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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Latino politics follow-up

There’s been some interesting comments so far in Friday’s “When politics gets personal for Latinos” post, including the one point the media often overlooks, that Latinos are not some monolothic entity that can be stereotyped in one particular way. Today, I came across a couple more interesting nuggets, one that digs a little deeper into Clinton and Obama’s support within the Latino community to-date, and another that breaks down Texas’ upcoming complicated not-really-a-primary contest on March 4th that Clinton’s effectively betting the house on.

NOTE: Check out the original post, too, as I added a couple of new references, including one that looks at the potential scenario of the Democratic nomination coming down to the final contest in Puerto Rico on June 7th!

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

A relevant look at Health Care from a new mother

Politicians love citing individual stories on the campaign trail to illustrate their ability to connect with the average voter and reinforce the superiority of their positions on any given subject. These stories are often moving, if rarely informative, but it’s always more interesting to me to hear the background on how someone came to the decision to support a particular candidate.

A friend of mine who lives in Texas — an intelligent, married white woman under 40 who recently had her first child — posted privately in her journal yesterday about how she ultimately determined her preferred candidate based on her own research (imagine that!) of their positions on health care and I asked her permission to repost it (with personal details removed) because it’s as clear, unbiased and relevant an explanation of the differences between Clinton and Obama’s health care proposals as I’ve come across so far.

I’ve made up my mind about my democratic candidate, and it’s based on health care.

And my choice is Barack Obama.  Here is why.

My #1 issue this year is universal health care.  It’s a personal issue for me.  It was a terrifying experience for me to be pregnant and slightly above the income level Medicaid.  Since I was unemployed during [my daughter’s] birth and most of my pregnancy, I had to have health insurance.  And the only thing available to me was to continue my employer’s plan through COBRA, which was difficult to apply when I moved from PA to TX, and whose premiums were incredibly expensive.  Now, with [my daughter] to cover, I’m spending $600 a month to cover both of us monthly.  And that’s before co-pays, deductibles, and lab fees.  I’ve had to pay this with no income of my own–my daughter and I wouldn’t have insurance unless my mom hadn’t graciously paid the vast majority of my COBRA premiums.  I’m usually on the phone at least once a week with my insurance carrier getting bills adjusted, and I’m convinced the the system is utterly broken.  I loathe going to the doctor because I know it means I’m going to have to spend a couple hours on the phone with the insurance company in two months to get the visit paid for.  [My husband], who is working full-time as a contractor right now, has not had health insurance for about a year and remains uninsured.

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

When politics gets personal for Latinos

In reality, politics are without question a very personal matter but, partly due to the media’s focus on the horserace aspect of elections and partly due to the candidates often allowing themselves to be defined by labels (or at the least, trying to marginalize their opponents with them), most political debate occurs from a safe, impersonal distance. It’s what I think made John Edwards such an intriguing but ultimately flawed candidate this time around as he was undeniably the most passionate of the bunch but was significantly hampered by the combination of his problematic track record as a Senator and the inherent discordance of a filthy rich trial lawyer attempting to present himself as a champion of the downtrodden, no matter how sincere he seemed to be about his chosen cause.

As Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continue to battle it out for the Democratic nomination that was not-too-long ago assumed to be going to be handed to her on February 5th, the admittedly minimal daylight between them on the actual issues are (hopefully) going to get a bit more scrutiny from voters and the media alike, and it’s going to be the most personal issues that will sway voters one way or the other.

Two issues of particular interest to Latinos are immigration reform and U.S. relations with Cuba and Latin America, the latter of which is greatly affected by a combination of the first two. Like Health Care, there’s not a huge disparity between them on the surface, but there are distinct differences in both their approach and tone that stand out for me.

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Little League Time!

051On Saturday, we signed Isaac up for another season of Little League baseball and I agreed to coach again.  Last year it was non-competitive Tee Ball and it turned out to be a lot of fun, but this year we’ll be moving up to the Bantam level which is where things officially get competitive. Talking with the league commissioner yesterday, he equated dealing with some of the parents to having a conversation with someone who’d drank 20 beers and was feeling punchy, the kind of thing I was worried about happening last season but never did, and now I’m hooked so I’m not worrying about it too much. If anything, it’s more likely that I’d get into a fight with an opposing coach than one of my parents!

The main differences at the Bantam level, beyond there being winners and losers, is that coaches pitch to their teams instead of hitting off the tee and there’s only 12 kids on the field at a time. While the former will be challenging for most of the kids, the latter will be toughest part as it pretty much requires organizing a weekly practice in order to identify who’s best to play which positions and ensure they understand the various nuances involved in fielding those positions. I never really thought about how complicated the game is until I had to explain it to kids.

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Random Thought on Race

Barack Obama is half black, half white and was raised mostly in Hawaii and Indonesia, but is considered by most to be the "black" candidate. I'm half Puerto Rican and, depending on who's telling the story, probably a quarter black and a quarter white, and was raised in and around New York City. If I ran for President, I wonder how they would label me, especially considering I don't speak Spanish?

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Monday Mash-up, 2/4/08

1) While a couple of good things happened in January (most notably an unexpected promotion at work to Online Ad Sales Director for all of our properties!), overall it was as bad a start to 2008 as I could have imagined. Nothing major, but a lot of bumps in the road that tested my constitution and nearly shook my resolve. I’m very glad that it’s February.

New Fossil Bag2) I’m not a big shopper but I’m a complete sucker for a handful of things, including bags and electronic gadgets. While picking up a new wallet from Macy’s on Saturday (one of those slim, front pocket types that I’m still getting used to, frantically patting my back pocket every couple of hours) I saw this great Fossil messenger bag that kept screaming my name, no matter how many times I said it was too expensive. I make fun of Salomé all the time about the many, many, many bags she owns (rivaled only, perhaps, by her shoes) but I can appreciate a good bag and this is a nice step up from the cheaper, smaller bag I’ve had for the past year or so. It fits all of my gadgets comfortably plus has plenty of room for all of the books and papers I’m invariably carrying around, whether I need them or not. We also came close to buying an HD TV as Best Buy had a great deal on a 32″ Westinghouse but I still couldn’t quite bring myself to pull the trigger. Soon, though. Probably when we get the Wii.

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Hope vs. Cynicism

I’m a pretty cynical person most days, but I have a couple of good friends who make me look like the love-child of Mother Theresa and Gandhi. One of them emailed me today asking me to convince him about Obama: “C’mon Guy, if anyone can sell me, it’s you….do your worse…..convince me why I’m not just settling for the candidate I dislike the least!”

What started out as a brief reply became a much longer one and I decided to post it here because I suspect there might be others who know my cynical side and are curious about how I fell for the “hope” candidate.

Short answer: Because cynicism enables the status quo.

Slightly longer answer with a dash of cynicism: To paraphrase John McCain’s take on global warming, “If we’re wrong, worst case scenario is we end the Clinton/Bush dynasty and still get a Democrat in the White House.”

Long answer, personal/persuasive essay style: For me, it’s not simply about how progressive Obama is or isn’t, because if it were about that, I’d still be in Kucinich’s corner, the only real progressive to run for President in the past 2-3 elections. Obama is a moderately progressive Democrat, but he doesn’t play the cynical us vs. them game which simply guarantees another 4-8 years of partisan gridlock, no matter which side wins.

What I like most about him is that he’s a realist — putting forth policy proposals that actually have a realistic chance of being passed instead of the pie in the sky shit everyone wants to hear but knows they’ll never see in their lifetime, ie: a Department of Peace —  but he has the heart of an idealist. Bill Clinton was right about the “roll of the dice” thing, but the gambler isn’t those voting for Obama it’s Obama himself, appealing to the idealist in all of us, daring people to not just hope for better but to get off their asses and help make things better; trusting that they are smart enough to look beyond the sound bites they hear on the evening news and look deeper themselves.

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