the Democratic party was able to build powerful, vote getting machines in the big cities of the northeast and mid-west partly thanks to the nativism and anti-Catholicism of the Republican party. Treating immigrants with respect paid huge dividends a hundred years ago and it will pay huge dividends today. Yeah, once the children and grandchildren of these immigrants were accepted as “white” they tended to vote Republican, but it took a while.
Xboxershorts
@TooFunnyToBePresident:
It’s not like the democrats are a whole lot better. The real hope is to marginalize the republicans in 2010 and then marginalize the blue dog dems in 2012.
Someone needs to rewrite some Diebold/Premier and ES&S code before that will come about.
Martin
@Wag: California is imploding along similar lines. The teabaggers should be getting funded by the DNC at this rate.
beltane
@TooFunnyToBePresident: They’re going to milk the Archie Bunker vote until the last Fox viewer is brought before the death panels.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Anya:
Isn’t Tweety already senile?
kommrade reproductive vigor
Is it too much to hope some bright spark in Colorado will copy the latest piece of crap floating through AZ’s legislature? (Hint: It involves revoking peoples’ citizenship for not being American Enuff.)
But since they’re not all falling in line regardless of the crap we heap upon them, we’d better think of more ways to keep them away from the voting booths!
demkat620
@bago: Yes, it is.
bkny
@Wag:
any attention paid to norton’s time as interior secretary…
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Violet:
Clearly people have never visited Ward, Colorado. It’s up in the mountains west of the People’s Republic of Boulder.
For that matter, clearly people have never visited a lot of the old towns up in the mountains.
Western slopes? Conservative like most Rocky Mountain Repups in the Montana mold.
The Springs really is a pit of the most batshit insane wingnuts west of the batshit insane ones in Southern Missouri. Or Topeka, or Wichita. Oh nevermind.
JCT
I had an amusing discussion with a student recently – from a very large multigenerational Mexican-American family in the Central Valley of CA. She has always complained about how conservative they were, horrified that they voted for McCain in 2008, etc. She said that overnight the entire family swore off the Republicans — was amazed at how fast the “blinders” fell off. They felt (not surprisingly) personally insulted by the whole thing.
I agree this was a monumental blunder out west for the Republicans. As exemplified by the tip-toeing around the issue by Perry in TX, highly amusing.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
It’s been said before but from a historical perspective, look back at the Civil Rights Act. Sure, a lot is made that on many social issues, African Americans (I’m dangerously over generalizing conventional wisdom here–why can’t I be a teevee pundit?) fall more along some of the Repup public talking points but why do blacks still overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party?
Asked and answered.
It’s deja vu all over again.
beltane
@JCT: I’ve heard similar stories from my husband’s Cuban friends from Miami. This law had them up in arms from the moment it was signed. I was pretty surprised at both the speed and the intensity of the response, as Cuban-Americans are not known for their love of Mexicans. The GOP has created a Brotherhood of Brown were none existed before.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@Dave L: To be fair, Karl Rove did see the Hispanic backlash coming but I guess the rest of the party decided to ignore him on this.
Midnight Marauder
@wrb:
A one-time, good for a year or so gold mine, yes. But again, that kind of thinking flies in the face of the facts on the ground. Just look at all the big time national races out West, and you’ll clearly see a stampede of Latino and Hispanic support for Democratic candidates. Moreover, those successes in towns like you are describing will come at the expense of dampening national enthusiasm for Republicans in the general. I believe in the Kentucky Senate primary, there were more participants in the Democratic Primary than the Republican one. And across the board, we saw a higher turnout for contests featuring Democrats than those including Republicans.
Remember, the biggest thing the Republican Party has had going for them so far is the monolith of a narrative that their base was SO enthusiastic for the midterms this year and they would be turning out in such eye-popping numbers. Well, if that doesn’t happen, and you factor in a surge of Hispanic support for the Democrats, you are all of a sudden looking at a radically different landscape. And i don’t think it’s far-fetched to believe that Republicans could experience another substantial drop in enthusiasm over the next 6 months. There’s just too much time left for their bubble to burst.
So yes, there are a lot of ways the Republican Party can stand to benefit from their repugnant actions this election cycle. But again, I think we are already seeing the groundwork laid for a substantial backlash, if not a repudiation.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people):
Just goes to show you that the inherent and underlying bigotry in the Republican Party outweighs naked, calculating political stagetery in the Atwater/Rove mold.
Some things never change.
El Cruzado
@beltane: Yeah, but they know the Arpaios of the world won’t be telling them (Cubans and Mexicans) apart.
joe from Lowell
The same shortcoming that causes Republicans to talk about “Real America” and welcome “Macaca” to the state he’s lived in his entire life also prevents them from understanding that immigrant-bashing is bad politics.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
Sorry to burst your bubble when it is still happy hour back east, but polls mean nothing until voters show up on election day.
2008 Hispanic voter turnout percentage was in the 40s here compared to the 60s for white voters. Morever, voter registration in the Hispanic community is not up to the level of the white voter demographic.
Unless those voters register and show up at the polls, the GOP wins this round. And they appear to have calculated that that is exactly what will happen, which is why you see McCain treating the Hispanic bloc as disposable now.
It is essential that Dems mount a gi-gan-to GOTV operation this fall on general election day, on the heels of a hu-mun-go voter registration drive in Phoenix and Tucson.
Otherwise the assholes win.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
Just as a follow, please refer to this link if you are in Arizona this weekend, Memorial Day Weekend, and are interested in taking part in the protest being planned here in the capitol.
Gather at Steele Park early in the morning and plan to march to the State Capitol.
And sign up for the email updates. Yours truly is planning to rent a van and do GOTV voter transport on election day in November. If you are a BJer then email me at jackalopez_two at yahoo, and we’ll meet up with you at the park. We live about 7 blocks away.
See you there.
kay
It’s particularly devastating for Republicans because (unlike Democrats) their core constituency among Hispanic voters is in the foreign-born category.
It’s another one of the myths about Democrats Republicans promote, that Democrats are promoting immigration to secure a new slice of the electorate. US-born Hispanics are (by and large) already Democrats. Republicans are actually looking to immigrants for better numbers.
“But for Republicans eyeing a long-term majority, the Hispanic vote is considered the real prize, particularly immigrant Hispanics. While two thirds of registered U.S.-born Hispanics reliably vote Democratic, foreign-born Hispanics remain up for grabs. This group now comprises nearly half the Latino electorate, which has tripled between 1980 and 2004 to 10 million voters; that figure is expected to double by 2020. For Republicans, this growth is especially important, because their core constituency—white voters—is in demographic decline. “
Splitting Image
I’m one of the people who believes that the G.O.P. drove the final nail into their party’s coffin with the Arizona act (and the dozen or so others they’ve got lined up) but I actually agree with this. The Dems’ biggest problem at the moment is that Obama’s campaign concentrated on registering new black voters in Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia and Georgia. 2008 would have been a good time to start getting Hispanics on the rolls in Texas and Arizona, but Obama evidently felt that he’d get better mileage out of the strategy he took. (Can’t say I blame him, based on the 2008 results.)
Unfortunately, it means that the Dems haven’t really put the infrastructure in place to take advantage of the shift that is going on right now, so I’m not really confident that they will greatly benefit this fall. On the other hand, if the G.O.P. pick up even a few seats on the immigration issue, they will double down on the crazy for 2012 and give the Dems more time to do the job right. Obama will also be running for office again and he should have his team in place to get things going properly.
Even at this point, the Dems are already a couple of months behind where they were in 2008 with respect to voter registration. That isn’t good. Over time, the G.O.P. have certainly picked the losing side in the fight, but I don’t think many of their candidates are looking beyond winning this November and accumulating a couple more years’ worth of pension rights.
New Yorker
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the GOP self-immolation over immigration is the greatest gift to the Democratic Party in history. Within 20 years, every state out west with a population of greater than 1 million will be solid blue, possibly even Utah if the evangelical nuts can’t help but continue to piss on Mormons.
Soon, the GOP will simply be the new Dixiecrats, but even that won’t hold forever, as states like Virginia and North Carolina have left the Dark Ages, and Georgia may soon follow.
asiangrrlMN
@licensed to kill time: LOVE it. Wah wah wah. Boy, the big tough sheriff sure is a WATB with easily hurt fee-fees.
If the Republicans want to be stupid enough to continue alienating the minorities (who, please note, will not be the minority for much longer), I’m not going to stop them.
DougJ
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
And who won the election in 2008?
That’s the point here — the proportion of the electorate that is Latino will grow because Latino turn-out will likely increase.
mclaren
An accelerant, really. If you look at the demographics and the secular-vs-religious polling trends, white anti-government highly religious voters in the U.S. are going away. They’re getting replaced by secular Asian and Latino populations not tremendously enthralled by tradition.
That has spelled doom for the Republican Party for quite a while now. The only measure on which the rising Asian and Latino majorities in America align with Republicans involves their high identification with the family as a central social value.
Lisa K.
@wrb:
Ehh. Most people who are worried about “illegals” taking jobs were in the Republican camp years ago. This law is simply validating those fears-it is not going to bring any new GOP voters to the polls.
Asshole
@mclaren:
Aren’t Latinos one of the most devoutly religious groups in America? Correct me if I’m wrong on that, but I’d thought they were socially a pretty conservative bunch who voted Democratic because of economic/immigration issues.
lou
I’m willing to bet it’s not just Latinos repulsed by the Arizona law. My DH worked to elect a D congressman years ago in a Mass. district that used to vote reliably Republican. (yes, there are those)
Because the R candidate had made some anti-immigrant remarks, hoping to get the blue-collar vote behind him, he actually repelled the significant Asian population in the district. And didn’t get the blue-collars anyway.
It was one of the few districts to turn from R to D in a year when Newt Gingrich was turning Congress over to the Rs.
IndieTarheel
@Anya:
Fix’t.