Outreach Fail

Image by feastoffools via Flickr

Outreach to Hispanic voters. Ur doin it wrong.

John McCain sounds angry and frustrated that, despite the risks he took in pushing immigration reform, Hispanic voters flocked to Democrat Barack Obama in last year's presidential contest. McCain's raw emotions burst forth recently as he heatedly told Hispanic business leaders that they should now look to Obama, not him, to take the lead on immigration.

The meeting in the Capitol's Strom Thurmond Room on March 11 was a Republican effort led by Sens. McCain of Arizona, John Thune of South Dakota, and Mel Martinez of Florida to reach out to Hispanics. But two people who attended the session say they were taken aback by McCain's anger.

While it may be true that McCain has been more reasonable than some other Republicans on the issue of immigration he’s not thinking this thing out too clearly. If he was, he might see that it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for people to vote to empower the party that had just designated their entire ethnic group as the scapegoat of the year. And McCain wasn’t exactly Mr. Maverick during campaign season, was he?  In any case, this isn’t going to help much:

McCain's message was obvious, the source continued: After bucking his party on immigration, he had no sympathy for Hispanics who are dissatisfied with President Obama's pace on the issue. "He threw out [the words] 'You people -- you people made your choice. You made your choice during the election,' " the source said. "It was almost as if [he was saying] 'You're cut off!' We felt very uncomfortable when we walked away from the meeting because of that."

I’m no politician but just for starters I’m guessing it’s almost always a good idea to stay away from using the term, “you people” when addressing a particular demographic group. Read the whole thing. It’s really interesting.