Illinois

Importance Of Latino Vote For Democrats!

Ronald Leave a comment

The Democratic Party suffered major losses in the Midterm Elections of 2010, but it could have been far worse had it not been for solid Latino support in many states!

A couple of seats in the House of Representatives were saved because of Latino votes in Arizona, and the Senate seats of Harry Reid in Nevada, Michael Bennet in Colorado, and Barbara Boxer in California were retained due significantly to the Latino vote in those states for the Democrats!

Additionally, the Latino vote also helped Governor Pat Quinn to win in Illinois, and Jerry Brown to win the Governorship of California!

The only place that the Latino vote seemed to help Republicans was in Florida, where Marco Rubio won the Senate seat, but the difference is that Latinos in Florida are more heavily Cuban American, a voting bloc which tends to be strongly Republican. With Marco Rubio himself being a Cuban American, and replacing an elected Cuban American, Mel Martinez, who held the seat until he resigned in 2009, Florida is therefore a special case!

It is clear that the Latino vote can have a dramatic effect on the fortunes of  the Democratic Party in the 2012 elections, and be a decisive factor in the re-election campaign of President Barack Obama!

Future Obama Presidential Library: Hawaii Or Illinois?

Ronald Leave a comment

Imagine this: It is only early in the second year of the Obama Presidency, and already, discussions have begun on where the Obama Presidential Library should be after his time in the White House ends!

Being that he was born and lived in Hawaii for part of his youth, the Hawaii legislature is planning to petition the President to place his Presidential papers in their state.

At the same time, Obama’s adult life was primarily in Chicago, and certainly that is a more central location for his papers, regarding access to scholars.

A good compromise would be to do what happened with President Ford. His papers are in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at the University of Michigan, a major scholarly repository and outstanding university where Ford graduated. However, there is also a Ford Presidential Museum in the city which he represented in Congress–Grand Rapids.

So I propose that his presidential library be in Chicago, either at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, or the University of Illinois at Chicago.

At the same time, put a Presidential Museum in Honolulu, as the home of his birth and early childhood.

That way, scholars have easy access, but tourists visiting Hawaii have another major historical site besides the Pearl Harbor Memorial.

This would be a good compromise to be fair to both Hawaii and Illinois!