The Battle For The Latino Evangelical Vote | Newsweek Scope

CAMPAIGN 2008
Death of a Battleground
Keith Naughton 11/3/2008 12:00:00 AM
The polls give Barack Obama a double-digit lead in Michigan, but you wouldn't know that from the intense canvassing his workers conducted in suburban Detroit over the weekend. Two Obama workers approached the sprawling split-level ranch home of Larry Lobur in Madison Heights, a working-class suburb dotted with McCain signs. Lobur has never voted Democratic. But when canvasser Ginger Roehr asked him if Obama had his support, Lobur snapped: "I know I'm not voting for McCain." Michigan's sour economy forced Lobur to close his construction business, laying off 20 workers. The barrel-chested 46-year-old now works on his own and fears McCain is too old and Sarah Palin too inexperienced to turn things around. "He's overready and Palin's not ready," says Lobur, who credits McCain's VP pick with pushing him over to Obama, to the dismay of his Republican family members. "Just this morning," he says, "we were arguing over the Internet."
COVER STORY: THE ECONOMY
A Darker Future For Us
Robert J. Samuelson 11/1/2008 12:00:00 AM
We Americans are progress junkies. We think that today should be better than yesterday and that tomorrow should be better than today. Compared with most other peoples, we place more faith in "opportunity" and "getting ahead." We may now be on the cusp of a new era that frustrates these widespread expectations. It is not just the present financial crisis and its astonishing side effects, from bank rescues to frenzied stock-market swings. The crisis coincides with a series of other challenges—an aging society, runaway health spending, global warming—that imperil economic growth. America's next president takes office facing the most daunting economic conditions in decades: certainly since Ronald Reagan and double-digit inflation, and perhaps since Franklin Roosevelt and 25 percent unemployment.
CAMPAIGN 2008
Debunking the Bradley Effect
Nate Silver 10/21/2008 12:00:00 AM
With Barack Obama having moved into a statistically significant lead in most public polling, and the Democrats' strongest issue—the economy—likely to remain tops on the electorate's mind between now and Nov. 4, commentators are asking how John McCain can win the election. The best answer that many of them have come up with? The "Bradley effect."
Campaign 2008
A Catholic Brief for Obama
10/17/2008 12:00:00 AM
George Weigel and his fellow McCain advisers are growing frustrated at the state of the campaign, and they should be. This election rightly continues to focus on the millions of Americans at risk of losing their jobs and their homes. The issue of abortion, of course, is tied to the nation's economic fortunes. In part, we endorsed Senator Obama because his tax-reduction plan focuses on the betterment of average families and those living at the margins. Center for Disease Control statistics reveal that prosperity directly affects the abortion rate far more significantly than Republican rhetoric pledging to outlaw abortion—a feat John McCain has failed to accomplish with nearly three decades in Congress.
CAMPAIGN 2008
'Health' of the Mother
Sarah Kliff 10/16/2008 12:00:00 AM
Using air quotes in any serious conversation is risky. Even more so during a presidential debate when the topic is abortion. So it was perplexing to many women when John McCain inserted them into a discussion on Wednesday about whether late-term-abortion bans should include exceptions for the mother's "health." Senator McCain's point was that health exceptions, which his rival Senator Barack Obama supports, have "been stretched by the pro-abortion movement in America to mean almost anything." But then, while describing what he called his opponent's "extreme pro-abortion position," McCain made air quotes when referring to the "health" of the mother.
CAMPAIGN 2008
Power In The Pews
Arian Campo-Flores 10/7/2008 12:00:00 AM
A few weeks ago, Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's former chief strategist, paid a visit to the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, a man some have dubbed his Latino alter ego. As president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC—which includes some 18,000 evangelical churches across the country—Rodriguez is known as a powerful orator and a politically savvy operator. He also sits at the juncture of two groups that Rove has courted assiduously on behalf of the Republican Party: Latinos and evangelicals. "If you're the Hispanic Karl Rove, then does that make me the Anglo Sam Rodriguez?" Rove asked as they sat down for breakfast at the Hyatt Regency in Sacramento.