Counting down the days ‘til Election Day ¿What will our message be?

Where I live, Thursday is the final day for people to use an Early Voting Center if they want to cast a ballot without having to resort to absentee ballots or an Election Day visit to a polling place.

So we’re at the point where we’re counting down the days until Election ’10 is a mere memory – and potentially a bad one for the growing Latino population, since the segment of our society that sees itself as gaining next week is the one that is more than willing to demonize our existence for their benefit.

WHICH IS WHY I’d enjoy it thoroughly if there were a strong Latino voter turnout. Because that would produce significant numbers of votes for Democratic candidates that would dump all over the conservative ideological vision many of these people are dreaming of.

Latino Decisions, a group that has been doing various polls trying to get a sense of how much Latinos care about this election cycle, came up with a study that claims the Latino turnout will be 75.1 percent.

That figure is significant because it is about 10 percent higher than a figure the group came up with a month ago.

 If they’re to be believed, then we really have had a significant jolt during the past four weeks, when the Pew Hispanic Center came out with its own study that said Latinos favored Democrats for Congress over Republicans by a 3-1 ratio, but that only about half of Latinos felt motivated enough to even want to vote.

IF THE FIGURE really is up around three-quarters of the Latino population that is registered to vote, then that could produce significant numbers of votes that could cost the GOP candidates who are counting on nativist-leaning supporters to elect them to office.

It sounds nice. But I am skeptical, in large part because I’m always skeptical.

What this latest poll does is merely confirm what I already knew – the potential is there for Latinos to step up on Tuesday and provide an antidote to the poisonous political rhetoric we have been hearing from Tea Party types, whose idea of “taking back” government all too often means excluding our growing numbers.

It is nice to read reports about activity in Texas, which has become a solidly Republican state in recent years. But it is one that could flop back to Democrats (and not the old Dixiecrat kind) because of the growing Latino population.

IT WAS ENCOURAGING to read state GOP Chairman Steve Munisteri tell the Ft Worth Star Telegram newspaper, “we can’t wait until we lose the state before we go talk to Hispanics.”

For some political people, it is going to take “losing” their territory because of the Latino vote before they finally accept the reality that we’re in the 21^st Century and that their talk of “taking back” is more about going backward.

But for that to happen, it means there needs to be a decent voter turnout. Which is why those activist types who seriously talk about “sending messages” by staying home are absurd.

That “message” will be interpreted by these types as, “Lazy Mexicans staying home. Good riddance.”

REAL MESSAGES HAVE to be sent with significant numbers of votes. While I’ll be the first to admit that current Democratic leadership hasn’t done much on issues of concern to Latinos, we have to focus on those who would try to do our interests harm.

That all too often means going after those people whom the Republican Party is willing to rely on for support.

So are we going to send a message to our enemigos come Tuesday. That new poll sounds nice, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

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