Latino Vote & the Democratic Senate

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Latino Voters swung heavily Democratic in 2010 midterms. Adam Serwer concludes:

Latinos are so diverse culturally that the only reason they vote as a bloc at all is because they continue to have collective interests as Latinos. That has more to do with a shared experience of discrimination than a shared culture; the more immigration policy becomes pretext for targeting Latinos, the more likely they are to vote this way. That said, the victories of Republican candidates like Susana Martinez, Marco Rubio, and Brian Sandoval show that they can blunt this trend in the short term by nominating Latino candidates for higher office. Right now, in the long term, Latinos are still a swing vote.

via Adam Serwer Archive | The American Prospect.

I really believe many of these GOP statehouses and governors will begin to pass laws like AZ’s SB 1070 and make Tea Party, GOP and Blue Dog legislators unacceptable to the majority of Latino constituencies heading into 2012. Lawrence O’Donnell invited Maria Teresa Kumar, Executive Director/Co-Founder of Voto Latino on the Last Word to run the numbers down on Latino turnout in the Senate races.