Obama and Latinos’ Common Bond
SAN DIEGO — Barack Obama is looking for a way to convince Latino voters that he is simpatico. He may have found it thanks to the cover of The New Yorker. During the primaries, Obama tried to equate civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King and United Farm Workers President Cesar Chavez. Then, in a recent speech to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, Obama insisted that he had worked with local Latino leaders as a young civil rights attorney in Chicago and argued that, in a weak economy, “few have been hit harder than Latinos and African-Americans.” Finally, while speaking to the National Council of La Raza last week, Obama talked about how many in the Latino community came here “with so little but … a thirst to succeed” and said it reminded him of what brought his father here from Kenya “in the hope that, in America, you can make it if you try.”
Obama’s CEOs
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sen. Barack Obama has been meeting secretly with heavy industry CEOs in Washington to discuss issues that he would face as president. On the campaign trail, Obama has been highly critical of corporate executives and promised them nothing but tougher regulation and higher taxes. But the unannounced, small evening sessions with them since he clinched the Democratic nomination have been non-confrontational and cordial. Obama scheduled the meetings without any hopes of winning the captains of industry over from Sen. John McCain, but to show them they would be able to do business with him in the White House and that the president’s door would be open to the corporate leaders. Their consensus was that he has largely succeeded in that purpose.