Nothing Says "Care About My Issues" Like... Not Voting?

Edward Schumacher-Matos heads an editorial on how Hispanic voters feel neglected by the Democrats with the question, "What if the Latino vote stays home?"

If you want to be taken seriously by politicians you had best have a lot of money, or be able to reliably deliver up a significant bloc of voters.

In California, the races between Barbara Boxer and Carly Fiorina for the Senate and Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman for governor are essentially tied among non-Latino voters, according to a poll by the Los Angeles Times, Latino Decisions and the University of Southern California. Democrats Boxer and Brown, however, were leading overall, and the difference was almost entirely due to Hispanics. They make up 19 percent of California's electorate.

* * *

As Barreto said, "The vote is there for the Democrats, but Latinos aren't going to turn out for the Democrats just because."

About 11.2% of the population of California is over age 65. Older people are reliable voters. They don't complain, "If I don't get what I want in this election, I might stay home next time around. Or maybe even this time." They vote and boy, do they get.

With due respect given to Eugene Robinson's argument that reliable voting blocks can be taken for granted, if you're a big enough bloc to matter the best way to change that is to show up at the polls in consistently high numbers. If you want the Republicans to offer a platform that is more appealing to African American voters, demonstrate that their disinterest will cause them to lose elections.

A Strange Form of Extortion

Governor Schwarzenegger is threatening the people of his state:

If Washington does not provide roughly $8 billion in new aid for the state, the governor threatens to severely cut back -- if not eliminate -- CalWORKS, the state's main welfare program; the In-Home Health Care Services program for the disabled and elderly poor, and two tax breaks for large corporations recently approved by the Legislature, the officials said.

I'll say it again:

If more federal aid is offered to the states, it should have clear strings attached: tax reforms likely to create and sustain a balanced budget starting in, let's say, 2011. The CBO can crunch the numbers.

Schwarzenegger could start by convincing his own party to cooperate with efforts to balance the budget, as well as working to overturn some of the insanity that has been made part of California's state constitution.