The results of the 2022 midterm elections on Nov. 8 are still not completely counted, but almost all the media, many think tanks and pundits in DC have already weighed in with their analysis. It’s complicated. Did a sizeable new proportion of Hispanic heritage citizens vote Republican? After all, Congressman Mike Garcia’s (R-CA) win was the decisive majority 218th for Republicans. On Nov. 9, the Wall Street Journal came out with a colorful chart on vote count findings. Their bottom line: “Hispanic voters made up 11 percent of the total votes cast: 56% voted Democrat and 38% voted Republican”. That is about the same percentage who voted for Trump in 2020 and slightly below the 40% who voted for George W Bush in 2004. “The 2022 midterm election saw many Latino voters shift their support from the Democratic party to the Republican Party,” NPR’s WAMU-1A reported on Nov. 15. “Support for Democrats among Latino men was under 55 percent -- down from 63 percent in 2018,” according to CNN. “Among Latina women, support for the Democratic Party is strong but waning.”
“The demographics of the Hispanic voter has changed significantly since 2000,” said Jens Manuel Krogstad of the Pew Hispanic Center at a Georgetown University’s Catholic Initiative Center panel on Nov. 16. “US born Hispanics, not new immigrants, now form the basis of Latino growth in the US. There is no doubt that immigrants from Mexico shaped the Hispanic demographic for decades, but now that has dwindled”.
The bottom line on which all analysts seemed to agree? The Hispanic vote is highly diverse. “You can’t paint the Latino community with one brush. It is not a monolith,” said Julian Castro, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Obama administration. “There used to be a clear pattern that Hispanic voters supported Democrats, but that’s not always true now. In this election, we saw this support slip in formerly reliably-Democratic Miami-Dade county in Florida and in Oregon, that voted in its first Latina Congresswoman - a Republican.”
“Community is very consequential in determining which party will control congress and prevail in presidential elections,” Castro noted. “How Hispanics vote depends on where they are growing their local power addressing everyday realities like schools, jobs and our deepest values,” said Michael Okińczyc-Cruz, Executive Director of the Coalition for Spiritual & Public Leadership (CSPL). “It’s our spiritual history that matters.” According to exit polls, Hispanic voters’ top concerns were inflation, stable local jobs, legalizing some abortions and securing America’s borders. Many analysts concluded that the confusion about the Latino/a/x vote is a recognition that the Hispanic-heritage community is as diverse as America itself.
On Oct. 31, the US Supreme Court (aka SCOTUS) held an unprecedented five-hour oral argument on Affirmative Action – the almost 50-year-old program that started out as a Great Society civil rights executive order to support the concept that minority, underrepresented ethnic and racial groups should experience equal opportunities and non-discrimination when being employed. It evolved into a college admissions quota system favoring women and minorities. In 1978, the supreme court ruled that such racial quota systems were unconstitutional under the 14th amendment and that race could only be considered as one factor in admissions decisions. Affirmative action evolved then into an undefined “diversity” requirement that was promoted as benefiting the entire higher educational mission. Diversity programs were managed on every campus by generously paid designated campus diversity offices and officials with all the usual consequential academic grants, conferences, journals and even advanced degrees. Minority admissions increased and funding programs for Minority Serving Institutions were expanded in every administration. In 2005, the then liberal-leaning SCOTUS barely passed continuing race-based criteria (still referred to as Affirmative Action) once again. But Justice Sandra Day O’Connor – SCOTUS first female justice – said she sensed that the program would phase out after 25 years. But, she asked, what was the criterion for ascertaining whether it had been successful or not?
During the oral arguments of 2005, SCOTUS agreed that affirmative action success would depend on obtaining a “critical mass” of minority students on US college campuses. What was that? “Everyone would know it when they saw it”, was the comment. Seventeen years later, on Oct. 31, 2022, the now conservative-leaning Supreme court focused their five-hour oral arguments about two affirmative action cases (from Harvard and the University of North Carolina) on just that question: what are the criteria of success? “When does it end?” asked Justice Samuel Alito.
What is the goal of “affirmative action” – that morphed into undefinable “diversity,” and has now morphed into the even more undefinable concept of “equity and justice?” When does preference for some identity groups become discrimination against others – especially in this age of multiculturism and multinational (some say even multi gender) people? It is a question America’s supreme court justices -in an increasingly diverse court, appointed increasingly due to their identity group - will answer around May or June 2023.
With the 2022 midterm election almost over, the US House of Representatives and Senate face less than six weeks including week-long breaks for Thanksgiving, Christmas and other federal holidays – to finish up legislation for this 117th two-year Congressional session. Six weeks! Then the legislative docket is swept clean, a new Congress is sworn in on Jan. 20, 2023, and it all begins again. There is much that must be done and that advocates desperately want to have done in the period known as “the lame duck” weeks after a federal election. But little will pass.
The must-pass bills most agreed on are the end-of-year funding bills -- where the big red line is whether or not a debt cap will be imposed (most Democrats want no cap; Republicans are split). The other must pass bill is the National Defense Authorization Act – a 2,900-page bill (usually around 800 pages) complicated with billions of dollars of add-ons for everything from gender issues to increased funding for Ukraine.
But Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) told UNCENSORED that she is focusing on the farm bill -- incorporating funding for conservation and climate-change programs as well as for the always controversial food stamps. That focus will take away the time Lofgren will have to legislate the issue that Senate Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has spoken out most about: “We have a population that is not reproducing on its own with the same level that it used to. The only way we’re going to have a great future is if we … get a path to citizenship for all 11 million [undocumented immigrants]… or however many undocumented there are here. Our ultimate goal is to help the dreamers.” Most Americans don’t agree. The only way that will ever happen is if it is done by Congress piecemeal through the legislative process. Could that be the model, breakthrough bipartisan legislation of 2023?
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