Today's Stories

June 5, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Bush's Secret Deal Would Ensure Permanent U.S. Occupation of Iraq

June 4, 2008

Eric Walberg
Princess Patricia and the Taliban

Gary Leupp
Iran and EFPs: Chronology of a Lie

Ralph Nader
Disenfranchised Youth

Dave Lindorff
Of Whiners and Poor Losers

George Wuerthner
Farm Economics

Victor M. Rodriguez
The Puzzle of Race and Politics

Remi Kanazi
Why a Cultural Boycott of Israel is Needed

Stephane Luçon
Renault's Romanian Fairyland Suspended

Farzana Versey
The Tablighi Jamaat Movement

Laray Polk
The Militarization of Space

Website of the Day
Red State Rebels

June 3, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts /
Lawrence M. Stratton
Legislating Tyranny

Mike Whitney
The Withering Economy

Steve Early
San Juan Showdown

Manuel Otero
Why Hillary Won Puerto Rico: the View from the Colony

George Bisharat
The Hope of a Victimized People

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's VP Quandry

Dan Bacher
Death on the Salmon Highway

Website of the Day
Censoring Bill Knott?

June 2, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Olmert Scandal

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's Latino Problem Getting Worse

Allan J. Lichtman
Revisionist History: Bush, Borah and Hitler

Malini Johar Schueller
The Color of Randomness: Returning to the US From Beirut Via Syria

Robert Weissman
What's Driving Skyrocketing Oil Prices?

Peter Morici
Bailing Out Wall Street

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Don't Get Burned: How to Protect Yourself From Raytheon's Pain Gun

John Ross
Celebrating Catholic Fanaticism in Mexico

Ahmad Al-Akhras
Encounters with the Watch List

Website of the Day
Man on Earth

May 31 / June 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Worst is Yet to Come

Jeffrey St. Clair
Arkansas Bloodsuckers

Gary Leupp
How McClellan Prettifies Bush

Stan Cox
Broken Agriculture

Rannie Amiri
Lebanon: the Domino That Wouldn't Fall

P. Sainath
A Guaranteed Day's Work--in the Fields, at 110 Degrees, for $2 a Day

Binoy Kampmark
Going Bankrupt in Vallejo

Robert Fantina
Bush, Rice and McClellan

Seth Sandronsky
Will There be Water Riots, as Sacramento Goes Dry?

Corporate Crime Reporter
Death Penalty for Bush?

Anthony DiMaggio
Gaming the Ghetto: Grand Theft Auto IV, Racist Media and the Concrete Jungle

Karl Grossman
A Half-Trillion for Nukes

Matt Reichel
From Vegas to the Heartland and Back Again

Paul Myron Hillier
Of Gas and God

Andy Worthington
Suicide at Guantánamo

David Yearsley
And the Winner is ... Wayne Shorter

Daniel Cassidy
Free Lunch

Charles Thomson
If Hitler Had Been a Hippy ...

Gary Corseri
A Dream Deferred: Activism and the Arts

Wajahat Ali
Sex and the City Through a Man's Eyes

Ron Jacobs
Robins Weep

Poets' Basement
McNeill and Davies

Website of the Day
Last Charge of the Light Horse

May 30, 2008

Bassam Aramin
Here's the Truth You've Been Running From

Andrew Cockburn
Petraeus' Iran Obsession

Saul Landau
How We Got Into This Mess

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet South America's New Secessionists

Robert Sandels
Turning Back the Clock on Cuba

Dave Lindorff
Talk is Cheap

Martha Rosenberg
Raiding Big Meat; Arresting the Wrong People

Harvey Wasserman
Lieberman & McCain: Linking Internet Censorship and Atomic Reactor Terror

Doug Giebel
A Plague on Both Your Houses (of Congress)

Shaun Harkin
The Trial of the Raytheon 9

Website of the Day
The Once and Future Environmental Movement

May 29, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Bill Clinton and the Rich Women

Nikolas Kozloff
Puerto Rico, Obama and the Politics of Race

Col. Dan Smith
Deceiving the Dead

Karl Grossman
The Most Lucrative Incentive for Nuclear Power in the History of the United States

William S. Lind
Inside the Washington Game

Robert Weissman
What to do About the Price of Oil

Dave Lindorff
Why Puerto Rico Won't Matter

David Macaray
A Union Fable

Chris Genovali
Fear and Loathing in the Northern Rockies

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Battle Over Oil

Website of the Day
Support Antiwar.com

May 28, 2008

Wajahat Ali
The Libertarian Dark Horse: An Exclusive Interview with Ron Paul

Ralph Nader
What's Really Driving the High Price of Oil?

Brian McKenna
Why I Want to Teach Anthropology at the Army War College

Corporate Crime Reporter
Why Vincent Bugliosi Wants to Prosecute George W. Bush for Murder

Brian Cloughley
The Attack on Damadola

Eric Walberg
Opium for the Masses from Afghanistan

Michael Dickinson
Raytheon's Pain Ray: Coming to a Protest Near You

Ijaz Khan
Opening Windows in Pakistan

Website of the Day
Older Than America

May 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Her Mind She's Killed Before: the Plot to Assassinate Ralph Nader

Greg Kafoury
Is Obama Turning (Further) Right?

Jean Bricmont
Western Delusions

Tim Wise
Farrakhan is not the Problem

Ricardo Alarcón
Puerto Rico's Turn

Stephen Soldz
APA Supports Psychologist Engagement in Bush Regime Interrogations

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo 16

Alan Singer
Vapid, Stupid and Insulting: Chuck Schumer Speaks to the Graduates

Richard Neville
Storm in an A-Cup

Susie Day
Gone with the W

May 26, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Syrian Option

Bill Quigley
War Immemorial Day

Col. Dan Smith
Retreating from Hell: a Different Memorial Day

Cindy Sheehan
Why Memorial Day is a Double-Whammy for Me

Marjorie Cohn
Hillary's Assassination Politics: Her Last Shot?

Fred Gardner
Does the VA Care?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Pain Pays: Getting Rich at NY Presbyterian Hospital

Harvey Wasserman
Mugging the Election System

Moncia Benderman
Truth Matters

David Rovics
In Praise of Utah Phillips

Website of the Day
Fox News Jokes About "Knocking Off" Osama and Obama

May 24 / 25, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Death-Wish Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate

Jeffrey St. Clair
Yellowstone: How Sununu Shrank the Ecosystem

Barbara Rose Johnston
Dam Legacies, Damned Futures

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Fourth Fleet in Venezuelan Waters

Adriana Kojeve
The Environment and the 2008 Elections

Robert Fantina
Justice Department's Revelations on Torture

Dave Lindorff
Bush's War on Children in Iraq

David Yearsley
The War on Kitsch

Nelson P. Valdés
The Buying of "Democracy" Agents in Cuba

Kathleen M. Barry
Celebrating Ethnic Cleansing

John Ross
Mexico's Narco Opera Reaches for High Point

Allison Kilkenny
Apathy Doesn't Live in Bronx

Fred Gardner
Orangeburg, 1968

Elizabeth Schulte
Can the Whole World be Fed?

Daniel Gross
Remembering the Wendy's Massacre: the Dangerous Side of Retail Work

Christopher Brauchli
The Search for a Token Right-winger

Richard Rhames
A Nation of Sheep

Daniel Cassidy
My Mother

Poets' Basement
Davies, Klipschutz and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Happy Birthday, Bob

May 23, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
War Abroad, Poverty at Home

Alan Farago
The Radical Extremists of the Building Industry

Conn Hallinan
Ballots and Bullets: From Beirut to Bolivia

Mark Engler
The World After Bush

George Wuerthner
Cars and Cows: Living Large in America

Kamran Matin
The Kurds and American Neo-Imperialism

Sandy Boyer /
Shaun Harkin
The Long Incarceration of Pol Brennan

Robert Weitzel
A "Holey" Instrument of Peace in Iraq

Cindy Sheehan
An Uphill Battle

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Futile Constitutional Amendment

Website of the Day
A Message from the Moral Compass of the McCain Campaign

May 22, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Racist Grammar

Joanne Mariner
A Military Commissions Cheat Sheet

Sharon Smith
60 Years of Apartheid

Jeff Birkenstein
Disaster Redux: Some Early Thoughts on the Earthquake in China

Brendan McQuade
From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq

Peter Morici
The Sorry State of the Banking Industry

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Restoration Boulevard

Dave Zirin
What I Want to Ask Mary Tillman

Ron Jacobs
CPR for the Antiwar Movement

Stephen Lendman
Immoral Hazard

Website of the Day
Hagee: God Sent Hitler to Drive the Jews to Israel

May 21, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Gothic Politics of Hillary Clinton

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Military Bases in South America

Alan Farago
Miami, Cuba and the Presidential Campaign

Dave Lindorff
Big John and the Scary, Scary Iran Threat

David Model
Genocide in Iraq?

Eric Walberg
Afghanistan: Who is the Enemy?

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Gets a President

Kenneth Couesbouc
Tax Against Tyranny

Website of the Day
Child Labor and War-Affected Children: a Photo Essay

May 20, 2008

Ralph Nader
A Trip Inside Google

Uri Avnery
With Friends Like These

Patrick Irelan
The Empire and the Fleet

Ray McGovern
Come Out, Admiral Fallon, Wherever You Are

David Macaray
The UAW Strike Against American Axle

Chris Genovali
Big Oil on the Water: Skating Around the Tanker Issue

Ibrahim Fawal
Birmingham, Israel and the Nakba

Christopher Ketcham
Let Us Now Praise Famous Suicides

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Trial Delayed

Martha Rosenberg
Merck is a Repeat Offender

Website of the Day
Defend the Students Who Pied Tom Friedman

May 19, 2008

Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live

Paul Craig Roberts
The Metamorphosis of the Conservative Movement

Brian McKenna
Brotherly Love in Philly's Badlands

Patrick Cockburn
City of the Dead: Mosul on Lockdown

B. R. Gowani
The Central Problem Pakistan Needs to Tackle

Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists and Torture: If Not Now, When?

Cindy Sheehan
Whose War is It?

John Mohawk
The Warriors Who Turned to Peace

Remi Kanazi
When Free Speech Doesn't Come for Free

Robert Day
I Get a Horse

Website of the Day
Evolve or Die

May 17 / 18, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The View from the Crusaders' Castle

Tim Wise
Testosterone is Not to Blame: Why Sexism isn't the Reason for Hillary's Loss

Andy Worthington
Gitmo Trials: Betrayal, Backsliding and Boycotts

Robert Fantina
The Double-Talk Express Derails

Karim Makdisi
In the Wake of the Doha Truce

Harry Browne
Only Ireland Can Vote on EU's Future

John Ross
Suicide by Taco? The Demise of Mexico's PRD

Dave Lindorff
Fear at the Pump

Robert Weissman
Pharmaceutical Payola

Laray Polk
Bush Family Appeasement

David Yearsley
Puritans in Seattle

Ron Jacobs
Riot Squads, Privatization and the National Front

Paul Quinnett
My Last Flight

Sam Bahour
Refugees are the Key

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Poverty Wages

Dr. Susan Block
The Groom May Kiss the Groom

Kim Nicolini
Paranoid Park: Inside the Fractured Landscape of Male Adolescence

Jeremy Scahill
John Cusack's War

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Dominguez, Gerard and Davies

May 16, 2008

Stephen Soldz
Involuntary Drugging of Detainees

Jonathan Cook
Police Attack Al-Nakba March

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies of Aggression

Christopher Brauchli
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pharmacy

James L. Secor
Olympic Torch China: the View from Shaoxing

Franklin Lamb
Did Hezbollah Thwart a Bush/Olmert Attack on Beirut?

Linn Washington, Jr.
The Price of Protecting Racist Cops

Dave Lindorff
What West Virginia Means

May 15, 2008

Stan Cox
Big Brother Close Up

Jeff Halper
Rethinking Israel After 60 Years

Greg Moses
Living for the Children of Palestine

John Ross
Why Mexican Justice is a Euphemism

Ron Jacobs
Go to Work, Go to Jail

Binoy Kampmark
Indian Jailbirds: the Case of Binayak Sen

Eve Spangler
We Should Not Celebrate Dispossession

Martha Rosenberg
Meat Wars with South Korea

Website of the Day
Idaho Wolf Killers

May 14, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Oil Wars

Reza Fiyouzat
Torture, a Bully's Creed

Felice Pace
California Water Politics: Of Dams and Water Buffaloes

Hamdan A. Yousuf / Dania S. Ahmed
A Generation Defined by War

Robert Weitzel
Hillary's "Final Solution" to the Persian Problem

Ralph Nader
You're Either with the American People or the Big Auto Bosses

Dave Lindorff
Hillary, McCain and the Stupid Vote

Missy Comley Beattie
White Heaven: Hillary's W. Virginia Idyll

Neve Gordon
Israel as a Site of Struggle

Dr. Susan Block
A Washington Witch Hanging

Website of the Day
Hillary's Downfall

May 13, 2008

David Rosen
Sexual Terrorism: the Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror

Alan Farago
Nuclear Florida: Beachfront Reactors in an Age of Rising Sea Levels?

Saul Landau
The Crisis at Home

Saree Makdisi
Forget the Two-State Solution

Paul Craig Roberts
How Empires Fall

Andy Worthington
Gitmo's Suicide Bomber

Brother Bede Vincent
The Problem with Rev. Wright--There are Too Few Like Him

Linda Mamoun
Marketing Ethnic Cleansing

David Macaray
The Myth That Won't Die

Website of the Day
Burning the Future: Coal in America

May 12, 2008

St. Clair / Frank
The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy

Ziga Vodovnik
Rebels Against Tyranny: an Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism

Gary Leupp
Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop an Attack on Iran

Frankln Lamb
Choufeit's Bloody Pentacost

Suzanne Baroud
The Ambition of Hillary Clinton

Martha Rosenberg
Farmer Ernie's Chamber of Horrors

Dave Zirin
The Boss's Boycott

Carl Finamore
I Ain't Gonna Work No More

Peter Morici
Recession Watch

Richard Rhames
The Third Way to Nowhere

Website of the Day
The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

May 10 / 11, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Real Clear Numbers: 101,000 Casualties a Year

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah Eases Up and Beirut Opens Its Shutters

Ciara Gilmartin
A Surge in Iraqi Detainees

Diane Farsetta
Inside a Nuclear Industry Soirée

Kent Paterson
Mother's Day in Ciudad Juarez

Alan Farago
The Social Engineers

Rannie Amiri
Beirut on the Brink

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia, Morales and the Red Ponchos

Robert Fantina
The Lexicon Legacy of George W. Bush

Nikolas Kozloff
El Salvador 2009: Another Feather in the Cap of Chavez?

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Yumare Massacre, 22 Years On

David Yearsley
Bacharach at 80

Ron Jacobs
Rosa Luxemburg's Shock Doctrine

John Holt
Can Yellowstone Survive?

David Michael Green
It's So Over

Ben Terrall
Dealing Sleep

Kim Nicolini
The Best Film of the Bush Era?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Frisella, Gladstone-Gelman

May 9, 2008

Franklin Lamb
A Wild Day in Beirut

Andy Worthington
The Afghans of Gitmo

Benjamin Dangl
Polarizing Bolivia

Mark A. Huddle
Remembering Mildred Loving, an Unsung Hero of the Civil Rights Movement

David Macaray
Hollywood Gives SAG the Brush Off

Dave Lindorff
Team Clinton: Going Down Ugly

C.G. Estabrook
The Way We Live Now

Matt Kosko
McCain, Clinton, Obama and the Wages of Lesser-Evilism

Robert Weissman
Big Business is not the Solution to Global Poverty

Michael Dickinson
Jailing the Joint

Website of the Day
The Role of Third Parties in the U.S.A.

May 8, 2008

Sharon Smith
Rockefeller Family Fables

Saul Landau
The NATO Axiom

Laura Carlsen
A Primer on Plan Mexico

Binoy Kampmark
Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.

Kenneth Couesbouc
China's Paper Feet

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Constitutional Shenanigans

Franklin Lamb
Blindsided, Hezbollah Mulls Its Response

Sen. Russ Feingold
Government in Secret

George Wuerthner
The Problems with Conservation Easements

Richard W. Behan
A Brief Exposé of a Fraudulent War

Adam Federman
Marching for Sean Bell

Website of the Day
State of the Air

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Latinos or Reagan Democrats?

Obama's Electoral Dilemma

By NIKOLAS KOZLOFF

Though it might have appeared in the early primaries that Barack Obama would be able to transcend race and put together a winning coalition of whites, blacks, and Latinos, that hope has been dashed.  If the nominating process has revealed anything, it is that the country is seriously fractured along class and racial lines.  Having won the affluent, educated white vote and African American vote and lost the Latino and poor white vote, Barack Obama must now figure out how to reassemble a viable electoral coalition.

It’s a known fact that the Democratic Party has been seriously hemorrhaging conservative, downscale white male voters since the days of President Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s.  Disaffected by social and political change, many Blue Collar whites no longer saw the Democrats as champions of their working class aspirations and concluded that the party was instead working primarily for the benefit of others: the very poor, the unemployed, African Americans, and other political interest groups.

By the early 1980s these traditional Democratic urban and rural lower middle class voters, located primarily in the Midwest, turned out for Reagan.  Socially conservative, they were attracted by Reagan’s message of moral values, so-called fiscal responsibility and national security.  Many of these Reagan Democrats voted for Hillary Clinton during the primaries and probably ate up the news media’s racist handling of the Jeremiah Wright story.

For some time, DNC Chairman Howard Dean has been determined to expand the Democratic Party beyond its usual base in the Northeast, Illinois and California so as to compete with the Republicans on their own home turf as well as in key battleground states.  After Obama wins the nomination, there will surely be calls from within the party that the Illinois Senator should try to recapture the votes of the so-called Reagan Democrats.

Scenario #1: Recapturing White Reagan Democrats

In scenario #1, Obama could have Latino New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson campaign on his behalf in the American West but devote the lion’s share of his time and resources into trying to win back Reagan Democrats.  By putting a centrist Democrat or Republican on the ticket with military credentials such as Virginia Senator Jim Webb or Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, Obama may hope to win back this voting bloc.  Obama could also turn to Senator Jon Tester of Montana, another conservative who appeals culturally to the white male constituency.  Yet another option for Obama would be to offer the vice presidential slot to Hillary Clinton in an effort to mend fences within the Democratic Party.  Hagel or Tester might make Obama more competitive amongst Reagan Democrats around the country, but both Montana and Nebraska are solidly in the Republican column and would be difficult to tilt.  Hillary Clinton might argue that if she were the vice presidential nominee she could put Ohio and Indiana into play, two states that she won in the primary season, or Florida.

If Obama is going to follow the Reagan Democrat strategy, picking Jim Webb of Virginia might be a better choice.  Webb is not just a Reagan Democrat wannabe, he is a Reagan Democrat.  A Vietnam veteran and former Secretary of the Navy under the Great Communicator, Webb is an anti-war Democrat who would give Obama leverage in Virginia.  The state, which has 13 electoral votes, turned out heavily for Obama on primary day and the Illinois Senator did well amongst a range of different voting constituencies there.  If you average the recent polls, McCain is winning in the state but not by much. 

With Webb on the ticket, Obama could take the state and maybe even make neighboring North Carolina competitive for the Democrats.  Right now North Carolina is considered close and Obama won the primary there by a wide margin last month.  The southern state, home to Fort Bragg, has a long military tradition and having an ex-Secretary of the Navy could tip the state in favor of the Democrats.  If Obama furthermore promised to give John Edwards a position as Attorney General, the former North Carolina Senator might be able to help sew up the state.

In this scenario, Obama narrowly loses the American West and Latinos but does well amongst the Reagan Democrats elsewhere in the country.  If we assume that Obama takes the entire Northeast (and New Hampshire stays in the fold) and his home base of Illinois plus the neighboring Midwestern states of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, and he holds on to California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii, plus Webb and Edwards help Obama win in North Carolina and Virginia, the Democrats could triumph in the election by a razor thin margin, 270 electoral votes for Obama to 268 electoral votes for McCain.  However, if Webb is able to make an impact upon Reagan Democrats in the Rust Belt, the margin of victory could be higher.

Scenario #2: American West Latino Strategy

On the other hand Obama could pursue another strategy.  He could deploy John Edwards or Hillary Clinton to the Rust Belt in an effort to woo Reagan Democrats but put the lion’s share of his campaign resources into winning the Latino vote in the American West.  Because of the growing importance of the Latino vote in New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada, such a strategy now becomes possible (for more on this, see my earlier article: “Obama’s VP Quandary: Time for a Latino on the Ticket? June 2, 2008).  What’s more McCain is now vulnerable on immigration having flip-flopped on the issue: in 2006 he was a key sponsor of legislation which sought to regularize the situation of illegal immigrants.  Now however he says he’s “gotten the message” that the border must be “secured” before any other reforms can be carried out.

Obama could choose Latino New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson as his running mate which would probably tilt New Mexico to the Democrats and put nearby Colorado and Nevada into play.  An African American and Latino on the same ticket would represent a new historic first in U.S. politics.  Obama could fly to Albuquerque and deliver one of his eloquent speeches about race.  The Illinois Senator could talk about how African Americans and Latinos have both suffered discrimination.  He could then argue that it is time for the two groups to band together.

What are the chances that a Western strategy might succeed?  Unfortunately, Obama would face some daunting math.  Let us suppose that he hangs on to the traditional Democratic stronghold of the Northeast plus New Hampshire, Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii.  If Obama can hold on to these traditional Democratic states and then add Latino states like New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada he would do well but still lose the election with 261 electoral votes  against 277 for McCain. 

Scenario #3: Latinos in American West and Florida

But consider another scenario: Obama could dispatch running mate Richardson to Florida during the campaign.  Though Richardson is from the West, perhaps he might be able to sway Florida’s Latino voters, which now number more than one million, and bring them into the Democratic column.  The idea of hinging one’s electoral strategy upon Florida is surely disquieting to the Democrats, but winning the state back is not as crazy as it sounds.  At present, the state is leaning in McCain’s direction but still could tilt back Democratic.  By November the number of Latino Democrats in the state will probably exceed the number of Latino Republicans for the first time.  According to exit polls, the Democrats won the Latino vote in the 2006 mid-term election.  It was the first time in 30 years.

Traditionally, the Republicans have locked up the Latino vote by appealing to conservative Cubans.  But in recent years Florida’s Latino population has gone through dramatic changes.  In 1988, Cuban-Americans made up 90 percent of the Latino vote.  Now, that number has fallen to 45 percent.  The influx of other Latino groups such as Venezuelans, Colombians and Puerto Ricans, and the deaths of older Cuban-American exiles, account for the changes.  In the crucial “I-4 corridor” in Orlando and Central Florida, Latinos are growing in population.  Many Puerto Ricans have settled in the Orlando area, taking jobs in the state's stable tourism industry.  Colombians, Nicaraguans and other Latinos have also moved to the area and typically lean Democrat.

The GOP may not even be able to hold on to its traditional base within the Cuban-American community.  In Florida, the Republicans are running scared because a younger generation of Cuban-Americans is shedding its traditional loyalty to the GOP.  Younger Cuban-Americans are more concerned about the economy, healthcare and the Iraq War than U.S. policy towards Cuba.  In addition, Fidel Castro is gone from the scene and as a result the Republicans don’t have their traditional whipping boy anymore.  With Richardson on his team, Obama just might be able to turn Florida blue.  If Obama carries the American West, the West Coast, some Midwestern states and the Northeast, and adds Florida to the fold, he beats McCain with 288 electoral votes to 250.

Reagan Democrats or Latinos?

So which strategy should Obama pursue, Reagan Democrats or Latinos?  From the point of view of simple electoral math, putting Webb on the ticket and going for Reagan Democrats probably makes more sense.  The Virginia Senator could potentially help tilt his own state and North Carolina, and might make a difference in swing states Ohio, Indiana and Michigan.  Richardson could put the West in play but these states don’t have as many electoral votes as the Rust Belt and Upper South.  The New Mexico Governor could perhaps help in Florida.  But the Sunshine State, despite recent demographic trends, is much more challenging for the Democrats than Midwestern swing states which are closer in the polls.  Moreover the last thing the Democrats want to do is rely on Florida to clinch electoral victory: the GOP still has a lock on the governorship, which brings back bad memories of voter manipulation in 2000 under Jeb Bush. 

On the other hand, from a political perspective there are serious disadvantages to the Reagan Democrat strategy.  History has shown that Reagan Democrats are enormously wary of liberal candidates and are susceptible to right wing media propaganda.  Assuming that Webb or someone like him helps Obama win back Reagan Democrats, the Illinois Senator may wind up compromising his politics on the campaign trail and wind up like Bill Clinton, a politician who won the White House but who ultimately caused irreparable harm to progressive politics.  By contrast, if Obama put together a new electoral coalition comprised of youth, affluent Whites, Blacks, and Latinos, and actually won, he would end his campaign on a more idealistic note of “change” and have more of a political mandate to move the country away from the conservative politics which have so dominated the Clinton-Bush era.

Nikolas Kozloff is the author of Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave-Macmillan)

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