By By James O. Goldsborough

Wednesday, August 13, 2008 |There are not likely to be any huge surprises in November — no hanging chads, no landslides, no Truman upsets. The two presidential candidates are close in the polls, meaning we could have again, as in 2000 and nearly again in 2004, a minority president, but given our electoral system and political polarization, that would be no surprise.

This election, like the past two, will come down to a handful of states. What will make it unique is the Latino vote, ready to explode. Because of the rapidly growing Latino population — Latinos account for half the U.S. population growth this century — we've thought Latinos would make the difference in previous elections, but it didn't happen. Here's why:

According to U.S. Census data, only 17 percent of all Latinos voted in 2004, compared with 51 percent of all whites and 39 percent of all blacks. True, a higher percentage of Latinos was either under 18 or not U.S. citizens, but, in addition, a lower percentage of eligible Latino voters turned out. Only 47 percent of eligible Latinos voted in 2004, compared with 60 percent of blacks and 67 percent of whites.

Latinos have been largely self-disenfranchised in recent elections. Too many haven't registered to vote, and, if registered, haven't voted.

Only 7.5 million Latinos voted in the 2004 election (out of a total population of 46 million), but as low as their vote has been, it's been rising, and Latino organizations promise a spectacular increase this year. Between the presidential elections of 1988 and 2004, the Latino vote doubled. The goal this year is to increase it by nearly 50 percent over 2004 — to 10 million voters.

If delivered, the significance of the increase will not be in total votes, but where they are cast. Latinos make up a large bloc of voters in four key states that George W. Bush carried by fewer than 5 percentage points in 2004. They comprise 37 percent of the eligible electorate in New Mexico, 14 percent in Florida, 12 percent in Colorado and 12 percent in Nevada.

In 2004, Bush won 40 percent of the Latino vote, a five percent increase from 2000. He did better among Latino voters than previous Republican candidates (Bob Dole won 22 percent in 1996), largely because he won nearly half the Latino vote in his home state of Texas, home to 19 percent of the nation's Latinos.

Republican candidate John McCain, of Arizona, won't have the Texas advantage, and the latest polls show McCain trailing Barack Obama among Latino voters by a crushing 66 to 23 percent, according to the Pew Research Center. By 41 to 14 percent Latinos say Democrats are doing a better job of dealing with illegal immigration, and by 44 to 8 percent Latinos say Democrats are the party with more concern for Latinos.

The polls have been influenced by the Bush administration's new high-profile crackdown on illegal immigrants, featured nightly on Spanish-language news. The symbol of Bush policy is the recent raid in little Postville, Iowa. A battalion of helicopter-borne ICE officers attacked a Postville slaughterhouse as if it were an al Qaeda base in Afghanistan. Instead of the usual procedure of detaining, processing and deporting illegal workers, some 300 meatpackers, including children, working in appalling conditions, were tried in ad hoc courts and sentenced to five months in prison prior to deportation.

Bush has made Postville into a political issue, and McCain must deal with it. To whatever extent such raids may help McCain among Pat Buchanan nativists, they will not help him with those 10 million Latino voters, as appalled by Postville as the rest of us.

Illegal immigrants are not criminals. To treat them as terrorists, deny them acceptable legal representation, ignore that they have families here to support, and “disappear” them into prisons around the country is not how this nation historically deals with immigration. The Postville workers shouldn't have been here and shouldn't have been employed, and if this nation had a proper identity-card enforcement system in place, they wouldn't have been here.

But 12 million of them are here, and you can do the math to figure out how many Postville raids it will take to arrest them all.

Along with Sen. Ted Kennedy, McCain was the author of a 2005 comprehensive immigration bill that would have addressed the issue of those 12 million undocumented immigrants. And, yes, that bill included a foolproof identity card system to enable employers to verify legal status. But since his nomination, McCain has abandoned all talk of what he once called a "comprehensive and humane" way of dealing with illegal immigrants. He now says he wouldn't support his own bill.

Both Obama and McCain showed up in Albuquerque last month to address an umbrella meeting of national Latino organizations. Obama was the only one of the two candidates to speak of finding ways to bring those 12 million people — symbolized by the people of Postville — "out of the shadows." McCain now speaks only of criminals and drug-traffickers among the 12 million.

The polarization of American politics, combined with a system that does not elect presidents by popular vote, means that a handful of states now determine who wins the White House. If Latinos have been underrepresented in the past, this looks like the year, thanks to their presence in swing states and the absurdity of Bush-McCain immigration policy, that they might pull more than just their weight.

James O. Goldsborough has written on foreign affairs for four decades, both from the United States and abroad, where he worked as a foreign correspondent for The New York Herald Tribune, International Herald Tribune and Newsweek magazine for 14 years, reporting from more than 40 countries. Visit his website here. Submit a letter to the editor here.

By By James O. Goldsborough

Thursday, March 8, 2007 | Barack Obama made a nice showing on his first swing through Southern California, raising an estimated $500,000 in San Diego and a cool $1.3 million in Los Angeles, thanks mostly to a Spielberg-Geffen-Katzenberg fund-raiser, which brought out the stars. You might say California was Obama's for the asking.

But then, Al Gore won an Oscar and a huge ovation, and you could see Hollywood dreaming of a comeback movie with Gore as the star and Obama in the supporting role.

Obama is a phenomenon. Every election cycle brings its shooting stars — politicians who rise brilliantly only to fade in the snowy drizzles of Iowa and New Hampshire or fizzle out in the swamps of South Carolina. But Obama, helped by a political conjuncture as rare as the man himself, shows no sign of fizzling. He is rising steadily in the polls.

It's not every campaign where the two leading Democrats are a woman and an African-American, and if that's not enough they are running against a Republican party reeling from a failed presidency and a strong anti-war movement. Anti-war movements have a way of producing big surprises — like Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy knocking President Johnson out of the race in 1968.

Hillary Clinton hits Southern California later this month and may well surpass Obama's fund-raising totals despite the insults leveled at her and her husband by David Geffen, one of Hollywood's highest rollers. Clinton leads all other Democrats in the polls, though she does worse than her rivals when matched up against the leading Republicans, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain.

Beyond Obama's unique background — an African-American not descended from slaves — it's his position on Bush's war that gets the most attention. The other leading Democrats, all of them U.S. senators in 2002, supported Bush (though all wish they hadn't), and are finding it hard to escape blame for a failed war.

As an Illinois state senator, Obama opposed the war his rivals supported. "Even a successful war against Iraq," he said, "will require an occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences." It's that prescient Chicago speech in 2002 that puts him in the catbird seat today.

Working against both Obama and Clinton is the stark fact that since the South took control of the Republican Party in the late 1960s, the only Democrats to win the popular presidential vote have hailed from the South: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Northern Democrats have had no trouble winning the party's nomination, but turn into Republican cannon-fodder in November. The list is long: Humphrey, McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, Kerry.

In principle, that gives John Edwards, of North Carolina, the edge in 2008, especially since the Republicans find themselves in a similar position to 1976 — a discredited party with no clear heir apparent. McCain might have been the man, but in these anti-war times he has crucified himself on the Iraq war as thoroughly as Bush.

Some of the applause thundered over Gore at the Oscars may have been recognition that as a Southerner, he might be the Democrats' best chance next year. Some of it may also have been our sense of fairness. Grover Cleveland, another Democrat who won the presidential vote but was ambushed by the electors (in 1888), got revenge four years later, beating the Republican who stole the election from him, Benjamin Harrison.

(The electoral vote — there is no such thing as an electoral "college" — exists because in the 1780s the Founders did not believe communication, transportation and tabulation were advanced enough to elect a president popularly. None of those 18th Century inadequacies exists today.)

To the chagrin of Hollywood scriptwriters, Gore insists he has "no plans to become a candidate for office again." That means Democrats will likely nominate one of the three front-runners: a northern woman, a northern black and a Southerner out of office. Gore is not high in the polls, and it seems unlikely he could pull a Bobby Kennedy and wait until after the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries to get into the race.

But if Hollywood — from whence $33.1 million in funds to federal candidates and parties flowed in 2004 — thought there was a chance for Gore to become the first president with an Oscar (Ronald Reagan never even came close), one doubts whether it would have been quite so enthusiastic for Obama, the phenomenon. That enthusiasm showed not just in the star-studded dinner at Geffen's home, with nice checks from George Clooney, Barbra Streisand, Eddie Murphy and others, but in the extraordinary insults dished out by Geffen to Hillary Clinton.

The insults were a rude surprise (and pretty stupid for a party fund-raiser) not just because he'd been close to the Clintons while Bill Clinton was president, but because Hillary Clinton has a healthy lead in the polls and may well turn out to be the party's candidate. In the latest Washington Post-ABC poll (conducted, Feb. 28), Clinton had 36 percent; Obama, 24 percent; Gore, 14 percent, and Edwards, 14 percent. In California, however, the latest poll gives Clinton only a 3 point lead over Obama.

Obama is closing the gap, persuading ever more voters that, black northerner or not, he may be the party's best hope to bring the country together and beat the Republicans next year — even in the South. Harold Ford Jr. won 48 percent of the vote last November in Tennessee, a state that has never had a black senator.

Even without the South, Obama could win just by holding the states John Kerry won last November and adding one more — Ohio. Though Hillary Clinton leads in the polls, my sense is that the nomination is Obama's to lose.

James O. Goldsborough has written on foreign affairs for four decades, both from the United States and abroad, where he worked as a foreign correspondent for The New York Herald Tribune, International Herald Tribune and Newsweek magazine for 14 years, reporting from more than 40 countries. Visit his website here. Submit a letter to the editor here.

By By James Goldsborough

The two-party system under which our country operates has some advantages, but one overwhelming disadvantage: Too often it puts bad people in office. The rise of independent voters, those who decline to state affiliation, helps overcome the two-party flaw, but often there are not enough independents to make a difference.

Next month, voters in San Diego's 50th District will have a chance to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of our two-party system when they elect a member of Congress to succeed Randy Cunningham, who turned out to be a crook. As usual, the primaries reduced the June special election to the usual suspects: The Democrat is Francine Busby; the Republican Brian Bilbray.

Normally, Republicans win in this now-reconfigured district, which is dominated by Republican voters. How else could Cunningham - known to be vainglorious, dimwitted and sleazy even before he was exposed as a crook - have won so easily and so often? Cunningham was a perfect demonstration of the central two-party system flaw: the tendency among many voters to vote party, not candidate.

Despite a handful of small parties - Greens, Libertarians, Peace and Freedoms, etc. -ours is a classic two-party system because one of the Big Two always wins in November, no matter whom is nominated. The small parties garner their one or two percents, but the most they can hope for is to be spoilers, like Ralph Nader, who gave us George W. Bush and his now-imploded administration.

Two-party systems have the virtue of providing government stability. Since only two parties ever win, one will have the majority, the other the minority, and the country will never be governed by unstable coalitions such as exist in multi-party democracies such as Italy or Israel. But the virtue of stability, especially in a presidential system such as ours, fails to outweigh the flaw of producing too many bad candidates.

How was Cunningham, whose outstanding characteristic was venality, able to win election after election in this well-educated, affluent and presumably politically sophisticated district? Part of the answer was the blind Republican Party loyalty of too many district voters.

But another part of it was media irresponsibility. Jefferson's comment that he'd rather have newspapers without a government than a government without newspapers requires that newspapers be free and independent, not in the pocket of government.

The local daily newspaper's blind allegiance to everything Republican played a role in Cunningham's election to seven terms of office. The congressman's soaring mediocrity was apparent to some of us who interviewed him before every election. We protested endorsing such a candidate, but were always in the minority. Because Cunningham was a Republican, he easily won the newspaper's endorsement each time.

Even after Cunningham was exposed as a crook by one of the paper's own Washington reporters, who came across evidence of his shenanigans while doing a routine on-line credit check, the newspaper's editorial page, presided over by David Copley and Karin Winner, failed to call for Cunningham's resignation, as it should have done and would have done for any Democrat.

The local newspaper's blind party allegiance was also in evidence in the case of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Even as the DeLay smell grew too strong for his own party, the local newspaper continued to back him, to the point of labeling the many charges against him as "routine." Imagine for a moment that Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, was indicted and forced from office on the same charges as DeLay, and imagine what the local newspaper would have opined about how "routine" her misdeeds would have been.

And let's not forget lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who became the most notoriously corrupt Washington bagman for DeLay and his Republicans in decades: the local newspaper's editorials never even mentioned Abramoff.

The newspaper's blind Republicanism continues to this day as it ignores the debacle of Iraq and other misdeeds of a government now opposed by two-thirds of the nation, refuses to condemn stupid congressional actions such as the proposed $100 gasoline-price rebate, and recommends Bilbray, another lobbyist, for election in the 50th District. Whoever wins on June 6 will fill Cunningham's seat until November, and put the winner in the strongest position to be elected to a full term in November.

The local newspaper endorsed Bilbray prior to last month's primary election, a strange action in itself, for the normal newspaper practice is to let the parties pick their own candidates without comment. How much that endorsement hurt or helped Bilbray cannot be known. He won only 15 percent of the vote, barely enough to defeat other Republicans but only a third of Busby's 44 percent.

Nevertheless, unless Busby comes up with another 6 percent in the runoff next month, giving her 50 percent in a district that is 45-percent registered Republican and only 30-percent registered Democrat, Bilbray will win. The Republicans are pulling out all the stops to help him, including forcing other Republicans off the June primary ballot, sending money for attack ads on Busby and dispatching party stars to campaign for him.

That's where the 50th District's moment of truth comes in. The local newspaper failed its moment of truth when it backed Bilbray, a man up to his elbows in the very issues that destroyed Cunningham and DeLay - professional politics and lobbying.

If Busby wins, it will be a victory over the two-party system. It will show that voters in the 50th District understand the importance of electing the candidate, not the party. It will expose, once again, the vapidity of the local newspaper's endorsements.

It will demonstrate the importance of independent voters in helping to keep our two-party system reasonably honest. Twenty-one percent of the 50th's voters are independents, those whose votes will not be determined by blind party allegiance.

James O. Goldsborough has written on foreign affairs for four decades, both from the United States and abroad, where he worked as a foreign correspondent for The New York Herald Tribune, International Herald Tribune and Newsweek magazine for 14 years, reporting from more than 40 countries. Submit a letter to the editor here.