 |
|
|
 Editorials | Opinions | October 2007 
Bill Richardson. Raw.
 Robert A. Hahn - RedState.com
go to original
It's official. Robert Novak has just described New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson as "a Mexican-American who could pin down the Latino vote."
I had no idea that it was even possible to pin down the Latino vote.
For one thing, hardly anyone is a Latino. The whole concept of Latin America was thought up in colonial days by the French, to whom all those people looked alike. Besides, the idea that a single individual of a certain ethnic background will attract, or "pin down," the votes of people with a similar ethnic background is kind of insulting to the people involved. It suggests they have no brains; only tribal loyalties.
I doubt that this "pin down the Latino vote" thing is conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is that most African-Americans are going to pass on the O-man and vote for Hillary Clinton. No, the Richardson comment belongs in the category "noise generated in an echo chamber full of empty suits."
Washington journalists often try to determine what's happening by calling other people. Calling up sources is a good way to collect facts. It is a lousy way to collect thoughts. It collects thoughts only when one of the people on the calling list can think.
For many years, the sort of people who ran political campaigns thought in terms of demographics. They did that because they could not read anyone's mind. But they did have demographic data. Following the "I have a hammer; therefore the problem is a nail" paradigm, they pretended that demographic data was a substitute for mind-reading. They would slice and dice the population by age, sex, and ethnic background, then imagine that they had lists of people who thought and acted the same way. On the face of it that is stupid. But for decades it's as close as anyone got, with the consequence that even today the "experienced" political operatives in Robert Novak's Rolodex think in terms of pinning down the Latino vote.
Thank goodness for inexperienced political operatives. Robert Novak apparently never calls them. They are the ones who not only know where every registered Republican in the Third District lives, they know which ones are NRA members, which ones consider abortion the #1 issue facing America, which ones own a small business, and so on. When you know that, it doesn't matter whether their name is Gonzalez or Ginsburg, John or Mary Jane.
We have computers now. There are Blackberrys. It's time to lose the Rolodex. And with it The Latino Vote, the Women's Vote, the Transgendered Lesbian Vote, and all the people who still think that politics is about tribes, clans, and priesthoods. |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us