Nate Silver's narrow-minded analysis: Republicans can dismiss Latinos and still win
Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com said Thursday:
Since the Republicans, to say the least, do not seem particularly inclined to curry favor with Hispanic voters by playing nice on Sonia Sotomayor, it's worth engaging in the following thought experiment: Can the Republicans win back the White House in 2012 or 2016 while losing further ground among Latinos? And if so, what is their most plausible path to victory?
Silver then goes on to explain that there aren't many states in which Latinos make a difference any way.
But here's the problem with Silver's simplistic approach: Consider this comment:
Curt Levey of the conservative Committee for Justice argued she was "picked because she's a woman and Hispanic, not because she was the best qualified."
I doubt women in general will welcome this statement, if you ask me. Sotomayor's net approval among men is 17%, in contrast with 41% among women, according to a Quinnipiac poll released today.
Yet Silver does not draw colorful graphs depicting how women voted in 2008, and how badly Republicans need to improve their standing among women. He isolates Latinos as if we lived in a nation where each group only cares about itself. Blacks come to mind. African Americans with little doubt identify with Sotomayor, who sided with mostly black firefighters in the now-famous New Haven case.
Nor did it cross Silver's mind that African Americans (especially women) might be really pissed off that the nominee chosen by the first African American President is being trashed by Rush Limbaugh as a "reverse racist." and that the President himself is being smeared in the process. Indeed Limbaugh simultaneously called Sotomayor and Obama himself a racist. Tom Tancredo is equally wondering if the Obama administration "hates white people."
In short, Nate Silver should spend more time doing his homework before delving into such complex issues.
Sotomayor is not only Latina. She is a woman, and a minority.
