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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.
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I agree and I think the best way to win on this is to leverage the sexism which all too few Democratic men even get. Democrats don't have to sell the Hispanic thing. Hispanics will pick up on that without instruction from spin doctors. But they sure could start turning the sexism against the big fat bullies on the right.
May 29, 2009 8:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think you may have missed the point of Silver's column. He was asking if Republicans COULD win without turning around the trend with Hispanics. His conclusion, it's possible but improbable.
Basically they would be giving up on the Southeast which means they'd have to make significant gains elsewhere.
Also, the GOP has already lost women and African Americans.
Silver's just a numbers guy, I wouldn't try to read any morality into it.
May 29, 2009 9:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why not write to him with your comments (in a constructive tone)?
May 30, 2009 12:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
silver's point was to do a narrow minded thought experiment looking solely at the electoral impact of further gop loss of hispanic votes. he wasn't giving serious strategic advice to the gop.
May 30, 2009 4:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with Storm. Silver's just trying to get into their strategic thinking and, well, find out if they're even capable of strategic thinking or whether they've just gone totally over the falls into the Land of the Losers in their hate and fear fest. Its an empirical, not a normative analysis.
Just a correction, btw. Sotomayor did not "side" with anyone in that case. She applied the law as she found it (the McDonnell-Douglas test, we call it) to the facts before her, period. She did exactly what Republicans say a judge is supposed to do but, since they didn't like the outcome they call it judicial activism.
May 30, 2009 9:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with the other statements from storm and NCSteve and young. Nate was just running a prediction model on how things could turn out if republicans gave up on Hispanics, his results show that it wouldn't be very good news for republicans.
May 30, 2009 9:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with several of the commentators above. You missed the point of Nate's exercise. What would be the impact of the GOP completely writing off the Hispanic vote for 2012 and 2016. He found that there is a barely plausable way for them to win.
Although it was not part of Nate's excellent analysis, writing off the Hispanic vote will have even more significant adverse impacts on Republican candidates "down ballot." They are in the process of destroying their farm teams: think of local elected officials as the A league; state legislators as AA league; Governors, US Senators and US Representatives as AAA; with Presidential candidates being the "majors." They have already created the dynamic that African-Americans vote Democratic at the minimum level of 85% in most elections. They are pushing Hispanics into that same category. But do not forget the growing "other" vote consisting of Asian-Americans. Attacks such as that on Sotomayor such as this make them believe that the Republicans do not like "people like them." [Do not fotget former Senator "Macaca."] The Asian vote is by no means monolithic with those of Vietnamese and Korean heritage having Republican tendencies. Those Republican tendencies, however, are becoming less pronounced as a result of the continued bashing of people of color by the Republicans.
By becoming the party of some old white guys, they will destroy their ability to have a farm team and lead to even greater Democratic dominance IF they do not slap down hard these bigots and do it quickly.
May 30, 2009 2:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm in agreement with others here. It seems your reading of his presentation of data was narrowly focused.
May 30, 2009 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Someone who uses the moniker Truthseeker should be a little more careful with the truth. Tom Tancredo is a poor excuse for a human being, but the statement that he is "is equally wondering if the Obama administration 'hates white people,'" is an out of context distortion of what Tancredo said on Hardball. Let's not act like GOPers and make things sound worse than they are.
May 30, 2009 3:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just a narrow point, and I don't mean to pile on in any way.
I think the idea that African-American women as a group would be mad at Republicans over a Supreme Court nomination may be an Overreach.
They hate Republicans already, and how much more they would hate them? Maybe not too much, really.
May 30, 2009 3:56 PM | Reply | Permalink