“Hispanics Abandoning The U.S.S. Obama”

Negative enthusiasm for this year’s mid-term elections, for President Barack Obama’s political persona and for his “accomplishments” roiled up in unexpected places this fall.
Hispanic political attention and appreciation of Obama turned negative, especially in the last few weeks and days of the campaign.
To be precise, some Hispanic commentators like Harvard-educated Ruben Navarrete of the Washington Post Writers Group as well as some Hispanic activist groups suggested that Hispanics should not vote at all in the midterms, much less vote Democrat.
Essentially, both views revolved around immigration reform.
Navarrete argued that The Democrat Party has not only reneged on President Obama’s immigration reform efforts, and lack thereof, but has thwarted immigration reform forever because the financial heart and soul of the Party is owned by organized labor unions and their money. He also argues that Obama is a hypocrite on reform because he brags about record high deportation of illegals, most of which are not criminals but guilty of traffic tickets mostly, not murder. This, while courting Hispanic blind loyalty.
An aside on this subject is the collective horror of many expressed nationally of the murder of two deputy sheriffs in California a few days ago by an alleged shooter who the government says has been deported twice after criminal convictions in American courts. The finger appointing is aimed at Obama because of his perceived lack of immigration law enforcement despite his claims of record setting deportations.
In other words, if Obama is a real “Deporter-in-Chief,” why wasn’t this alleged killer in Mexico instead of shooting two men dead in California.
Back to Navarrete’s views, Obama and the Democrat Party have hindered or blocked immigration reform and there are still 11 million or so illegally present people here and more wanting to come. He and others point to the rush of thousands of Central American kids and some of their mothers that flooded Texas that the Obama Administration fumbled and mismanaged despite knowing the rush would happen months before.
The Obama incompetence in handling the kids brought out a huge anti-immigration burst of energy that peaked when anti-immigration outsiders flooded Murrieta, California and blocked federal buses full of these kids from entering federal facilities for processing.
Murrieta became the flashpoint of Obama immigration problem solving and was featured on network television as semi-riots.
Joining columnist Navarrete in recent weeks are organized Hispanic activist groups that normally are 100% Democratic. They have been forcefully suggesting that Hispanic voters refrain from voting altogether or at least not vote Democratic. They haven’t gone far enough as to say vote Republican.
Feeding this activity that doesn’t bode well for Democrats is recent polling that shows “millennials” over-all and millennial Hispanic support for Barack Obama plunging. In the Hispanic case, Obama’s popularity has gone down further, percentage point wise, than among any other group measured by pollsters.
The Harvard University Institute of Politics measures Millennial (18-29 years of age) views on politics and the presidency regularly.
It’s shocking conclusions of midterm elections by the Institute are that 50 percent of the millennials they surveyed favored a Republican takeover of the Senate and that among those “mostly likely” to vote it was 51percent in favor of a GOP Senate in contrast to 55 percent that favored a Democratic Congress at this time in 2010.
In November of 2009, 81 percent of Hispanic millennials approved of Barack Obama; 74 percent voted for him in 2012 and 60 percent approved Obama’s performance in April of 2014 and today – 49 percent approve and 46 percent of them disapprove of Obama’s Presidential performance. 66 percent of these young Hispanics worry about a terror attack on America and that is the highest of any group, Whites and Blacks or Asians surveyed on terrorism.
These numbers are slightly better than that of recent Gallup polling which shows that Hispanic approval of Obama is down from the 71 percent that voted for him in 2012 to 44 percent this month.
In President Obama’s penultimate campaign appearance of his career in Connecticut, young Hispanic protesters heckled the President about “Bold Action” referring to his delayed action on immigration he postponed.
To summarize, more than one national Hispanic commentator calls for Hispanics to dump Obama and his Party for their perfidy on Immigration Reform; they are joined by several Hispanic activist groups that are normally 100 percent Democrat. They are angry that President Obama has done nothing but evade ignore immigration reform since he promised seven years ago to fix immigration in his first year in office. His supporters hypocritically campaign on his “record” deportations.
Obama is not alone in being criticized/heckled on immigration by former supporters; recently soon–to-be Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was heckled at a Maryland Democratic event. Young Hispanic activists unhappy with her Immigration evasions heckled her entire appearance.
Clinton falls short of concrete immigration positions waiting to see what the polls say. Activists seriously want reform delivered after being stabbed-in-the-back, they think, by past hero, Barack Obama with his 49 percent (44 percent in Gallup) Hispanic approval that is falling.

Contreras formerly wrote for the New American News Service of the New York Times