Fusion (Commentary)
By Jorge Ramos
November 4, 2015
Judging
by the all the ferocity in politics these days, one might guess
Election Day were right around the corner. Yet we’ve still got a year to
go before the fight for
the White House is settled. There’s still plenty of time to sort out
the bullies from the true leaders; the genuine hopefuls from those
merely playing a role.
In
addition to the viciousness of the Republican campaign, what has also
struck me during these early months of the election cycle is the fact
that the presidential candidates
do not fully reflect voter demographics in the U.S. Out of 18 major
candidates (15 Republicans and three Democrats at press time), only two
are women: Republican Carly Fiorina and Democrat Hillary Clinton. In a
nation where women outnumber men (161 million
versus 156 million, according to data from 2013), this is disappointing
and worrisome.
The
same could be said about ethnicity. I recently spoke with Debbie
Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee,
and she pointed out that the
Democrats were still “the diversity party” in America. Yet in the last
Democratic presidential debate, I didn’t see any Latino,
African-American or Asian candidates on the stage. Indeed, the election
of Democrat Barack Obama made history in 2008, but what
have Democrats done since then to support and encourage more minority
presidential candidates to run?
Surprisingly,
the Republican bench is more diverse. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson
is African-American; Bobby Jindal is the son of Indian immigrants; and
two Latinos,
Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, were born to immigrants from Latin America.
Despite
the candidates’ diversity, however, immigration reform remains a
sticking point in terms of attracting more Hispanic voters to the GOP.
For instance, neither Cruz
nor Rubio supports a path to legalization for most of the 11 million
undocumented immigrants now living in the U.S.—a stance that I don’t
fully understand. Given their background, why not offer immigrants who
arrived after their parents a similar opportunity
to become Americans?
Republican
leaders realize that they must eventually support some sort of
immigration reform in order to attract Hispanic voters. But the party
stubbornly resists, even
though most Republican voters support immigration reform, according to a
recent AP poll.
The
resistance against reform is so deep that Paul Ryan, the newly elected
speaker of the House, recently vowed to block any immigration
legislation from being voted on
for the near future, assuring Republican lawmakers in a letter obtained
by The National Review that he would not bring up comprehensive
immigration reform “so long as Barack Obama is president.”
That’s
a bad start for Ryan. If he wants to succeed as a national leader, Ryan
has to demonstrate some political will, and steer clear of any
strategies that resemble
those of Donald Trump.
The
first few months of the current presidential campaign have been marked
by Trump’s offensive and ignorant declarations about immigrants in this
country. Those statements
are driving a deeper wedge between Latinos and the GOP, underscoring
the fact that the billionaire presidential candidate has no clue where
the U.S. is heading demographically. By 2055, white Americans will lose
their majority status.
Today
no candidate can win the White House without the support of Hispanics.
And while Trump has claimed that Hispanics love him, that’s hard to
believe after all his
insults and attacks. In fact, a recent poll from the Associated Press
showed that only 11% of Latinos have a positive opinion about Trump.
That’s not nearly enough support needed to win the White House. In 2012,
Republican candidate Mitt Romney was only able
to draw about 27% of the Latino vote, and John McCain won 31% of the
Hispanic vote in 2008.
Today,
with such a small percentage of Hispanic voters willing to cast a
ballot for Trump, he’ll probably join the likes of Romney and McCain.
But
perhaps all of this analysis is premature—again, the election is about a
year away. Extremists from both parties tend to fade away in the months
before Election Day,
leaving only the moderates standing.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed that this happens.
Jorge
Ramos, an Emmy Award-winning journalist, is the host of Fusion’s new
television news show, “America With Jorge Ramos,” and is a news anchor
on the Univision Network.
Originally from Mexico and now based in Florida, Ramos is the author of
nine best-selling books, most recently, “A Country for All: An
Immigrant Manifesto.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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