Candidates across the nation are no doubt taking note of the new Pew poll of Hispanics. The poll, conducted October 3 to November 9 (m.o.e. 2.7) was all good news for Dems. Some key findings:
Hispanics now say they favor Democrats over Republicans by a margin of 34 percent, compared to a margin of 21 percent in July 2006
Pew estimates that there will be 8.6 million Hispanic voters in ’08, up by a margin of more than a million since ’04
In four of the six ‘swing states’ Bush won in ’04 by a margin of less than 5 percent, Hispanics are in a position to be a key ‘swing vote’ in the electorates: NM (37%); FL (14%); NV (12%); and CO (12%)
44 percent of Latino rv’s say Dems have more concern for their issues, compared to 8 percent who say Republicans have more concern.
Younger Hispanics are slightly more likely to favor Democrats.
79 percent of Hispanic voters say immigration is a “very important” issue, up from 63 percent in June ’04.
Although Latinos are 15 percent of the U.S. population, they are 9 percent of the eligible national electorate, but they are expected to be only about 6.5 percent of the electorate in ’08.
The Clinton campaign should also be encouraged that she was favored by 59 percent of Hispanic voters, compared to 15 percent for Obama and 8 percent for Richardson. Clinton has experienced some loss of African American support to Obama in the weeks since the Pew poll, but it is unclear whether Hispanics are also beginning to trend toward favoring Obama and/or Richardson.
This year’s big media narrative has been the confirmation saga of Neera Tanden, Biden’s nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget. At New York I wrote about how over-heated the talk surrounding Tanden has become.
Okay, folks, this is getting ridiculous. When a vote in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on the nomination of Neera Tanden was postponed earlier this week, you would have thought it presented an existential threat to the Biden presidency. “Scrutiny over Tanden’s selection has continued to build as the story over her uneven reception on Capitol Hill stretched through the week,” said one Washington Post story. Politico Playbook suggested that if Tanden didn’t recover, the brouhaha “has the potential to be what Biden might call a BFD.” There’sbeen all sorts of unintentionally funny speculation about whether the White House is playing some sort of “three-dimensional chess” in its handling of the confirmation, disguising a nefarious plan B or C.
Perhaps it reflects the law of supply and demand, which requires the inflation of any bit of trouble for Biden into a crisis. After all, his Cabinet nominees have been approved by the Senate with a minimum of 56 votes; the second-lowest level of support was 64 votes. One nominee who was the subject of all sorts of initial shrieking, Tom Vilsack, was confirmed with 92 Senate votes. Meanwhile, Congress is on track to approve the largest package of legislation moved by any president since at least the Reagan budget of 1981, with a lot of the work on it being conducted quietly in both chambers. Maybe if the bill hits some sort of roadblock, or if Republican fury at HHS nominee Xavier Becerra (whose confirmation has predictably become the big fundraising and mobilization vehicle for the GOP’s very loud anti-abortion constituency) reaches a certain decibel level, Tanden can get out of the spotlight for a bit.
But what’s really unfair — and beyond that, surreal — is the extent to which this confirmation is being treated as more important than all the others combined, or indeed, as a make-or-break moment for a presidency that has barely begun. It’s not. If Tanden cannot get confirmed, the Biden administration won’t miss a beat, and I am reasonably sure she will still have a distinguished future in public affairs (though perhaps one without much of a social-media presence). And if she is confirmed, we’ll all forget about the brouhaha and begin focusing on how she does the job, which she is, by all accounts, qualified to perform.
