There are 50,000 students from outside Iowa now attending college in the state. The state government encourages these students to register and vote in Iowa. This presents a large bloc of potential votes that Obama can collect in his efforts to win this pivotal state.
In 2004 President Bush carried the state of Iowa’s seven electoral votes, albeit by a very slim 10,000 vote margin. Yet, prior to 2004, Iowa had voted for the Democratic nominee in the four previous presidential elections. In the 2004 election, voter registrations were about evenly divided between the two parties. But currently, Democratic voter registrations in Iowa are running about 100,000 ahead of those signing with the GOP.
Iowa stands out today as a prime target for Obama in his effort to switch red states to blue.
In Iowa there is a special opportunity. This is the voting potential of the huge number of students going to college in the state. As a percentage of total population, there are more college students in Iowa than in any state in the nation. This is because, according to the Iowa College Student Aid Commission, there are as many as 50,000 students from out of state who are enrolled in higher education in Iowa. Comparatively few Iowa students leave the state to go to college. (Click Here to Read More)
Most people think that every eligible black voter in the country will quite automatically flock to the polls to become part of a historic election of Barack Obama as the first African-American president of the United States. This is not so. Despite the excitement of a ticket headed by Obama, this year’s primaries revealed a huge reservoir of unregistered and non-voting blacks in the United States. A staggering amount of black voter apathy persists.
In the current 2008 election there may be no state where the black vote is more important than Michigan. With its 17 electoral votes, Michigan is the No.1 target in John McCain’s efforts to turn this historically blue state into a red state. President Bush came close to carrying Michigan in the 2004 election. Current polls show Obama with a slight lead in Michigan. But the race has narrowed within recent weeks so that Obama’s lead in some polls is within the margin of error. For Obama there is danger too in the fact that in recent years some counties in the northern part of the state have become increasingly Republican.
The Michigan vote is pivotal to the outcome of the national election. Without its 17 electoral votes, Obama will need to add Florida or Ohio and other smaller states won by Bush in 2004 in order to assemble the necessary 270 electoral votes required to win the presidency.
There are more than 1 million eligible black voters in Michigan. They make up 14 percent of the total electorate in the state. Black voters in Michigan are overwhelmingly Democrats. John Kerry took 94 percent of the black vote in Michigan in 2004.
But estimates are that there are at least 300,000 unregistered black voters in Michigan. A large majority of them live in the Detroit metropolitan area. Tens of thousands of additional blacks were registered to vote in Detroit in 2004 but they declined to cast a ballot.
Obama’s chances to carry the state of Michigan may turn on efforts to register this large reservoir of black voters and get them to the polls on Election Day. (Click Here to Read More)
The Obama campaign is now in a position to show 27 million Hispanic voters how McCain’s new decision to support a ban on affirmative action could severely damage the college opportunities of hundreds of thousands of college-bound Hispanic youth.
Ten years ago John McCain opposed a bill in the Arizona legislature that would have banned affirmative action for Hispanics in college admissions. No surprise there. He is a senator from a state where 25 percent of the voters are Hispanic.
Over the past 30 years affirmative action rules have been the principal instrument for helping young Hispanics gain access to good opportunities in higher education. This has been public policy for the most part because, due to the language and cultural barriers, the average score of Hispanics on standardized college admissions tests tend to be at least 10 percent below the average score for non-Hispanic whites.
Today there are 1.8 million Hispanic Americans in colleges and universities in the United States. Large numbers of them would not be there but for the benefits of affirmative action. Also, as a result of affirmative action policies, there are tens of thousands of Hispanic Americans today in our most selective colleges and universities. Again, without affirmative action, very few of these Hispanic students would have been admitted.
Senator McCain has always presented himself as a man of principle, rather than of expediency. Now, apparently for political reasons, McCain has changed his mind on affirmative action. McCain announced that he supports the new so-called Arizona Civil Rights Initiative that would ban the use of race as a positive factor in admissions to public institutions of higher education. The initiative has since been pulled off the ballot in Arizona because many of the nominating signatures submitted by the initiative’s supportered were deemed invalid. (Click Here to Read More)
There is no official Census data on the number of Muslim Americans living in the United States. Estimates range from 3 million to as many as 10 million.
But most analysts are confident that there are at least 400,000 Muslim Americans living in the state of Michigan. And it is estimated they may make up as much as 4 percent of the total electorate in the state. This is the largest presence of Muslims in any state in the nation. Muslims in Michigan include the nation’s largest pockets of Arab Americans, as well as followers of Islam from Pakistan, Iran, and Indonesia. There are also large numbers of Black Muslims — African Americans who have converted to Islam. (Click Here to Read More)
A consensus is developing that Mitt Romney will be John McCain’s choice for vice president of the United States.
For the Obama campaign, this is a matter for major concern. Why? A recent poll shows that a McCain-Romney ticket would quite easily carry the state of Michigan and its 17 electoral votes.
But with any other vice presidential nominee, McCain narrowly trails Obama in Michigan. (Click Here to Read More)
Barack Obama charmed Europe and its leaders. Let’s not allow this to divert our attention. The fact that five Frenchmen out of six would vote for Obama is irrelevant. The election is not in Europe. It’s in the United States.
It’s in the United States where for millions of voting Americans the economic sky is falling.
In 1992 the governor of a small southern state who had no experience in foreign policy challenged an incumbent president of the United States who a year earlier had accomplished the spectacular feat of liberating Kuwait and who was riding to reelection on popularity ratings of 80 percent or more.
But the country was in a deep recession. Knowing that their candidate was no match for George H.W. Bush on foreign policy credentials, Bill Clinton’s advisers kept reminding him, “It’s the economy, stupid.” (Click Here to Read More)
This week’s identification of a near epidemic is a perfect opening for Obama to establish his strategies for combating AIDS in Hispanic communities.
AIDS is reaching epidemic proportions among Latinos in this country. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly one quarter of all new AIDS cases are Latinos. In major inner-city areas, often 25 percent of Latino men are infected with the virus.
This frightening new data on AIDS will raise grave concerns within Latino communities throughout the United States. Obama must promptly tell the public why he would be a far stronger advocate to combat AIDS than would John McCain. It now may be necessary for Obama to address the issue on national television.
Obama’s healthcare reform measures have consistently promised support to patients who suffer from AIDS. Obama has already declared that if elected president, he will lead the fight against AIDS not only in the United States but throughout the world. Obama’s words: “We are all sick because of AIDS.” (Click Here to Read More)
The Bush administration has just proposed a regulation that would allow healthcare providers at their discretion to refuse to provide women with certain types of contraception. This includes emergency contraception, or what is sometimes referred to as the “Morning After” pill, which is almost always administered to women after they have been raped.
Under the proposed regulation, hospitals and state regulators could not force physicians to prescribe or even to tell women of their options concerning certain pharmaceuticals or procedures when the physicians themselves object on moral grounds.
The question is, where does John McCain stand on this critical health issue? (Click Here to Read More)
Undoubtedly, Barack Obama will win the lion’s share of the black vote this November. But further increases in black voter turnout could insure victories in the closely contested battleground states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Virginia, and Florida. In these states alone there are 1 million or more African Americans who are not registered to vote.
A significant and further increase in black voter turnout for Obama is likely as more African Americans become aware of John McCain’s voting record, which over many years has been consistently directed at blocking the paths to equality and opportunity for African Americans.
Voting decisions of whites, too, may be an issue. Few U.S. citizens today know that McCain’s legislative record has been consistently hostile to the aspirations of black Americans.
Here is the record:
• McCain voted four times against the 1990 Civil Rights Act, including a vote to sustain a presidential veto. This bill would have strengthened enforcement provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 regarding employment discrimination against blacks.
• In 1983 McCain opposed the creation of a federal holiday to honor Martin Luther King Jr. Seventy-eight of the nation’s 100 senators, including many Republicans, supported the legislation. (Click Here to Read More)
For a century or more, many American voters have been influenced, if not controlled, by a deep-seated myth that the election of a Democrat is bad news for the stock market.
Once again the myth is being used to political advantage. The U.S. stock market has declined precipitously. Since October 2007, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has plummeted by 20 percent or more.
This opens up a superb opportunity for the GOP to bring old ghosts out of the closet.
McCain swiftboaters are making two charges:
• They charge that the decline in the market is due to national polling results showing that Obama is likely to be the next president.
• They say, too, that the election of Obama will inevitably produce a further sharp decline in stock markets after he is in the White House.
But both statements are false. (Click Here to Read More)
